In Search of More Sugar Maple Trees #fff
Pictured here is one of my favorite deciduous trees of all time. Its Botanical name is acer sachurarum. Yea, I needed to look that up. 😃 This beauty of a tree is commonly called a Sugar Maple, and for good reason.
In an attempt to produce more maple syrup this year, then last, @farm-mom and I decided to take advantage of the fabulous weather and get into the woods. Our goal was to locate and tag an additional 8 sap producing maples trees.
Last year's hall was just over two gallons, and it looks as though we may have been a little too generous. One of the coolest things about making maple syrup, is giving it away. What a warm feeling you get when the person on the receiving end is soooo appreciative. You would think we just gave them liquid gold.
At the ratio of 50 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup, we figured tapping an additional 8 trees would put us well over the 3 gallons of maple syrup we want to produce next season. With #farm-mom now using maple syrup almost exclusively, when a recipe calls for a sweetener, the more the merrier.
The Sugar Maple in its fall glory.
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This is why we need more sap, way too many empties. 😢
Last years sap producing CHAMP!
I can tell you this, for those of you who may be reading this post and think it would be cool to try and make maple syrup, it's a blast.
If you like the outdoors, enjoy being active, appreciate late winter days, take pleasure in making homemade gifts, and think a diet void of processed sugars is up your ally, I say you go for it, if your situation allows.
Just in case you want to give it a try, the first step would be to identify the Sugar maple tree.
The leaf at the top is that of a sugar maple. The leaf below that is from a soft maple, not what you are looking for.
With most of the leaves down long ago, look under the canopy of the tree and you should be able to find some leaves that are still intact.
The two main differences between the two leaves are,
#1 the sugar maple leaf pictured at the top has five lobes, while the soft maple only has three distinct lobes.
#2 you can also notice that the valley between each lobe in the picture at the top is somewhat round while the soft maple pictures below is V shaped.
Remember, 5 distinct lobes on the leaf, and you are on your way to successfully identifying the granddaddy of the maples.
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?
Another way of differentiating the the sugar maple from all other maples is to recognize the differences in their bark. The bark pictured here is that of a soft maple. The bark of a soft maple, comparatively speaking, is much smoother than the bark of the sugar maple.
The bark of this sugar maple is so deeply furrowed that you can peel it from the tree. On an old sugar maple like this one can produce up to 5 gallons of sap on a good day, when the conditions are just right.
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In the distance you can see the orange tape on two of the trees we will tap for the first time.
#farm-mom is no where to be seen, I guess she's out exploring.
We knew that this bad boy was there all along, but never tapped it. It was a little bit deep in the woods. Oh well, just a little more exercise.
#farm-mom found these two sugar maples while pulling her disappearing act.
This picture doesn't show both sugar maples. One of these is a soft maple, can you tell the difference.
Here I thought that she was pulling a Rip Van Winkle. You go girl! 
Here are the two sugar maple trees she found, with the soft maple in the middle.
After a 1/2 hr. of cleanup, it will be a lot easier collecting the sap from these two. Five new trees on the scrolls in total, with three to go.
Tree #4, winner winner 
dinner. Another sap producing monster. One of the first 6 sugar maple trees we tapped four years ago.
With all eight new sugar maple trees located and marked we will now be gathering maple sap from 24 trees.
This is the set up. Not a difficult deal.
With the addition of some new trees, we will need to get some additional taps, and possibly some more food grade tubing.
Mission accomplished. What a wonderful day, as we spent hours surrounded by the beauty that only Mother Nature can dole out.
See Ya at syrup time.
Hope you enjoyed!
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How cool! That is definitely an awesome gift, but I can also see why you want plenty for your own stores. Hope they give you plenty of the good stuff. :)
Excellent post! I loved everything but above all the information you offer about the identification of the maple leaf. Thank you very much for sharing all your knowledge. A big hello @thebigsweed
A big hello to you @marcybetancourt. Thanks for stopping by. I'm happy you found this post informative.
Have a great day.
Oh man I would absolutely love to own some land with maple trees (or birch for that matter - birch syrup is delicious!) to make our own syrup. I hope your post inspires some people who do own land to locate some sugar maples and start tapping!
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 25/35 - need recharge?)
Thanks @tipu
Thanks for stopping by @carlgnash. This is a great activity for a time of year when it's just to cold yet to start the garden. I have never had birch syrup, but would love to try some. We have a large plantation of Black Walnut trees, and I have heard that syrup can be made from the sap of this tree as well. Most of the Black Walnut trees are still too young to tap, but in another 5 or 6 years many of them should be large enough to begin to extract the sap from them.
It would be really cool if someone were to be inspired by this blog, and give it a try.
Enjoy this festive time of year.
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Acer? Acer Sachurarum? Dude, what’d you call me?!
The luckiest guy I know is the jealousiest (just go along with it, please) guy you know. 🤔 I never would’ve known the difference in leaves. The way you described getting the sap reminds me of the moon shining days. What a treat those days were man, you ever cook off shine? It’s all about hanging out with friends and although the finish line is what it’s all about—the 10 hour process is priceless.
Rip Van Winkle—good one.
Now for the fun part, right? Hanging out in your shorts with snow on the ground trying not to throw as many back as the amount of maple gets burned off—1:1. Yeah.. I can still see last years image and yeah, I still don’t have even an empty jug!
Man, you may have delays in between but you sure know how to swing for the fences. Great to see you post again dude. Always late but worth the.... wait, I forgot how it goes? 🤔
👍🏿 Have a great weekend, Bob. Thanks for throwing down, my man.
Good memory, me sitting around in shorts while cooking off the sap. Thanks for the reminder, that was a gorgeous day. I've never made moon shine, drank some way back in the day, we called it white lightening.
Years ago, a couple of buddies and me, for 5 years running, would enter the Delaware River Raft Race. You would build your own raft and paddle down the river, from Skinner's Falls to Digman's Ferry. We would never even come close to winning, but had a ball. The last year we entered, we took along a bottle of White Lightening. We always finished the 11 mile journey down the Delaware, but this particular year we had accomplished something that we had never accomplished in the past, we finished dead last. After about an hour on the river we just stopped paddling and floated at a very leisurely pace.
My pleasure to be back on board @dandays
You guys are the “Maple Making Masters” over there. I swear to you, it’s going to happen, we will make a round to your hood for some of that Jesus nectar. 😉
Jesus nectar, I like that. If by chance we were ever able to meet, it would be our pleasure to lay a couple of bottles of that Jesus nectar on you.
Just a side note. You should try shaving your legs, and then maybe you and pura could share in feeding those little fiends.
@puravidaville, in my comment above farm-mom pointed out that I said you should shave your legs. I know that a lot of women in Europe don't even shave their mustache, but this particular line,
"You should try shaving your legs" was not intended for you, I swear it was directed at the GUY with the hairy legs @dandays.
I hope you get a better night's sleep. If your man refuses to shave his legs, just make sure that you send him to bed a couple of hours before you retire. Without your legs in the picture for a couple of hours, I'm sure they will deal with
and by the time you get ready to tuck in, the little critters will be in a food coma, or hair coma.👌
I saw that and got a good laugh out of it! At the time, she was still all doped up from the allergy meds so I didn’t show it to her. I’m glad you reminded her.
You sure you didn’t write that from the last place raft a little high on lightning??
That is very funny @dandays. I thought a little explanation was necessary as far as the hairy leg goes. @farm-mom just scolded me for taking a picture of my leg and then posting it. I had to laugh and needed to show her where the pic came from as she was convinced that the pic was of my leg. No way, I got the pic from https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=pictures+of+hairy+legs&fr
😃
Thanks for the lesson on the trees -much appreciated
Thanks for stoping by @missaj, I'm glad you found this post informative!
What a nice post... a wonderful day, perfect weather, fun ride through the woods.
I am really getting good at identifying trees, thanks teacher.
Did you know I have a crush on you? 😘
I find it fascinating how you tap syrup from the tree, ain't nature amazing! We rarely find real maple syrup here and if we do, it's very pricey! We mostly find maple flavoured syrup which of course is laden with sugar and doesn't taste as good as the real thing!
Hope you and @farm-mom had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Wonderfully interesting post!
We only started making maple syrup four years ago, and in that time we have learned so much. We don't eat a lot of items like pancakes, french toast, or waffles unless our children and their families are visiting. When they are here we do the BIG BREAKFAST and the syrup flows. Much of the maple syrup is used by @farm-mom when cooking.
I always thought the price of real maple syrup was a little steep, that was until we started making our own. Even in this neck of the woods, where real maple syrup can be found on display in every little country store, it still demands a good price. An 8 ounce bottle of the stuff goes for $8.00. A gallon of maple syrup sells for over $60.00.
Thanks for stopping by and God bless.