Portage River Farm

Aidan, Sean and I headed out this morning into a dripping world. The warm air was making quick work of melting away the snow accumulation of the past weeks.

We hauled our maple tapping gear out into the woods and got right to it. We drilled each tree, tapped the spouts in place and hung the blue plastic "Sap Sacs" in place. We were a little late in the morning and the temperature was already 43 degrees when we started. It seems that we missed most of the day's flow.

The third tree that we tapped rewarded our efforts with a steady drip of faintly sweet crystal clear sap out of each spile. The boys took turns catching the drips in their mouths before we set the bags in place. You can see from the picture that Aidan would happily have stayed there acting as a human sap sac.

All of the trees stopped dripping shortly after they were tapped, most likely due to the crazily warm weather. We probably collected a few cups before it stopped. Now we'll have to sit back and see what the weather will bring us.