Tapping Maple Trees

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm going to start doing a series of videos and stories on farm life around the Ottawa Valley, and in particular my farmers Gord and Janet, who own and operate Saffire Farms, a beef farm and CSA. I got to know Gord about 9 years ago now when he showed up at our homebrew club's 1st Big Strange Brew event to learn how to make beer from grain. We've been good friends since then, and over that time I switched most of my farm business over to him. When I mentioned my video project a month or so ago, he was keen to have me do it. I told him to just keep me posted when there were any new "farm activities" going on, and I'd come out to film them.

Yesterday he emailed me and told me that the sap was running, and it was time to tap some trees this weekend. Normally I'd be keen to go out on a Saturday but we've got a huge weekend with a birthday party for one of our boys, and a visitor coming in from Alberta. So I called him back on the phone and asked if I could pop out at about 4pm. I leave work early on Fridays to pick the boys up at school, and so we could just jump in the van and head out to see him. He assured me that would be no problem at all, so that is what we did!

When we arrived at the farm, we knocked on the door and Janet greeted us, and told us that Gord was out in the barn. We'd been here quite a few times, so I thanked her and made my way out there with the boys. There is no rest on the farm, and Gord and his son Brad were hard at it rounding up the cattle and getting a few of them ready to have their ear tags installed. I also got a lot of good footage of this and will have a video of it up in a few days, but right now let's talk about maple sap!

We finished up with the cattle, and made our way back to the farm house where Gord disappeared into the basement to retrieve the buckets, lids, spiles and hooks for tapping the trees. Oh, and some beer. Like me, Gord brews outdoors so keeping himself in supply throughout the winter is challenging, so he had to offer me a commercial beer and not one of his own. We finished our beers and got the supplies out into a sled out front, and headed off into the woods for some tree tapping!

Gord still taps his trees the old fashioned way with a brace and bit. He currently only taps about 60 trees so it is not a whole lot of work for him to do everything manually. Even when he gets up to his goal of twice that amount he figures he'll still be doing it all manually with the old buckets and not the drip lines strung between trees like most of the big operations have. The lines all run to a central location, and the sap gets collected by gravity. He mainly produces for his family's own consumption, though he does give out gifts of maple syrup to returning full-share CSA customers. And he also barters with it - I recently got 500ml from him in exchange for a couple of brewing books I no longer wanted. Back to the brace and bit, he wraps a piece of masking tape around the bit to mark the right depth for drilling. I forgot to ask him what depth he uses, but in reading online it is typically 3 to 4 inches, and that would be my eyeball estimation of what he used.

There were a few interesting things I learned while helping tap the trees, and perhaps the most spectacular was that as soon as you drill that hole, sap starts gushing out! I really was not expecting so much, and Gord said it was actually running slowly because it was late in the evening just before dusk. He said that at noon time it will run a lot faster. I learned that enough sap comes out, that the buckets sometimes have to be emptied twice a day - and those buckets are a good 8 to 10 litres! He said the sap will run for 2 to 3 weeks, and you will usually get 1 good week where you are emptying the buckets twice a day. Wow! Another thing I learned is that you do not use the same hole every year, and that you have to stagger the holes at different heights as well as horizontally. But you can never put the hole on the north side of the tree - it has to always get some direct sunlight during the day. I also learned some tips on how to identify a Maple by the bark, as well as Oak, too.

The boys had an absolutely fantastic time on the farm and they are extremely eager to go back again! So am I! You can see more photos of our day, in addition to the videos below.