Sugar maples, sycamores, and almost any tree in the maple family can sweeten your life. Trees that are over ten inches in diameter are probably mature enough to be tapped. I'll put up to three taps around the trunks of my biggest, oldest trees. The trees heal up over the summer without your help and are not harmed by the process. Many people think that sugaring is a springtime activity. This may be true in Vermont, but here in southern Ohio, our sugar season begins much earlier. Warm days and cold nights stimulate the trees to start the sap flowing-when temperatures are below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. During the winter of 2005-2006, we had a hard freeze for a few weeks in December, and by New Year’s Eve, the weather warmed enough to move the sap. I began tapping my trees on New Year’s Day. By the end of January, the flow had
mostly stopped and sugar time had ended. While it makes a lovely postcard, I've found that hanging buckets on trees is not the way to go. Buckets get heavier as they fill, and if they're hung on the old-fashioned maple spiles (the little metal spout), the weight tends to pull out the spile, and can damage the tree. I have used rope or wire to hang the buckets under the spile, which alleviates the weight problems, but an open bucket tends to collect rain, snow, and all sorts of unwanted debris like leaves, bark chips, ants, and occasional bird feces. For big trees that have 2 or 3 taps, I like to use the big laundry detergent jugs like the ones from Sam's or Costco. For single taps, plastic milk jugs, two liter soda bottles, and big plastic juice bottles work great. Any big lightweight container that you can find or liberate from your neighbor's recycling bin will do the trick. I 195 I
I'll put these on the ground at the base of the tree, with flexible vinyl tubing running into them from the taps. Instead of buying expensive spiles, I use plastic racking canes from the homebrew store. These are long, hard plastic tubes used to siphon in the homebrew process. The outside diameter is 3/8 inch. I cut the racking tubes into 2 inch lengths, then grind a shoulder onto one end using a hand cranked pencil sharpener. To tap the tree, use a 5/16" drill bit and drill a hole about two inches deep into a clean spot on the trunk about 3 feet from the ground. The hole needs to be deep enough to penetrate the xylem of the tree, where the tree is sending sugars stored in the roots to the branches to begin leaf production. These sugars were produced last summer by the leaves. Make sure the sawdust is out of the hole, then hammer the shouldered end of continued on page 200