Another fabulous day in Gillies Hill Community Woodland, today with our wonderful friend Amos Higgins. Amos brought his birch tree tapping gear with him and helped us tap some sap from birch trees. We learned so much from him today! We were able to identify birch trees in our woods from their bark. We discovered that birch sap is a little bit like blood, it is inside a birch tree in the same way blood is inside our bodies. When we drilled a hole (tap) in a tree sap comes out just like blood comes out our bodies when we get a cut or graze. We found out that birch trees produce sap at this time of year (Spring) as they get ready to make their leaves. We tried to tap a broken birch tree and found that there was no sap coming out and decided that was because it wasn’t going to be able to make any leaves 😒 We tied to tap a beech tree but there was no sap in it. The birch trees we did tap gave us cupfuls of sap and all of our children were keen to taste. We decided it tasted like water and like apples. Since trees need their sap to make leaves, we were please to find out that they are able to stop leaking themselves. We’re going to go and check the trees are all ok tomorrow!