Maple Syrup

So, we'd decided that this year was not going to be a year to make maple syrup. After all, we have plenty going on with putting a significant addition on our house, plus a new baby coming, so we don't need more to do, right? And then a client who also makes maple syrup sent a few photos of their "rig" since he and Matt had been talking about it at one of our meetings, so we looked up an old video clip the architect Matt does contract work for put together a few years ago to send back to him, and that was the end of that. Last Friday Matt made a quick plea to our small group to save milk jugs and on Sunday went out with the drill to tap the trees. ;)

Here's Daddy coming around the garage armed with his drill. He and the big kids tapped the farther neighbor's tree, and then came back through to get me and the younger two mobile kids (Krassi stayed happily in the house occupied with his favorite activity: pull at Grandma's feet while she's doing the dishes and laugh uncontrollably.)

Reu and Rin each carrying a milk jug down the driveway. It feels SO GOOD to be outside without needing all of the gear! This has been such a cold winter. A few days before this I was on the weather page and read Matt the LOW temps, and we both agreed that those would be fantastic HIGH temperatures after the winter we've had!

Drilling the hole in our front tree. (Please note our neighbor's house to the left of this photo. I'll tell you why in a different post.)

First tap in, and Rinnah's helping Dad hang the jug on the second tap. Depending on the diameter of the tree, each tree can take one, two, or three taps. This one is a two-tapper.

Walking down the path to another neighbor's house. We are lucky to have three neighbors with maple trees who have no problem with us using a bit of their sap!

Reuben and Leah following in the puddles. "Wah-duh" is a big deal in Reu's world, so he was a pretty happy kid.

Leah and Dad down in the deep snow (up to my knees in places!) tapping Sylvia's tree.

We know this will take time to do, but as Matt said, we can't put all of life on hold while the addition is being built, and this is both something that he personally enjoys doing, as well as something neat that he can do with the kids. We're both excited that we decided to go for it. ;) If Barb has to move in a few days later because we took time to play together as a family, so be it!