Tapping Maple Trees In Pancake Bay! Northern Ontario Backyard Maple Syrup The Old Fashioned Way

we are about to start our 2021 maple season so excited we have all the buckets ready the lids the tabs all sanitized and we're ready to go out there and start putting them in trees today it's supposed to get up as high as four degrees above zero uh celsius so it is they're going to be flowing which is a great time to put the taps in because you know you got them right we are in the northern fringe of the maple tree distribution in canada which is really cool that we're able to be this far north but still make maple syrup just north of us here is pancake bay that is about where the transition zone is where the dense maple forest turns into more of a birch uh dominated forest which is pretty cool because who doesn't like a little bit of pancakes with their bowl of maple syrup it's time to strap snow shoes on our feet and get to work are you ready guys you want to go start capping some meat [Music] [Music] so [Music] do the first tree to tap of the year is always a special one and it's this tree right here it deserves a hug because it's so sweet it's coming it's coming we better get a tap in there there it is ah and the pileated pecker pal is out he's probably tapping trees too [Music] so [Music] how many have we done so far 200 yeah no no 10 maybe 20 20. it's like 60 to go yeah okay goddess likes to supervise in the woods over here she just keeps an eye on things make sure we're doing our job properly not taking too many breaks look at this tree oh that one that must be a grandmother yeah that's an old one nature's bat house right there so our forest here is probably maybe half maple there's also a bunch of coniferous trees and birch we actually sell this maple syrup we're not just making this all for ourselves we'll be selling maple syrup and maple sugar on our website as soon as it's ready we found some of that chaga that we harvested two years ago right here on this tree you can see there's been no regrowth in that area so i think it's actually grown out here so this hasn't grown from where we cut it but it's pushed out from the tree this was at the tree i think class two years ago it's still growing everywhere else we'll have to compare some footage to the old stuff to see just how much it grew we use the old fashioned bucket and tap method for our maple production i don't know why exactly because it's a lot of work especially when we're approaching 100 taps and buckets that we put out but gets you outside this time of year which is really nice enjoy the first first days of spring the last days of winter making something sweet so we ordered more buckets but we didn't order enough lids proper lids in time so i have what i call a redneck lid here it's just a plastic plate that has a piece of wire through it that can cover the bucket you might also be wondering why we have two taps in this tree this tree is basically dead and it's coming down this year so we're putting a couple more taps in just to get as much as we can out of it this year before we take it down for instance this tree if you were to look up you would notice that this tree is basically dead there's a couple living branches on it so there's still going to be sugar being shot up from the roots to those branches so we thought hey if we're going to kill it anyways how about we put as many tops as we possibly can on the sunny side of the tree and just see how much syrup we can get out of it we have this tubing that we put on our tap so we just have the regular tap so we bought a thicker tubing to fit over them and they're all feeding into this one five gallon bucket as you can see they're already flowing so this tree is still alive it's on its last legs but it's still alive and here's another tree that will be thinning out this year it is also already on its last legs out we set this up a little bit differently we have four taps on it it's a smaller tree and then so we just have buckets two taps per bucket because we couldn't fit four here and some redneck uh lids here normally when you're tapping trees the minimum diameter that you want for the tree would be 30 centimeters if you want to put two taps in the tree the tree should be 45 centimeters and once you get to 60 centimeters diameter then you can start putting three taps in a tree in order to determine the diameter of a tree it's not as easy as just looking at it so you can get the circumference and then get the diameter from that or you can get a dbh tape which is a diameter at breast height either way you want to do this at about breast height and since i'm on standing on a whole bunch of snow i would say that's about here a little bit lower i'm going to wrap my normal measuring tape around and it is 98 centimeters the circumference of a circle is 2 times pi times the radius and so 2 times the radius is the diameter and pi is 3.14 and some numbers you can just approximate the diameter by dividing that by 3. so 3 goes into 98 about 33 times and so this one is big enough for just one tap it's actually handy that we have this redneck lid here because you can also use a dinner plate as a reference of the size that's big enough for one tap another part about taking these dying or almost dead trees out is allowing for more light to open up the canopy so we can let these smaller maples grow and they can be part of our sugar bush at some point well that was a long day in the sugar bush that's for sure we got about 65 taps in so not too bad to start it's like five degrees today just about every top is dripping that's good that's sweet actually that's today's video until next time see you guys [Music] you

Channel: Wilderstead

Views: 1,515

Keywords: backyard maple syrup, homemade maple syrup, how to make maple syrup at home, backyard maple syrup equipment, homemade maple syrup evaporator, how to filter maple sap, how to filter maple syrup, how to make maple syrup, how to finish maple syrup, boiling maple sap, how to tap a maple tree, how to bottle maple syrup, how to can maple syrup

Id: 7n0oEY6z-gw

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021