My First Experience at Tapping Maple Trees

Last year about this time, we drove past a nearby home and I noticed several silver buckets hanging from one of their large trees in their front yard. I recognized that they were collecting sap from their maple trees, most likely to make maple syrup. "That looks like an interesting thing to try," I thought to myself, but I knew it was getting late in the season to start collecting sap of my own, so I filed the activity away for something to do the next year.

Months passed, and I never gave the...