Last winter I was contacted by Tap My Trees and asked to review their tree tapping kit used in making homemade maple syrup. Unfortunately, I live in south Texas and wasn’t able to take advantage of the offer. However, my friend Colleen, from Raising Lifelong Learners, lives up north where maple trees are abundant. She was excited to “tap her trees” and teach her children the process of making homemade maple syrup. The following post is her experience.
Have you ever tried tapping a maple tree to get sap, and then boiling it down to produce homemade syrup?
Thanks to Tap My Trees and their super-easy-to-understand instructions, website, and tools, we did that for the first time this spring. It was an amazing experience – and one I can’t wait to try again next year.
The Supplies
We received the Starter Kit, which gave us all we needed to tap three trees. The kit contains three taps {or spiles}, aluminum buckets with lids and hooks, cheesecloth, an instruction booklet, and even the drill bit for making the correct size holes to put the tap into.
The materials are very high quality and the instructions are easy for even the newest maple tapper to understand.
The Procedure
We have one lonely tree in our yard that we’d planned to tap when first presented with this opportunity, but after receiving the starter kit and reading through the instructions, we decided to bring our kit to a friend’s house and tap three of her many trees so we could pick the best ones.
She and her husband were as excited about the project as we were, so we packed the kids up and headed over to their house for a tree-tapping party when the weather was warm enough for sap to start flowing.
Drilling the holes was easy, though the first one confused us as the sap didn’t flow like we expected. Once we hit the second tree and sap flowed like a water fountain, we knew to go back and re-tap the first tree.
Once we had three trees tapped, and sap was flowing freely, we hung the buckets and took turns with our friends over the next two weeks emptying the buckets.
It was staggering to see how much sap flowed. We ended up with way more than we were prepared to boil down, so we drank some, made tea with some of it, and poured more in our gardens.
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Why Maple Tapping is Awesome for Homeschoolers
There is so much to learn when tapping trees. History, science, math, responsibility, and so much more. Making one’s own maple syrup is surprisingly satisfying, and in the words of my husband, “not something I’ll wait another 40 years to do again.” In fact, we have plans to buy more buckets and spiles, and develop a boiling system in the yard for next year.
- Tapping trees to get sap is a sustainable practice that allows professionals and hobbyists alike to make a high-nutrient sweetener. Maple syrup is really good for you as it contains minerals, vitamins, and micro-nutrients like potassium and magnesium.
- Studies have shown, too, that trees that are tapped each year suffer no ill effects from the process. They live as long, though they may grow slightly slower, than non-tapped trees. So, as a homeschooler, you can talk to your kids about using this natural resource, and having it available on a day to day basis.
- It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup – your kids can calculate how much syrup you’ll be able to make as you boil down your sap.
There are so many great things to learn and lots of fun to have as a family if you have maple trees in your area. This was great for all of us and we can’t wait to do it next
year.