Eating from the same tree

Two taps in a maple tree, using plastic tubing for collecting sap to be boiled to make maple syrup.

“We’re taping trees my grandparents’ parents” tapped. We look at it like this: a corn farmer can eat corn from the same field his great-grandfather planted, but he can’t eat from the same stalk. But an old syrupin’ family eats from the same tree.’’

-- New England farmer Tom Hunter quoted in Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon