Tapping Sugar Maples, Attracting Deer, and Bubbling Fish

Gathering Maple Sap Exercise Program

This week warmed up enough for maple tree roots to pump sugary sap into trunks. It took quite a few days of above freezing weather to start the sap flowing because the ground has been covered by a few feet of snow and nighttime temperatures were, until recently, often in single digits. It takes less than five minutes to drill a hole, tap in a six-inch tube, slide on a gallon plastic jug and fasten it to the tube. We’ve found vinegar jugs the best but milk vessels also work. I drill an undersize hole into the upper hollow finger loop that each vessel has so the tube fits very snugly to prevent midges and mosquitoes from getting into the jug. We rarely have to screen the sap.

Gallon Milk Jugs as Maple Sap Collection Vessels

The sap level in the translucent jugs is readily visible from far away and when days don’t go much above freezing or stay there very long, it takes awhile for the tree to fill a jug. We have 14 taps going and, so far, only one tree fills its jug in 24 hours. The others barely produce a quart. To prevent losing any sap from the productive tree, I slipped a connector on the tube and ran a longer plastic tube into a five gallon covered pail. This morning I checked the line of trees and none dripped more than a pint of sap since last evening. So I went the quarter mile home without having to carry extra weight.

Gallon Vinegar Jug Collecting Maple Sap

It won’t be long when I’ll have to carry two full five-gallon pails (80 pounds) and sometimes even twice a day when the exercise program really kicks in. It’s all for a good cause: it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup and our friends and family can readily consume four or five gallons over a year.

Recycling Nutrients

A long time ago we lived on a stream that salmon used for spawning. Many thousands swam upstream in late summer to mate, lay eggs and die. Our dog thought it a terrible waste to see thousands of fish rot along the edges of the stream so she rolled on them and ate as many as she could. She couldn’t digest them so had to throw them up, only to try again a bit later, or the next day. I’ve since read articles on how salmon benefit valleys where they spawn. The nutrients they carry from the deep ocean end up well distributed around the valley courtesy of the birds and mammals that eat live and dead salmon.

One afternoon we counted more than 40 eagles waiting to digest their last meal so they could eat again. None of the salmon lying along the stream had eyes because seagulls fought among each other to pick them out these delicacies: breaking through salmon skin was too much work! ….but not for eagles.

Deer Dropping Fertilizer

I think of them when I see deer and rabbit droppings all over the snow covering our fields. These herbivores cover wide ranges and deposit many droppings where they rest. It’s great to see a herd of deer spend hours in our grove of Douglas Fir and then later see pounds of droppings everywhere. Each year we use the top of one of these trees to celebrate winter holidays and the trunks and large branches for firewood. It’s great that the deer gather nutrients from miles around and the fertilize our fields and fir trees without me having to lift a finger!

Deer Droppings with Tracks Under Fir Trees

Thousands of Fish Die from Lack of Oxygen

Our neighbor has a 10+ acre pond that is very long. Every year we discuss placing a bubbling system in the deep end that would allow fish to survive the winter. Last winter fish older than two years died under the ice from lack of oxygen. We had a thaw in January, 2014, that opened up much of the ice and thoroughly oxygenated the pond that lasted long enough for the smaller fish to survive. The odor was pretty heavy for a few days in the spring but it didn’t take long for mammals and birds to gobble up the few hundred large bass and sunfish.

Large Pond Where Fish Died From Lack of Oxygen

This year the very deep snow on ice that formed in December and hasn’t yet melted. No January thaw.

Two+ Year-old Sunfish Died from Lack of Oxygen

The edges are melting in some places and reveal thousands of dead fish, including even last summer’ fry, see photos below. We’ll catch stock from our pond with enough pairs for them to repopulate this much larger pond. I hope this fall they invest in a bubbling system large enough to enable their whole pond of fish to thrive. Insects, mollusks, salamanders, frogs and turtles that also overwinter underwater should also benefit from well-oxygenated water. Some of them may die but won't be noticed since they bury themselves in the mud.

Summer's Young Fish Didn't Make it Through the Winter