Show's Over

I finished off the last of the sap last night - half a gallon and a half-pint produced. The trees have been mostly stagnant for a few days now and the weather is very warm. Any sap that did come out was dumped (many of the trees are budding). So, about half of the taps have been pulled and the rest will be taken care of this weekend.

I'll post later showing overall production. It's a "down year". Just shy of two gallons (three last year).

Yellow sap

A couple of the buckets were full of yellow-ish sap today. They had been outside a few days and probably turned bad. The others were OK. The rain today is unrelenting. Looking at the weather forecast, I think our days are numbered.

Puzzled

I guess it wasn't cold enough last night. Nothing much happened today, although I didn't check all the buckets. But, it's 23 deg. F right now. A low of 14 is forecast with a high of 50 tomorrow. That's the biggest temperature swing I've ever seen since sugaring. We'll see what happens.

A pretty good weekend.

Here's a photo of the weekend's production. A full gallon (plus) of medium amber syrup. No light syrup like last year. The new setup (also pictured below) has worked well. A couple notes on the weekend:

• The weather was great and the sap ran wild on Saturday
• Outdoor boil for ~10 hours in two pans
• Indoor finishing for several hours (boils slowly, easy to take care of)
• ~40-45 gallons of sap processed
• 2.5 bottles of propane used
• 1 gallon, 1/2 pint of syrup produced

This photo (below) only has one burner under the pan on the right. Later, both burners were installed and a preheat pan was up on the cinder blocks on the left. It worked great. By preheating the sap, the boil wasn't slowed down for very long after refilling the other pans.

The first boil

I set up the boiling rig today. With only one tank of propane (I forgot), I boiled down about 14 gallons of sap. It's finishing up right now.

The trees were going crazy today. I have around 25-30 gallons of sap that need to be processed. Most of it is from the last two days!

Trompin' in the woods

I got about 4-5 gallons of sap today. Overall, around 20 gallons. For the first time, I also tapped 5 trees with plastic spiles and tubing. It's not much of a tubing network, but I'm trying it out. They just drop down into buckets. I am pleased to say that the huge/old/half dead maple out front seems to have some life in it. I found a good spot and it started dripping immediately. Last year, four taps in it did nothing.

Not a drop

Must have been too warm last night. I checked five buckets...empty. C'mon freezing temperatures!

More people making syrup

Well, more people are tapping trees anyway. A couple co-workers have tapped trees for the first time. It will be fun to see how their experiment goes! I'm always amazed at how many people in this area make syrup on a small scale - and how many others have been involved on a larger scale.

The weather

I haven't kept track of the weather as closely this year as in the past. It looks like the remainder of the week is going to be ideal (mid-twenties at night, high 30s/low40s during the day). The 10-day forecast shows 5 days with lows above freezing (not good). This time of year, sugarers actually hope for cold nights and sunny days - I guess what is good for foliage is also good for sap output.

Saps running

I feel like I should have tapped the trees earlier. Got about 10 gallons after the first day and a half. Guess I'll be boiling this weekend!

The taps are in.

20 taps in today. We had a huge storm this week that gave us about 20" of snow, high winds, and no power for two days. Today was a nice, sunny day with a little snow. The taps started dripping as soon as they were drilled. I think I missed a little run last week, but nothing major because it was only 37-39 degrees and cloudy. Here's hoping for a season as good as last year (which I found out was the best in about 70 years in terms of production).

Cleaning...

Spent about an hour and a half cleaning the buckets, spiles, and larger storage buckets last night. Today, we got a foot or so of wet snow. I hear the sap is running, but I will tap after a bad wind storm coming this Friday.

Almost time...

Greetings. It's almost that time of year. I've noticed a couple other bloggers to the south are getting their sugaring equipment ready. The temperatures are in the mid-30s (forecast), but we always seem to be a little cooler on the wooded hilltop. I wonder what next week has in store for weather? It's definitely time to get the equipment out for a good washing and make some improvements over last year's setup.