Maple Syrup

so my family has a history with maple syrup.  my great-grandfather, albert holcomb, was born in 1850 in rock elm, wisconsin.  he farmed the land that was handed down from his father, levi,  and his grandfather, also named levi.  on that "home farm" was a chunk of woods with 290 maple trees.  we don't know for sure if  either of the levi's made syrup, but albert did.  he built a small wooden shack in the woods, "the sugar bush", and that is where he boiled and made maple syrup.

now for anyone who has never had real maple syrup...you have to have real maple syrup.  there is nothing like it.  syrup straight out of a tree is one of my favorite things!  it takes 30-40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.  now that original "sugar bush" is no longer there, it burned in the 1960's, but another "sugar bush" was built by my grandfather, willard holcomb, in that same woods.  he and i plan to take a walk out there this spring, to see what is left.  doesn't that sound like fun!?  i'll post pictures of that for sure.

we headed over to wisconsin, to my grandparent's house for easter weekend (i know i'm a little late) and my grandpa, who is 82 by the way, decided he was going to tap the three maple trees that he has growing in the yard next to his house in town.  i had never actually seen the process of tapping a tree and wanted to document it with pictures.  

because my internet/computer is slow, i am unable to post all of the pictures of the process, but i did post a few of my favorites...

first, grandpa drilled a hole in the side of the tree.  as you can see here, the sap begins to flow almost immediately.

next, a metal spicket, called a spile, is inserted into the hole and hammered in tight.

in this picture you can see how easily the sap begins flowing.  and yes, that's some blood down below the spile.  (grandpa hit his finger with the hammer)

the kids thought this was great fun and wanted to taste the sap.

another spile.  the sap is collected in buckets and boiled down to make the syrup.  grandpa said they gathered about 10 gallons over the weekend and came out with about 1 quart of syrup.

grandma had some syrup on hand already (always does) and so we made "wax".  that's when you boil the syrup and pour it over a pan of snow.  it cools to form a waxy candy.  it is so yummy and so bad for your teeth :)