March around here generally means time to tap trees. I hadn’t really expected to do so so soon, though. It wasn’t much more than a week before that we took these winter bird pictures.
oh, and some non-bird pictures.
Almost every spring, we get outside to tap a few trees. Last Saturday I did 16, I think. I tend to lose track of how many I have actually done, as I generally skip any trees that still have more than one unclosed hole, resulting in most trees being tapped about every other year.
I guess it is more of a hobby than anything; we generally turn about half of the sap we get into syrup and the other half into maple sugar on snow. Yum! 
I am very grateful to Elizabeth for assisting me by carrying all the buckets. She also carried a large pair of pruning shears – something I always mean to do, but never actually end up doing.
We tapped a couple of trees inside the cow’s fence, so we shall see what the inspector thinks.
Psalm 119:103-104 “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.”
Ohhhh, boy!!! I wish we were still doing that! yum yum!! It’s lots of work though. Some year, you should consider using pipe line and pipe it into your kitchen!! But maybe that would take the fun out of it, right?
P.S. Depending on how smart your cow is, you may find some empty buckets!!
A pipeline right into the kitchen… Now that is an idea – it would make the process much less work. Nevertheless, we enjoy doing it the "old-fashioned" way. Though perhaps I should check with David before stating that too strongly, as he is the one who does all the hauling! There have been some suggestions of training Mocha to pull a sled… She followed the tracks we made to find out what we had done in her fenced off area, but didn’t seem particularly interested in the rather large, silver-coloured growths newly appeared on some of her trees. (We were careful to avoid her normal scratching posts!) She does seem to be a pretty smart cow, but so far, she either hasn’t discovered a way to access the tasty drink dripping into convenient "water dishes" in her enclosure or else hasn’t acquired a taste for it.