The sap buckets were hung by the birch trees with care.
This was the view yesterday in a stand of woods outside of Ava, Illinois. Those are birch trees. If you look carefully in the photo below you will see a bit of sap falling from the tap into a bucket.
That sap will end up in a beer made at Scratch Brewing. As will toasted bark from the trees and Chaga, a crazy an intense smelling, parasitic mushroom that grows on the trees. Chaga is known by the Siberians as “Gift from God” and the “Mushroom of Immortality.”
Visiting Scratch is like enrolling in a Continuing Education class.
With that kind of bark, what kind of birch are they? 😉
River Birch.