Maple tapping don'ts for beginners

hi everyone and welcome back to the YouTube channel it is finally maple syrup and maple tree tapping time you always know that because the temperatures get higher above freezing it's really ideal in the upper 30s to mid 40s you don't want to be tapping really late in the season in April when it gets above 40s and 50s because your staff will go sour you get buddy SAP so never tap too long so this is a really late season for us too beginning this year in previous years we have started the week of February 14th I remember tapping two years ago on Valentine's Day and to me that is the sweetest gift for mother nature for Valentine's Day so today we are going to be talking about some major don'ts to tapping your maple trees there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of myth information about tapping a tree and if you're a beginner you're in the right spot today because I have been several seasons into doing this I've got several generations ahead of me who have taught me the things that I know and I'm here to help you the first thing we're going to start with is what you're going to collect your staff in and this is very important every state has different rules and regulations for any containers being in contact with your maple staff and your finish maple syrup but in my own personal backyard whether it's for myself my family my friends we are only gathering and collecting in food safe containers now let me talk about that for just a minute on a plastic bucket it is going to say food safe right on it now it should either be stamped on it in a permanent ink or on a sticker in some way if you don't see that just assume that it is not a food safe container and that you need to move on and find something else to collect in now that being said old metal buckets a lot of times are showing positive tests for lead now if it has led soldering in it sometimes it's better to just retire that old equipment for doing maple sap and maple syrup and then it's just time to move on to drastic other things that you could use they look really neat but you can use them for decoration Salim people are buying them on Etsy and making wall art with them they're just beautiful it's a nice thing to have around but we've retired them here on our farm I've also retired the old 7/16 taps or spiled a lot of times in four columns taps their actual name is called file s PIL e tapping is what you do to the trie file is what you insert into the tree so that is a huge beginner mistake and just out of habit everyone refers to them as tabs there actually files so if you've got the old 7/16 inch tree tab you should retire those as well there's another don't for you a huge don't that we do on our farm I never buy disposable equipment everyone thinks it's cheaper that it's faster or easier to just throw it away we're very eco conscious we try to leave a small imprint you know on everything in our life and we went with the SAP Meister stainless-steel taps for our first few years on the farm and I have one of these here in my pocket that I can show you this is 5/16 sometimes they are also referred to as tree savers now this bat Meister has a washer that is tack welded onto it and if you pry too hard you can pull that off and then it's a much harder situation trying to get that out of a tree later on they do make a rolled tap also and now this is stainless steel it is going to last and laughs I have stainless steel milk tanks for collecting our SAP in there is no rust and this is a great way to go I think these cost about $2 apiece when I bought them and of course you know with inflation they may be a little bit higher now and these only come in bags of 25 but this is a great way to go if you're doing it in your yard so if you've got old equipment that is rusty just assume that it is LED or think better to be on the safe side than to have that affect your health to affect your family's health and as well you don't want to inhibit any off flavors in your finished product now continuing on about some maple tap and style information 5/16 is the new industry standard they also have a 3/16 inch tubing don't be confused most of the 362 to be still requires a 5/16 inch hole drilled into the tree now one of the biggest things that I see all across YouTube when beginners are filming themselves in their home set and their maple therapy it doesn't matter if they've done it two years four years six years the incredible heights at which people will tap a tree if you are tapping a tree chest height and you have a bucket sitting on the ground you're going to have to have about a four foot plastic tubing drop to get from the style on the tree to the bucket so just know that two to four feet high is sufficient enough any higher than that then you're going to be spending extra money on tubing or drops if you've pre bought from anybody online any drops that are going down into a bucket most of them are giving you two to three feet and if you tap any higher and the snowmelt you're not going to be able to reach your bucket another thing about buckets with these plastic buckets it's cheap enough in most stores will price match for you and I have found in previous years Menards Lowe's and Walmart all carry the same brand buckets all of the ones that I have say century corporation on them and they're all just about the same and they will price match them I will tell you though that last year the employees at Menards did not want a price match because the SKU was a different number for the bucket and Lowe's had no problem with it at all and they were happy to do it and Lowe's was the original highest price out of all of them but if you can get a price match plus the 11 percent fail at Menards that's going to be your biggest savings so go ahead and get those bucket lids that way you can have all of your buckets with lids on top of them you can put a log or a rock on the top and it's not going to blow away a huge thing that I've seen done in so many videos across YouTube is people taking their bucket putting in an extra nail or an extra hanger into the tree every hole you put in a tree is hardware that you're going to have to remove and that the tree is going to have to fight bacteria and heal itself we have got maple tap holes in here from years and years ago and you can walk around a tree and realize how long that wound takes to heal so don't go ahead and hang it your bucket set it on the ground you can just as easily find a rock even an extra log that you're going to use later on and cooking your maple syrup and put it on top of the bucket so now let's move on to tapping your tree remember when you're putting the file into the tree you are tapping don't hammer it hard in there because you can end up cracking where you've drilled in and all that precious apps that you're trying to get into this file isn't gonna make it up the style it's gonna go underneath and have a drip drip drip all the way down the tree bark and you're not going to get much and don't forget drill slightly upwards don't get real aggressive about your incline on it but it really helps to get it coming out so that no staff will go back into it and freeze because if you're waiting the next day for frozen taps to thaw you're also missing out on stab you the important information to glean from here is one and a half to two inches depending on the bark of your tree these old shaggy bark maple trees real thick bark all these fissures where they're real deep real heavily grooved you're gonna want to go ahead and do two inches maybe a little bit less depending on the tree now on a younger tree I might go one and a half inch even almost one and a half inch as soon as I got that SAP coming out I want to stop and always always make sure that you are getting clean white pulp coming out with your shavings from your drill because if you're getting Brown that means you are getting dead wood non-conductive wood the fat sap is not flowing through it is creating a scar inside of that tree just like in your body and that vascular system is no longer in play to deliver that faff out of the tap or out of this file that you put into it if you missed and did the wrong spot so on that note if you have trees that you shouldn't be tapping you're gonna have to figure that out most people who make maple sap do not call in an arborist to evaluate their woods and tell them what should be caught and what not you're going to have to manage your maple wood your maple trees throughout the years you're gonna have to make health cuts you're gonna want to promote new growth you may even want to do future plantings to replace any older trees as they get too old to tap now this tree isn't in much worse shape than it was last year and I went ahead and tapped it thinking it was going to be the last year it was going to be here and it still gave me sap it was notably less than in previous years but it was definitely time to pull that tab if you have a tree that's not giving you much fat during the process you don't need to keep the tap in there and you can pull it out at any time and just let it start healing up early now if a tree has a lot of damage you know from wind and ice it has a lot of heavy damage from the pileated woodpecker I'll pull a half out of that too I did one of those out in the woods last year and you know two three weeks into it there wasn't much snap coming out of it and we looked up and it had five or six huge holes we just decided to pull that tab it was kind of off to the distance there was no reason to try to collect that anymore so if you have a section of a tree that has damage to it if a lot of bark is coming off of it just don't tap that section maybe move on to another some people believe that if you tap underneath a large limb that that's going to be more beneficial to you or if they tap only on the south side that that may be more beneficial I find anything on the east south or west side of the tree gives me ample stab now I have done it on the north side in certain cases in the wood and it really didn't make that much a difference the sunlight and the heat from the canopy in the tree is what's really going to make the huge difference in your SAP collecting and on which side of the tree okay so now you've got your buckets full of SAP what are you gonna do now just let them overflow no on a good saffron I might have to empty out my buckets twice a day and that means in the snow it means in the melted snow in the mud in the slush and in standing water make sure you have yourself a good pair of rubber boot I ordered a new pair last week and they came just in time and I'll tell ya I ordered muck boots they had been my go-to Footwear for the farm and I wear them right out my last pair I even put rubber patches on them from the kids bike tires just to try to get by for two weeks more while my next pair was coming in in shipments so don't leave your staff out in the Sun don't leave it out in bucket it will work for emergency temporary storage you're gonna want to store all of your staff in another food safe container you can use food-grade IBC totes they work really great they generally come in 275 to 325 gallons and I will tell you the three hundred and twenty five gallon totes are huge most pickup you can put two IBC totes in the back so keep that in mind if you're going or traveling any distance to go pick one up you may be able to get a third tote if you leave your tailgate down and take straps ratchet strap so that you can tie them all down so you don't lose your load because an unsecured load on any County Road any State Road you're gonna get a huge fine for us I was able to find some retired milk tanks from dairies that they were no longer making parts for and I got great deals on them if you can find them in your area it's a great way to go because again it's stainless steel and it would last forever if you can look for stainless steel on the inside and outside because for some time they did do stainless steel top stainless steel inners and a galvanized metal about 3/4 the way around and that galvanized metal can go bad I have a real ugly one from another video it was the ugliest thing but it was such a great deal and I used it regularly last year with some caulking and sanding and painting she looks a lot better than she ever did so when we gather our staff we do it as a family everybody goes out everybody help even little George when he was a baby in a car seat we put him on the trailer pulled behind the tractor and pop-pop with that Gianni popper he just fell asleep and rocked in his seat hit him all bundled up and took him out while we gathered stabbed you the key thing and gathering fat one is Footwear number two waterproof gloves really will help you a lot because once your hands get wet it can be miserable you another key thing in gathering staff is to make sure you strain the SAP you don't want any bacteria any tree branches any bog getting into your huge collection container so we use an old milk strainer for that and it really helps a lot now you don't want your SAP sitting around for too long so make sure you get to cooking it within three to five days if the weather is cold or you can put some ice from your buckets inside of it frozen sap that will really help store it a lot longer and that's why I like the milk tank is insulated it helps reflect a lot of the heat from the Sun and keeps the SAP cool on the inside but once it gets cloudy it's not even worth it if it's smelling fermented or if it looks ropey and cloudy don't cook it start from scratch wash everything out because it's not worth all the wood and all the time to cook up bitter SAP the last mistake that most beginners do I will tell you is over tapping a tree or tapping a tree that is too young here are the guidelines one tap for a 12 inch tree up to two taps in an 18 inch tree and on very very large tree three or four is my limit my big big trees at the end of my driveway I've done three and four of those so that I could get two on each side and it worked really well but those trees are now going into retirement also they are yard trees but again a lot of wind and storm damage and if you're tapping trees in your yard that are for decoration you may really want to cut back on the amount of tap to help prolong the life of your tree everyone says it doesn't damage the tree it doesn't kill the tree but if you over tap it you're going to affect the vascular system and the overall length and time and the overall health of a tree remember the more holes are on a tree the harder that tree has to fight bacteria that can enter those holes and the longer it's going to take to heal those wounds so thanks for watching everybody I hope these tips helped you a lot stop by our Etsy store we have maple drops on there if you need them we're shipping them all out within one to two days so that everybody can get into their tree tapping and then you can make your own backyard maple syrup the links over in the channel and down in the description we'll see you next time everybody don't forget to hit that like button for us and we'll see you next time bye bye you know the first time I ever went and split wood it was for maple syrup a couple years ago I did enough to get me through that maple syrup day and as soon as it was over and I thought about it I asked for that wood splitter for Christmas daddy just didn't split enough to get us through today this is ash wood that redwood cedar a pine tree heavy in that it's a sucker you're doing a good job keep at it you

Channel: Mommymilestones

Views: 35,322

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, homesteaders, farm, farmer, farming, family, home, implement, tractor, barn, livestock, processing, repair, wood, cutting, welding, hay, plow, plant, grow, harvest, truck, ag, agriculture, 4-H, FFA, prepper, garden, tool, tools, deer, hunting, land, timber, nature, woods, forest, bees, honey, hive, beehive, extracting, maple, sap, syrup, cooking, recipe, canning, preserving, preserve, How to tap a maple tree, instruction, learning, backyard, sugaring, buckets, taps, spiles, drop lines, tubing, mistakes, collecting, arch, pans

Id: 0tkeaoHOhOs

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020