Spring came very early this year! Maple syrup season in our area is typically at the end of March/beginning of April. But this year, thanks to very warm weather at the end of February, the trees started running sap in the first week of March. We had to hurry to prepare everything we needed if we didn't want to miss it! We built a rudimentary fire pit using old cinderblocks and collected dry standing fire wood, along with scrap wood from the cabin build. We tapped 29 trees and we were able to boil for 4 days in the span of a week, collecting a total of 180L of maple sap and boiling it down to a total of 6.5L of maple syrup.
We absolutely loved this process and are already thinking about how to improve our system to collect even more syrup next year!