Actually maple sap has been running for over a month now and this is just one, home grown “operation” down the road from us.

In the early spring when it warms to above freezing during the day and drops below freezing at night, sap starts moving up and down in trees, like they are waking up from hibernation. As it moves down, a well placed “spile” (a hollow spike/tube/hypodermic) will divert some of it either into a bucket or a tube.

In the old days, buckets hung off spiles on each tree. Big trees could have many buckets. The modern way of doing it is with tubing and a serious “sugar bush” might be on a large multi-acre hill with a network of tubing all connected to a main line tube/pipe which might be as large as 3″ in diameter.

When you get 100 or more sugar maple trees dripping sap, by the time it all gets to the bottom of the hill it can be a torrent that can fill a 1000 gallon tank in a day.

Of course, then the sap has to be boiled to eliminate water. It takes between 40 and 60 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. That’s a lot of boiling and that’s why maple syrup is so expensive.

We buy ours from a local producer who drives a state snow plow for a living and makes syrup as a hobby. We’ve been buying from him for 10 years now and if you know us well, you’ve tasted his syrup. Great stuff.