Season Started

The Maple Syrup season has started at Adams Maple Mountain.  With the tapping of 275 trees on Saturday, and a crew of people (I lost count) we had a wonderful day in the sugar bush.  Although we were missing several key members of the family due to the State Wrestling Meet which our Dominic was participating in, we still had plenty of help on hand for the season starter.  Our family from the suburbs of Detroit were here for the weekend to help out as well.  We had a pancake breakfast to celebrate Blain’s 28th birthday in the morning.  Greg and Kevin had prepped the equipment in the morning, and the breakfast crew helped gather the buckets and spiles for tapping.  We hit the sugar bush around 11:00 a.m. and starting tapping the trees around noon.  With a break for lunch, we finished around 5:00 p.m.  It seems good to see the buckets on the trees again.  The weather was beautiful.  We starting the morning with cold temperatures – 11 degrees.  The afternoon brought the temps to 25 degrees with calm winds and sun.  By the time we finished we were all hot!  The bonfire warmed us up through the day, but it sure wasn’t needed by late afternoon.  We had new tappers help us this year, and they really enjoyed the day.  There was plenty of snow on the ground as this February was quite snowy.  In fact, we had the second snowiest February on record in Michigan.  The kids enjoyed he sledding hills when we took a break for lunch.  Matthew our youngest tapper this year at 2 years old, loved the sledding hill.  I’m not sure his Dad and Mom have recovered yet.  A perfect tapping day!

Blain taps the first tree using the pioneer method.

Morning Tappers

Afternoon tapping crew