In the throes of collecting sap again this year — our sixth season — I’ve come to the realization that every single season is different.
Early in February our buyer sent us a text from Florida: “When u tapping?”
“When are you opening?”
“When u have sap!” he retorted.
With 300 taps this year, we have more than ever. My husband added three more lines, no pails. With a natural slope and our maples on south-facing property, it’s custom-made for collecting sap.
Much like dairy farming, sap collecting is entirely dependent on the weather. Sap runs when the trees warm up. During sunny days the temp has to rise up around 40 degrees and then freeze at night.
If trees could talk they’d be saying, “No sun, no run.”
This year, we had what my husband called a false spring. Early February it got warm and he got antsy to get the taps in and see what the trees were doing. We had thought we jumped the gun but since have heard the trees gain momentum when it reverts back to cold days, in preparation to flow again when conditions are ripe.
When we began this endeavor, we’d put up 60 pails and found it to be more work than we’d thought. My husband scouted around at other guys’ set ups and asking questions. We thought lines would be more to our liking. So we decided to sell our pails — in sets with each one having their own tin-mounted tent cover and metal taps. (We work smarter, not harder.)
Each year, my husband does a maintenance check before the season starts. He looks for downed lines and tree damage. When our season begins and the sap starts running there may be a slow line or one that doesn’t run at all. Those could have animal damage such as mice, squirrel, or deer nibbles — it all slows the vacuum down. Also, there may be a splice that got pinched or sawdust in the splice, which could float down the line, plugging it.
Last year, we took the truck with the holding tote up to the top of the ridge at first light because the sap route was getting mushy. In the early morning, it was still firm. The collection after that is all downhill.
We don’t collect every day, it just all depends on the weather. My brother-in-law told us to go give those trees a pep talk.
“Why did you want to start doing this?” I asked him one day.
“I got sick of making wood.”
This man of mine is a lover of his woods. Taking good care, he has planted numerous trees over the course of years, maintained the downed trees by skidding them out with tractor and chain and a winch. I’ve told him, “Don’t tell me what you did until you get back and do you have your cellphone with you?” He’s hunted our ridge for deer and turkey and now, for the last six years, has harvested sap.
One of his Christmas gifts this past year was a tool belt. His request. He makes plans for the next sap season just about all year long. Instead of nails, his tool belt holds taps, splices, a scissors, a box cutter and a hammer, which leaves his hands free to use his drill to drill tap holes in the trees.
There’s also a tool we bought from a guy in Birnamwood who fashioned two pliers welded on either side of a handle, which he uses to hold lines together. In that way he can cut lines easily, and then place a tap or a splice on the line.
To be honest, I am along just in case something goes wrong. My job is to follow him up to the woods on the four wheeler with any supplies for fixing in the back. We drive up to each stop and unload the sap from four totes and four pickle barrels using a wand pump, which gets hosed into the larger mobile tote. We haul all our sap to the buyer and don’t cook it down.
He discovered food-grade pickle barrels on Marketplace. That’s his go-to for any sort of supplies. He also follows Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers on Facebook. This place is a veritable unlimited source of information. People there are willing to post questions and others answer with hands-on knowledge. Ideas are bounced around.
Where one county in Wisconsin has started collecting, another county may still be a frozen tundra.
Wisconsin weather is never boring. If you don’t like it, wait 15 minutes and it’ll change. Our four seasons have seasons within the seasons. Every sap season is different.
(“I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce.” Jeremiah 2:7a, New International Version)
Kay Reminger was born and raised on a dairy farm, and she married her high school sweetheart, who happened to farm for a living in Leopolis. Writing for quite a few years, she remains focused on the blessings of living the ups and downs of rural life from a farm wife’s perspective.
