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.

Done for now

A 1/2 pint short of 2 quarts. Dark, very tasty.

No more sap - boiling what's left

I was holding off saying the sap was done, but now the weather confirms it. One tree today had a half gallon or so, not very sweet at all. Several had a few tablespoons of yellowish sap. Probably from sitting in the hot sun a couple days.

I have the two pans boiling outside and one inside. There probably isn't enough propane or time tonight to finish it all off. We'll see how far I get. I'll try to avoid the trap of putting fresh sap in the pan very late. Then it has to boil off for an hour of two before bringing inside to finish (another hour or two).

Boiling again

Another late night. Boiled about 20 gallons +/- tonight. It's on the stove finishing now. This reduces the remaining sap to around 30 gallons. At least it's manageable.

Loads of sap

Surprisingly enough, we got sap today-8 gallons. It was very mild last night, just around freezing. In total, I have about 60 gallons of sap...enough for about 1.5 gallons of syrup. Total sap for the year is around 120 gallons. Not bad considering about 10 of the taps are pretty quiet trees.

The sap this week was also the sweetest it has been all year. It really was a great week for sap. Not sure when I'll boil, but probably Saturday evening. Definitely won't get through the 60 gallons. There isn't enough propane or time in the day.

Record production (for me)

We achieved the higher volumes of syrup we were shooting for. 1.25 gallons of syrup made on Friday and Saturday (see photo below). If I can get one more weekend like this, I should have enough for the year and a few gifts.

Finished everything tonight at 8PM. That's nice because usually it's much later. The turkey fryers worked really well when turned up high, getting through the 30-35 gallons of sap in about 7 1/2 hours. I also waited longer this time before bringing it onto the kitchen stove. The finishing process was a little faster because of that.

The syrup made last night (below, left) used sap from last weekend and Monday. The syrup made today (below, right) was from late-week sap. It looks a lot darker and tastes a little stronger. I've heard that batch processing like this can make the syrup darker, but haven't found many sources online for that (let me know if you can confirm).

Boiling day

I have somewhere around 30-35 gallons of sap. Right now, the last of it is boiling in the pans. Looking forward to see how much we get. The sap is sweet, plus I dumped all of the ice out...and there was a lot this morning. Some trees are quiet today, others are dripping so fast it is almost a steady stream.

Sap's back

Boiled down around 12-14 gallons tonight for 1.5 quarts, plus a few ounces. That's a pretty good ratio. Somewhere in the low 30s, but I took out some ice. It seems to help, even if I lose a small amount of sugar. The buckets are full and I'll toss the ice in the morning.

Uh oh

Since the 14-gallon collection on Sunday, I got 20 more gallons. No collection today, maybe I'll check it out in the morning (didn't see much in the few buckets I checked...too warm). I don't know how much time this is going to take to boil, but I think it will be a lot. So, hoping to make a gallon this weekend.

A productive weekend.

Well, I boiled down a half gallon of syrup on Saturday and emptied 14 more gallons of sap today. It's going to be a busy week or two. The weather looks promising, with only one night forecast to be above freezing. Without freezing temperatures, the sap doesn't build the pressure to come out.

Boiling took about 8 hours on two burners. Then a couple hours to finish, etc.

That's more like it.

After gathering a few gallons of sap this weekend and making a half pint of syrup, we had two days (Sat/Sun) that were so warm at night, no sap came out. However, today was a different story. We gathered eight gallons of sap today from our 20 taps. Some of the colder trees (deeper in woods) are just starting to produce. A few out in the open produced 1-2 gallons just today! It's sealed up and stored in the shade and snow for this weekend.