Over the last month or so, we’ve seen a number of maple trees grow something rather odd – a metal bucket. Well, okay, the buckets don’t actually grow out of the trees, but are rather put their by people to collect sap inorder to make maple syrup.
It’s a tried and true practice that gives lovers of pancakes, waffles and French toast a fresh batch of the sweet stuff every spring.
And count residents of Havenwood Heritage Heights as participants in the annual sap collecting craze. They’re known as the Bucket Brigade and they are 20 members strong.
Using the old fashioned metal buckets – none of that fancy, new-aged tubing here – the brigade has tapped 17 trees on the two Havenwood campuses to see what kind of sap they can generate.
Last week, the brigade collected 15 gallons of sap, bringing the season total thus far to 23 gallons. And if you’re not familiar with the conversion of sap to syrup, it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup. So they’re a little over halfway toward a full gallon of syrup for their pancake breakfast in April.
The brigade has brought its sap to Dean Wilber of Mapletree Farm and he uses his fancy new evaporator to turn it into what will surely be some mighty tasty maple syrup.
Insider staff
