Hello, my friends!

My family taps our maple trees every year for syrup, we’ve been tapping for 8 years now. It’s always an adventure. Anyhow, this year, I thought I’d share our maple syrup-making adventures.

To start, we had to clear all the snow off to make room for all the buckets. I think this is the most snow we’ve ever had when tapping. Here’s Zekey with his little shovel. He’s too cute in my opinion. =D

Then, we had to move the buckets from the garage to the house so we could wash them.

Look at how much snow we have!

The buckets were quite dirty and all needed a good scrubbing after sitting in the garage for a year. Levi found a mouse in one of them. Eek! That bucket definitely got some extra washing. 😅

While we were carrying them in, Mom started washing. Most years we would use the hose to clean the buckets, but it was too cold and snowy for that so we brought them into the mudroom and used the sink in there.

Once we got all the buckets moved to the house, I went and sat in a tree until it was my turn to help wash.

Partway through my break of sitting in the tree, I was called to help load all the buckets into the Ranger so we could move them up to the trees easier.

Once we loaded all the clean buckets, Malachi drove them up to our Maple Grove (Where most of our trees are at), and I was called to finish cleaning the last few buckets.

I finished the last buckets and we loaded them up for a second trip up. (Just so you know, the garbage bag has lids, not garbage in it.).

Then, we drove up to the Maple Grove and unloaded all the buckets.

Now onto the real tapping! We started by finding a tree, and then Dad used the drill to make a hole in the tree for the tap to go into.

Once we had a hole, Luke held the woodblock for Mercy while she pounded the tap in. (The tap is hiding behind the woodblock in this photo.)

A photo where you the tap is not invisible.

And then the finished product!

Wait, this is actually the finished product. The Maple Grove full of trees with buckets on them, and extra buckets for collecting the sap later.

Have you ever tapped trees before? What’s your favorite photo from this post?

Thanks for reading, friends!

P.S. I’m planning to give away a bottle of our syrup (and maybe some maple candy!) at the end of this series. What do you think about that? More details + how to enter will be in my next post in the series. =D