We tapped the maples last week, a little earlier than the normal mid-March time. We have owned the woods on the east side of Orr Lake since 1963 when Dad and Mom bought it as a second farm. The woods were cow pasture with huge old maples and mostly open under them with large areas of open pastureland.
The woods were about 55 acres of 100 acres of the farm. We had been tapping maples at what we called the North 60, a half mile from the home farm on Evergreen Avenue. The 50 acres of woods there were also cow pasture with a scattering of large maples, on very rolling hilly lands bordering the east side of Wolf Creek.
With the new farm, with many large maples, easier to tap and collect sap, we made the switch and eventually even built a sap cooking shed there rather than haul it the 3 miles to the home farm.
In 1975, Margo and I built a lake cottage - we call The Cabin - on the hillside overlooking Orr Lake. We used it for our summer home when I was then a teacher, and a weekend escape in later years and as a second home from 2005 on after we retired, ending our stay there in 2013 when we bought the home farm after Mom died.
I claim to have started to help make maple syrup when I was 4 years old, 75 years ago, although I may have been 5 or 6 - it was in the early 1950s when Dad got the urge to try it like he and his brothers had done growing up.
This year, so far, we have 80 taps out, probably headed to 100, down from many years when we tapped twice that or more. Our goal is 25 gallons of maple syrup this year, what we can sell, give as gifts and use.
Dad got Parkinson's disease in this early 70s, gave up his cows and gradually most of his farming, putting his fields into CRP. By the time he was 85, his balance made it so he mostly watched us make syrup, participating by watching the cooker and enjoying it from in our newly made sap cooking shed. He died at age 89. That year he was only able to be at the sap cooker a few times, being unable to walk on uneven ground even with a walker.
I am 79, and other than a rackety heart, am physically sound and able to still carry pails and walk through the woods OK, although slower than I used to and a little more careful on the slippery hillsides.
