| I spent an evening collecting 330 gallons of sap with a local family, hauling buckets through the woods, getting my hands dirty, and breaking a serious sweat. Wisconsin boasts the highest yield of maple syrup per tap with a yield of 458.000 gallons in 2024. From the looks of my neighbor’s taps – 2025 is going to be an epic year. Before moving to central Wisconsin, I really didn’t understand the labor of love put into tapping maple trees. Most of our neighbor’s have tapped trees their entire life and do it every year. It’s so common you can guarantee a bottle as a Christmas gift each year. Last Friday night my husband and I were honored to be invited to collect sap with a local family who has over 200 trees tapped less than a mile from my house. With a blue Ford tractor outfitted with a tank on the back and a few dozen 5 gallon buckets hanging from the tractor’s tines 8 of us headed out to the woods promptly at 4pm. We walked up to each tree, unhooked a blue bag from a tap and poured the clear slightly sweet liquid into the bucket. Being a newbie, I was paired with the crew’s 8 year old to show me how to unhook and not spill a bit of the sap. For an hour we hiked around the woods and brought back bucket after bucket to the tank for transport to “the cooker” or off to a bigger syrup operation down the road to be sold for commercial production, which is rumored to sell to General Mills. At the “cooker” the elder of the family sat monitoring the sap with the precision of a scientist, complete with temperature checks and sugar content readings as it cooked down. What impressed me was that this fella had a clipboard complete with data going back decades on their daily yields to compare this year to the past. All signs are pointing to this year being an epic one with at least a few more weeks left of collecting. After hauling in a lot of buckets my muscles were tired and I felt like I’d had good workout. No wonder a lot of these guys up here live well into their 90’s! Carrying buckets with with sap got me thinking how good it feels to get outside and do something that isn’t a structured workout. Saying our goodbyes for the evening we told them we’ll come back whenever they need us, not because I’m banking on a gallon of syrup (I’m sure we’ll get one or three anyway) or a few cans of Busch Light (official beer of Central WI – not my thing) but because it felt good to do something different! How could you step out of the traditional workout and have a fun time getting your sweat on? Cheers to Wisconsin maple syrup season & exploring new ways to challenge your body, Dr. J PS: My podcast with Ric Scalzo on herbal medicine was one of my faves to date and it’s still available- click the link below and listen in! |
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