Making a roof for a Sugar Maple spile
We tapped our easy to get to
Sugar Maple tree today.
It's got a nice and steady
drip rate.
Attaching a couple of shelf
brackets with bungee cords was an easy way to make a roof for the
bucket without damaging the tree with screws or nails which is a whole
lot prettier than the way
we did it last year.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi guys! This question is coming from a city dweller with no experience...but many dreams that will hopefully come to fruition in 2015!
Could a hole drilled into the side of the bucket to allow the spicket to drain while using a bucket lid keep the rain & other falling debris out? I like your roof-without-screws option since it is nicer to the tree, but a bucket lid could probably protect it more from any significant rain - if the drain could work properly.
Thanks for your blog! I'm a long-time reader & ebooks fan!
Anonymous --- You use a different kind of spile if you're using tubing. Those spiles (and the tubing itself, of course) tend to be plastic, and we wanted to stick to long-lived metal for now.
Erin --- Mark considered that, but the problem is hanging the bucket, since the spiles are made to hang the bucket below. It might still work, but might pull the spile out of the tree (and would probably be harder to empty daily). We might still change over to something like that, though, if Mark's lid doesn't keep the rain out!
Thanks for your kind words!