Another question for people in the south

[madokie]

68. We have about a dozen sugar maple trees on our home place

and a couple years I've tapped them and made my own syrup. It takes a lot of sap but its well worth the effort. I keep telling myself I'm going to do it again but for some reason I always seem to find an excuse from making the 20 mile round trip every day to do that. Hopefully I will this February cause there just ain't anything like your own made maple syrup.
I'm not a big pancake eater though so a little goes a long ways for me. I've got pancakes burned off by 9 am or so.

ETA: We also have a big ass shagbark hickory tree that is supposed to be good for making flavoring for corn syrup that is awesome, or so I'm told.
With it you take a piece of the bark about 2 or so inches with by about 18 inches long and boil the fire out of it to get the flavoring. The part of the bark you use is the inner bark, not the outer bark and thats why I've not done it before because I feel like I'd be raping the tree to get the bark I need. I keep hoping I'll be there when a big limb breaks off and use the inner bark from it but so far I've not been there when that happens