Cedar Eater
03-10-2016, 04:36 PM
I don't really see myself as an ambassador of this hobby, but I was out collecting sap from a cooler at the bottom of my tubing run when I looked upslope and saw a pit bull bearing down on me followed by a guy who's yelling at the pit bull to stop. The dog slowed down and approached cautiously and the guy walked up and introduced himself. My property is a pretty big parcel and it runs behind a street lined with small lots. Mike is a neighbor who moved into one of those houses after becoming disabled from his job as a homebuilder/carpenter. This was the first time he'd seen anyone back behind his house. He'd noticed that I'd put some flagging on some of my trees and he wondered if I was going to be doing some logging because he wanted a big pine and "some other trees" removed from his back yard. It's not uncommon for people to do this around here, try to make a little money from their trees while loggers are in an area, and more importantly, get professional loggers to remove trees that threaten their house without paying a tree removal service.
Mike was literally standing about 3 ft from the tubing line that had been snaked through all the flagged trees and I'm standing next to a 48 quart Coleman cooler at the end of that line and he seemed completely oblivious to them. I explained that I flagged the trees to make this tubing run for collecting maple sap and that I was going to boil the sap down to make maple syrup. His eyes lit up and we continued talking as I drained about 3 gallons of sap into a glaze bucket. I never really payed attention to the trees in his yard, so when he commented that he wondered if he had any maple trees, I offered to look his yard over and he accepted.
As I came up the slope I started to be able to distinguish his trees from mine and his other neighbors'. He has huge clump reds, one of them with six tappable stems. I counted 15 tappable stems in his back yard and some in the neighbors yard that he thinks he might be able to tap. He had been planning to take most of his trees down so he could grow a garden, but as soon as he learned that he could tap them, he started to rethink that. I explained how gravity and buckets were less reliable than tubing for reds and offered to let him add a run of tubing down my slope to his own collection point. I think next year he'll be doing that.
So we said our goodbyes and when I got back to my house I thought of all the reds in the cold cedar swamp that haven't produced a drop of sap this year, yet. I decided to pull one Sapmeister SS spile and bring the drop tube and jug over to his place so we could see if tonight's drop into the twenties will give him a little dose of sugaring. I'll check back with him in a couple of days and see if he's ready to boil.
Mike was literally standing about 3 ft from the tubing line that had been snaked through all the flagged trees and I'm standing next to a 48 quart Coleman cooler at the end of that line and he seemed completely oblivious to them. I explained that I flagged the trees to make this tubing run for collecting maple sap and that I was going to boil the sap down to make maple syrup. His eyes lit up and we continued talking as I drained about 3 gallons of sap into a glaze bucket. I never really payed attention to the trees in his yard, so when he commented that he wondered if he had any maple trees, I offered to look his yard over and he accepted.
As I came up the slope I started to be able to distinguish his trees from mine and his other neighbors'. He has huge clump reds, one of them with six tappable stems. I counted 15 tappable stems in his back yard and some in the neighbors yard that he thinks he might be able to tap. He had been planning to take most of his trees down so he could grow a garden, but as soon as he learned that he could tap them, he started to rethink that. I explained how gravity and buckets were less reliable than tubing for reds and offered to let him add a run of tubing down my slope to his own collection point. I think next year he'll be doing that.
So we said our goodbyes and when I got back to my house I thought of all the reds in the cold cedar swamp that haven't produced a drop of sap this year, yet. I decided to pull one Sapmeister SS spile and bring the drop tube and jug over to his place so we could see if tonight's drop into the twenties will give him a little dose of sugaring. I'll check back with him in a couple of days and see if he's ready to boil.