Every year the Stage Nature Center in our city offers a Rent-A-Maple program, where — for a small fee — you can have a maple tree on the property tapped in your name. Last year, we just donated to the program and had our name on a tree, but didn’t sign up in time to do the tapping ourselves. This year, we put it on our calendar and signed up as soon as we were able!

Even though Donald has to work on Saturday afternoons, we figured that we could fit this into our morning. We made sure not to sleep in, had our coffee, and Donald made us eggs and toast for breakfast. Once we were fed and ready, we set out into the sunshine, blue skies, and cold weather (below freezing)!

We were met at the door by some of the Stage Nature Center docents/volunteers and quickly found our guides for the event. I was so surprised to see Sarah there! She was in training as one of the guides and happened to be assigned to Donald and me!

As we went from the main building to the staging area outside, our guide, Danielle, kept reminding us that we needed to get a bucket and a lid. Apparently, it was a common thing to forget, and they didn’t want to have to walk all the way to our tree, just to have to backtrack to pick up the bucket that our tree sap would collect in.

Donald made sure to grab them, and then commented on how he could use them to make himself some Mandalorian armor.

Once we found our tree (which already had a tag on it with our names), Danielle showed us how to use a brace hand crank drill to make a small hole in the tree, angled slightly downward, each of us taking a turn. We then used a nail to get the wood shavings out of the hole and sprayed some water in it. Donald then gently tapped the French cast iron spile into our new hole and I hung our bucket on the spile. Donald put the cover on the bucket and we were good to go!

For a quick outing, it was a lot of fun! We received a little goodie bag with some maple candies, a pint of maple syrup, candles, pancake mix, and a certificate for our “lease” of the maple tree. We grabbed a Starbucks on the way home, my parents stopped by for a visit and a surprise (more on that later!), and then it was time for Donald to start work.

We have another adventure planned for tomorrow, so keep an eye out for another post soon!

Happy Saturday from Jenn and Donald!