Good morning from the sugar bush! On the steep slopes of Shenandoah Mountain in the northwestern corner of Rockingham County, things get busy for just a few weeks each year. That's when my wife Bethany and I, along with my father-in-law, head out and start tapping maple trees.
Once we are done tapping trees and stringing up line, we wait for "syrup-making weather". Those days that warm up into the low 50's and freeze up again at night. That's when the sap starts running. It flows through our taps, lines and pipes down the mountain to a tank at our sugar shack. There, we cook it down to syrup on a wood-fired evaporator.
I put together a quick reel of the process. You can check it out here👇