Tapping trees and raking roofs is it all just playtime?

Although it's still very much winter here the temperatures are improving. In fact most days in the current 10 day forecast look to be above freezing day temperatures and below freezing night temps. Just right for maple sugaring so it's time to start tapping the trees. We've been doing this awhile now. Thinking about it makes me think of the recent "playing at homesteading" issues on Youtube. If you haven't farmed all your life or don't have a big set up are you just playing at homesteading as one of the big channels says? Maybe or maybe you're learning, don't we all have to start somewhere? Or maybe you're doing just enough for your situation. Anyway I'm not a youtuber and don't really plan to be beyond what I have to upload there to add to my blog. I do consider myself a homesteader or small farmer. I usually say "hobby farm" when asked since we don't make an income and we're in this more for self sufficiency and to know where our food comes from and how it has been grown. When it comes to tapping the maple trees we have done that for a number of years. The first year we tapped the trees we were doing so as a project with our then very young children. We ended up with maybe a couple pints of pure maple syrup and a little candy when it was all said and done. I'm pretty sure I blogged about it somewhere (since blogs were the thing before vlogs!). Was that playing at homesteading or learning? We did learn that's for sure and  put that learning into practice. Now we finish most maple seasons with 6 or 7 gallons of syrup and some candy. That's plenty for our family for the year and we don't have to buy maple in the stores and don't buy all that much sugar either since we can use the maple to sweeten many things. So I guess you could say we are self sufficient with maple! It's definitely not playing at homesteading. Tapping the trees to the final product is a lot of work with a sweet reward. For now just the first couple taps are up, more going up tomorrow! Unfortunately I made myself extra work by not storing all the buckets under cover. I had to dig about a dozen out of deep snow and give them a good scrubbing. I'll store them better this season!

Some maple sap buckets freed from deep snow.

More buckets still very stuck in the snow. It's about 4 feet deep in this area.

This grand old maple tree is our best producer of sap by far. We tap about 10 or so trees most years but this one gives as much sap as any 3 other trees.

First tree tapped.

Other work today included roof raking the chicken's covered run. This recent storm was heavy snow and some ice too. It made for a heavy job getting it off the run. 

In the time I spent outdoors today I noticed a lot more bird song and other bird activity such as the woodpeckers pecking away at trees in the woods. Some little birds were hanging out in the chicken yard looking for food that the chickens missed.

Tapping the trees and birds more around. I guess spring must be on it's way. I'll get to "play" at gardening then and even better, play with baby chicks.