The [backyard] Landscape
I live in a fairly nondescript neighborhood not all that far from the center of Canada's capital city of Ottawa. It's a neighborhood I would consider "middle aged", built about fifty years ago - just about at the same time that a four-lane expressway was built - one that cut east-west across the city. The story I've heard is that many of the residents of Ottawa's "Little Italy" were displaced by this highway, and many of them relocated to this then-new suburb. And indeed, many of my neighbors are Italian.
More to the point, however, is the fifty or so years since this neighborhood was built - that, and the relatively generous lot size of that era. Both combined to produce a neighborhood rich in greenery and mature trees. And where I live - through no planning on my part whatsoever - several large maple trees have firmly established themselves as woody yard-kings. One tree - a particularly massive Silver Maple - towers above pretty much all of the other trees in the vicinity.
courtesy JInnes
Brilliant Backyard Foliage
Over the years I've enjoyed the company of these maple trees. In the summer months, they shade a good 50 to 60% of the yard, including a good chunk of the house - no doubt helping to reduce air conditioner use. In the fall, they produce a splendid array of colors - especially the three sugar maples - reliably turning in the deepest and fullest reds around.
Acer saccharum
It hadn't occurred to me (or at least to my forebrain) until recently, however, that these were indeed m a p l e trees - the very same capable of producing Canada's signature sweet. It had never crossed my mind that one could contemplate getting maple syrup out of trees that were growing in my backyard, in a city. Maple syrup had to come from a huge forest of maples growing on a sunny hillside in the country and harvested by a Quebecois family with a huge iron pot in a rickety old cabane à sucre, steaming away at all hours of the day. Really, such careless unimagination on my part.
Maple Branches to the Sky
Last year, the idea finally formed in my mind: these were maple trees. Check. They were of the right variety (sugar and silver maples). Check. They were healthy and free of disease. Check. They were big enough. Again, Check. So.... we could make maple syrup from them, no?
Despite passing the mental checklist, procrastination eventually took over and the season of opportunity passed. This year, however, just as 2015's long eastern winter started to loosen its grip, the idea came again. Giving something a name helps crystallize it in one's mind and helps ward off the lazy bones of procrastination, so I did just that: I christened the idea The Urban Maple Syrup Experiment. UMEX, for short.
Tools and gear
With a catchy name that now couldn't be ignored, planning started. The first order of business, of course, was to install a way to get at the source material: tree sap. And time was not on our side - maple trees produce usable sap only during a narrow window of time when the spring temperatures are fluctuating above and below the freezing mark. And, we had already had a few days of above-freezing temperatures, so the clock on the sap-extraction window had already started ticking.
We decided to go the traditional route and get the classic bits of gear: a narrow cone-shaped spigot that we could insert into the tree (properly called a spile), collection buckets, lids, and filters. A visit to a downtown hardware store left us empty-handed. Although they listed such gear in their catalog, this (and apparently other city-center hardware stores) did not carry such gear (indeed, what a preposterous idea!). The helpful clerk did say that some of the gear could be ordered for us, but that would take too much time. Time we did not have. The clerk additionally suggested that somwhere out there, in a rural town, one might find the appropriate gear at a seed-and-feed shop.
After corroborating with a lives-in-the-country work colleague, we located one of these country stores about 40 kilometres west of Ottawa. Sure enough, stacked up on one side of the narrow aisles packed with farming supplies was a whole section filled with maple syrup production supplies: spiles, buckets, lids, filters, hoses, etc. After petting the two pregnant store cats, we purchased enough gear for five separate taps and went on our way.
Ready for first tap
We waited until the next above-freezing day before starting our tapping. I suppose being a little skeptical still, we wanted to maximize the chance of some immediate gratification when we installed the taps. Jenn invited her brother's family over for the unusual event: maple tree tapping - in the back-yard of a house in the city!
It was indeed a beautiful spring afternoon. Brilliant sun and calm air warmed the backyard, and it all did feel a little sugar-shack-ish, especially if one squinted a bit and did not raise one's view above the high hedge that circled the yard (i.e. concealing the other houses in the neighborhood from view)
courtesy JInnes
Fastening collection bucket
The yard consisted of four mature maple trees: three Sugar Maple trees, and one super-big Silver Maple. We had done a bit of research and judged that we could quite reasonably put in five taps: two on the Silver Maple, and one on each of the Sugar Maples. With a 7/16ths-inch drill bit (generally the right size if you get the standard-type spiles we got) and a portable drill, we started with the Silver Maple. We chose a southern-facing aspect of the trunk, and tried to position the tap in line with a prominent root-line.
Spile needs better purchase
Much to our delight, clear sap started flowing almost as soon as we completed a 2.5-inch deep hole. We pounded the spile in, orienting it properly to position the built-in collection bucket hook, and immediately sap was drip-dripping out of the spout. We hung the collection bucket and fastened on the lid mechanism. Hey, pretty legit-looking!
Strangely, it took a few moments to come to grips with the fact that yes... these "urban trees" were just like the country ones, producing real-live sap. Letting a small amount of sap pool in the palm of your hand allowed you taste the sap - which came across as a refreshingly cool, slightly woody and yes, slightly sweet drink. Exciting!
Installed collection bucket
Second tap on Silver Maple
Energized by successful first tap, we moved on. Next was the installation of a second tap in the 32+ inch diameter Silver Maple. Rowan (Jenn's nephew) is especially keen on any sort of rotational device, and the drill was a deep attraction for him. For this and subsequent tappings, he personally assisted.
Inspecting
With the second Silver Maple tap in place, we turned our attention to the Sugar Maples. While the Silver Maple is a tree perfectly capable of producing a maple-syrup capable sap, it is the Sugar Maple that holds the reputation as the maple syrup tree. Sugar Maple trees generally have the highest concentrations of sugar per unit volume of sap.
The first thing we noticed about the Sugar Maple was its wood hardness. It was significantly more difficult to drill a hole into the Sugar Maple, as compared to the silver maple. This made sense, given some of the other names for the Sugar Maple: Rock Maple, Hard Maple. In addition to syrup-making potential and beautiful fall colors, this type of tree is highly valued for the quality of its wood.
courtesy JInnes
Once tapped, the first Sugar Maple - like the Silver Maple before - started producing sap. It wasn't as voluminous of a flow as from the Silver Maple, but then again, the tree was quite a bit smaller. I couldn't immediately taste the extra sweetness from the sap, but then again I wasn't allowing a particularly large amount to accumulate in my palm before tasting.
Sugar Maple bucket installed
courtesy JInnes
Watching the collection start
Tapping Maple Trees - Click on video above to start
We continued to tap the remaining Sugar Maples, and the backyard began to look a bit quirky, with all of these metal buckets hanging everywhere (all being only four, but still...). The final Sugar Maple, a fairly large tree that probably could support two taps itself, was actually located in the front yard, just outside of an enclosing hedge. This meant that its lower trunk was quite visible from the street, and we thought that perhaps it would be best to keep the collection bucket on this one away from curiosity seekers (lest they soil our precious sap with foreign substances). So, for this tree, we used a length of food-grade plastic tubing to run the output of the tap through to the backyard side of the hedge and into a collection bucket buried in the snow. Much to our pleasant surprise, this particular tree started producing a lot of sap - more than the other two sugar maples combined!
courtesy JInnes
Refridgerated storage
With all of the trees successfully tapped, we turned our attention to storage concerns. Namely, what to do if we produced more sap than our collection buckets could hold.
To solve this, we had purchased some large food-grade plastic buckets to act as secondary storage. According to what we'd read, tree sap needed to be treated like milk - kept cool and not left too long before processing. We therefore selected a corner in the yard most likely to be in shade and built up a mound of snow surrounded by a short snow wall. Inside this mound we scooped out holes for the large plastic buckets, and inserted them until only their tops were showing. This, we reasoned, would give us a nice refrigerated location where sap could be stored until we started processing it.
