Mad Scientist in Me Comes Out Once Again

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We thought we would try our hand at tapping trees this spring. I started out by turning a couple of spiles (wooden tubes for sap to run through) on the wood lathe. I'll include a video of that at the end of this post. We tapped a couple of maple trees on the property and have so far collected about seven liters of sap. We're going to boil that down on the woodstove while we heat our home. Hopefully, that will yield enough syrup to top a least a couple of stacks of pancakes. If this whole experiment is a grand success, we'll build an evaporator this summer and go whole hog next spring. Once the maple sap is done we'll also tap the birch trees. Their season immediately follows the maples so there is no reason we can't try both. Birch syrup apparently isn't that great on pancakes but works well in baking and as the Russians do, we can drink the stuff straight up without processing. Anyone else trying something new during their newfound spare time?