Saturday was a nice day: sunny, highs about 40. Ideal to start off maple syrup season. About 1:00 pm we headed out to the woods to begin tapping. By 5:00 pm we had 275 tapped. The sap was flowing. The tap hole was wet after drilling and sap flowed after the spout was tapped in with a hammer. After hanging the bucket, you can hear the ping, ping, ping of the sap hitting the bottom. We had two tapping teams. One person drills and puts in the spout. The other person follows behind to hang the pail and place the cover on the pail. We do all our tapping with a hand auger. This is a good workout. Larger syrup producers use gas or electric powered drills.