Birch tears or how to collect birch sap

Birch tears or how to collect birch sap

Slender white birches for more than a century inspire poets and writers to create masterpieces. Birches not only pleases the eye, but also serve as a source of trace elements, proteins, acids and vitamins. Everyone at least once tried birch sap, but you need to collect it carefully, so as not to cause irreparable harm to the birch. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to properly collect birch sap.

To begin with, you should know when you can collect birch sap. Season for the extraction of birch sap opens from the end of March, and ends with April. As warming should gradually move from the edge of the forest, where the forest wakes from hibernation much later. A thin sting is a prick on the trunk of the birch, if juice drips from the wound, then you can proceed to its systematic collection.

Preparing for collection of juice. It is necessary to take a few plastic bottles with them, since they have a narrow throat, and insects, trithes and small leaves will not fall into them. Be sure to take a hand drill or drill on the batteries to make a neat hole in the trunk. You can not make a cut with an ax, it ruins a birch tree, very often a tree dies from such procedure. Be sure to make small plugs, which in the future will close the holes you made. To collect the juice, you can take a soft rope, a piece of cloth or just a clean bunch of grass.

Extraction of birch sap. How correctly to collect birch sap is a whole science. The tree needs to be old enough so that it can tighten the wound. Once all the preparations are done, proceed directly to collecting the juice. We choose a tree, preferably slightly under a slope, so that it is easier to collect the juice. Make a drill a small hole in the trunk and firmly attach a bottle with a rag (rope or grass) to the trunk. Three times a day we go to check bottles and collect juice. It is best to drill 5 or 6 trees, rather than draining all the juice from one tree. In different trees, the intensity of the juice flow is different, as soon as the volume of juice is reduced, the tree needs to be changed.

Helping the tree As soon as you leave the tree, it needs to help heal the wound inflicted. Gently insert the plug in the hole, which was prepared in advance. The birch has already begun preparation for healing the wound, and your help will make the healing process quick. If you understand how to properly collect birch sap, the next year you will not find the place from where it was taken.

Storage Birch juice is best to drink fresh, then it will keep all the useful substances and vitamins in full. If you have a cellar in your house, and a glacier is the best, then the juice will be stored for quite a long time, without losing its qualities. Closing in cans or pasteurizing birch juice is not recommended. If you want to try kvass from birch sap, the recipe for making it is extremely simple: it is done just like usual, but instead of water, birch juice is added, and the product is much more useful than plain kvas. Birch juice helps treat acne, narrows the pores on the face, so you can frostbite "birch ice" from it and use it as needed.

Benefit of birch sap. Birch sap strengthens immunity, increases the body's resistance. Birch juice will save you from spring avitominosis, help to avoid depression and fatigue. Juice destroys stones in the kidneys and liver, improves metabolic processes, purifies blood, reduces blood pressure. For pregnant women birch sap is simply irreplaceable.

If you know how to properly collect birch sap, take care of trees, do not take more juice from them than they can give you, nature generously gives you useful vitamins, minerals and trace elements for the health of you and your family.