Black Walnut Syrup - our 4th season!

We've been busy tapping our trees the past weeks.  It's the black walnuts (Juglans nigra) that we tap, as we don't have any sugar maples or other substantially sized maples in our yard.   There are only 3
large black walnuts on this property, but enough to get a real taste for the whole tapping process. 

This year we set up some of our taps at 2-year old height, so our little guy could easily check the buckets by himself.   Both kids eagerly added this to the daily chore routine, getting tastes of fresh sap every day.  We boiled down over a fire using shallow pans, then finished the syrup indoors on the stove.  It was a 2-day boiling down process, but worth it!

Once the trees start to bud the tapping season is over, and it can last from a few days to a few weeks (this year it was a few weeks for us, but the weather this spring has been sooo unpredictable - it is snowing again right now!).   4 litres of delicious sweet syrup were accomplished in the end, plus lots of sampling of the "sweet water" along the way and some black walnut taffy - yummm!