Tree Tapping
So far I'm quite liking this tree tapping business. It's like trapping, only better. You go out scouting the woods in warm weather. Then when it's cold, but not the coldest of the year, you take your tools out and make your sets. Then you check them all once or twice a day and carry home your yield. But the trees, so far, have yielded far better than my trap sets ever did, and if you're late checking a tap, the worst that happens is that the bottle overflows. (I'm gonna save one-gallon milk jugs for next year.) And though I haven't actually boiled down any sap yet, I expect that evaporating is going to be a lot more pleasant than skinning, fleshing, and stretching pelts. It's also far less likely (I really hope) that thieves will steal my taps and sap bottles or that people will make it an ideological crusade to interfere with what I'm doing.
This year, I'm just doing this to teach myself how and to see whether it's worth the trouble to make a little syrup or sugar for us, but next year, I may get ambitious and try to make enough syrup to sell. I think especially if I use a cordless drill instead of a brace-and-bit, and if I use my cart to gather the sap jugs, I could spread out through the rest of the forest (beyond our borders) and gather quite a bit. If I planned ahead a little and found a source of burlap bags or something similar, I could even camouflage the taps and bottles so as not to draw attention to them.
This year, I'm just doing this to teach myself how and to see whether it's worth the trouble to make a little syrup or sugar for us, but next year, I may get ambitious and try to make enough syrup to sell. I think especially if I use a cordless drill instead of a brace-and-bit, and if I use my cart to gather the sap jugs, I could spread out through the rest of the forest (beyond our borders) and gather quite a bit. If I planned ahead a little and found a source of burlap bags or something similar, I could even camouflage the taps and bottles so as not to draw attention to them.