Getting organized for tapping this week. There is always great anticipation leading up to tapping. We know the whole season will be a lot of work, but we do it any way. Its a labor of love. As a small operation, we do everything manually. Tapping by hand drill. Buckets and spouts, no tubing. Collecting with 5 gallons pails. Boiling the sap over a wood fired evaporator. The wood shed holds about 12 cords of wood. All cut with chain saws and split by axe and sledge hammer. One cord of wood is 4 feet wide, 4 feet high and 8 feet long. Its a lot of work just cutting the wood. It takes about 10 hours to boil off 200 gallons of sap that results in 5 gallons of finished maple syrup. Yup…that a ratio of 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. And finally all the bottling by hand. At an hourly rate, we would not earn much.