Maple Syrup 2019

[Chuck White]

Supposed to be a cold spell coming up in a few days, it's likely to last a while!

We kind of think we'll get less syrup this year than last!

Good thing we don't do it for business!  ;)

[Stephen1]

Supposed to be a cold spell coming up in a few days, it's likely to last a while!

We kind of think we'll get less syrup this year than last!

Good thing we don't do it for business!  ;)

I always find a great year is followed by a not so good year.

[Ed_K]

 Last yr was not a good yr for us,and this yr I think won't be that great also with little snow around the trees. Anyways I would to find a new back pan for my set up. It's a water-loo small 2x6 pan with raised flue. Not in a rush I think the pan now will be ok this yr but will need a newer one for next yr. Let me know if you hear of one for sale. Thanks.

[celliott]

Ed, you spoke about not having much snow around the trees and a bad season, we have the opposite problem. The roots sometimes never thaw very well. We pull spouts on snowshoes sometimes. Anyways.

A few more photos.
This is our north pump station. It is located at the northern end of our property, and will service about 12,000 taps this season. We have more to add next year, eventually we will have probably 16-18,000 taps at this station.
We supply vacuum with a 3” line from our main station which is 10,000 ft (pipe length) away, with 3, 25hp Busch screw pumps. A 2” pump line follows the same 10,000’ route and we pump the sap uphill, then it gravity feeds to our main station, where it is pumped 8000’ to the sugarhouse.
We reused a 5000 gallon milk truck tank, and have a diesel generator to run the releaser and transfer pump.
Oh yeah, it snows a little up here.



 


 


 


 

And some tidy up work at our main station for the twin 3” pump lines that carry every single drop of sap this year to the sugarhouse.


 


 
You can see the generator in the background, that’s a new addition for this station. Standby only. We had an incident last season where we lost power while pumping sap on a cold night, and it slushed and froze solid in the pipe. Bad news.

And our re-configured hydra releaser.



 


That’s all I got for now guys. We’re still waiting on a sap run, and the long range forecast looks pretty cold for our location. Which is ok, we still have about 16,000 left to tap, and after that we’re gonna run more tubing, see if we can get 10,000 more new taps tubed and drilled. Ready for it to be done snowing that’s for sure.

[Ed_K]

Celliott, your on the west slope of the green mts right? I can see where you'd have a LOT of snow coming off the lakes :(. I think that this coming week will be the turn around for sap runs. Could be like last yr where the first 2 weeks of mar were froze solid. Good luck sugaring anyways.

[millwright]

We've got a monster amount of snow, and getting more every couple days. I'll start tapping next week, about 200 on bags and buckets. Putting tracks on the utv, otherwise I'd probably have to wait till July to get in the woods.

[cbla]

Thinking about tapping in on march 2.  mitchstockdale, I will have 35 taps out this year all on buckets. I collect the sap in food grade 20L buckets with lids. usually there is snow at the camp and I strap the buckets on either a toboggan or in the snowmobile sled.

[mitchstockdale]

Thinking about tapping in on march 2.  mitchstockdale, I will have 35 taps out this year all on buckets. I collect the sap in food grade 20L buckets with lids. usually there is snow at the camp and I strap the buckets on either a toboggan or in the snowmobile sled.

Cool,  how many gallons would you get in a season? 

[Chuck White]

We gathered around 300 gallons of sap yesterday and boiled it down today and made about 2½ gallons of syrup.

We'll boil the remainder down tomorrow in the finishing pan and should get between 4 & 5 gallons.

Tested the sap this morning and it tested "just" under 2%!

[cbla]

Thinking about tapping in on march 2.  mitchstockdale, I will have 35 taps out this year all on buckets. I collect the sap in food grade 20L buckets with lids. usually there is snow at the camp and I strap the buckets on either a toboggan or in the snowmobile sled.

Cool,  how many gallons would you get in a season?

Last year I made about 4.5 -5 ( 20 L) gallons of syrup on 24 taps. a lot of the sugar maples I have are in decline. This year I will tap 10 red maples that I have not tapped in the past.

[Chuck White]

We finished boiling what we had on hand today and ended up with 5½ gallons.

Graded on the line between Dark Robust and Amber!

[GAB]

The Old Timers rule of thumb was a quart of syrup per tap, per year, if it was a good year, and you did not overtap.
Like all things agricultural mother nature has a lot to say about the outcome.
My dad said one year his dad boiled once and his uncle never boiled that year.
It was a poor year in their area.
You can tap soft or red maples, however the sugar content is not usually very high which means a lot of boiling time which leads to darker syrup.  A blend of soft and hard maple sap does make for a very tasty syrup.
Gerald

[randy d]

I went and tried to plow our woods road today it was tuff going about 35 to40 " of snow in the woods and cold weather for the next week or more so it will be quite a while before we will be tapping any trees here in north central Wisconsin.

[Chuck White]

If it weren't for Soft Maples, we would have a lot less syrup!

About half of our trees are Soft Maple!

[petefrom bearswamp]

Chuck what is the sugar percentage of your Soft maple?

[maple flats]

Around my sugarhouse I added almost 200 new taps, about 90-95% on soft maples. In the past, until last year I was about 90% on Sugars. I now might be about 50/50. That bush is tapped but we have only gotten about 4-5 hrs sap flow, only enough to run the vacuum about 3 hrs. Then it froze up hard again. Looking at the long range it may not give me more than 2-3 days before March 11. Then it looks good for the next 3-4 weeks, until it ends because of too many nights with no freeze. I'm still looking at about 1000 taps total for this season.
We had very little snow until the last 2 weeks, now we have about 12-14" on the ground. Still fluffy, no need for snowshoes yet here.
As far as sugar % in the sap, I do not check individual trees, just the tanks, all sap at both the sugarhouse and at my one lease go into one tank at each. While the sugar % changes year to year, I did not notice a significantly lower % when I added the mostly reds soft maples around the sugarhouse. My lease is all sugar maples, that woods has no soft maples and it is about 80-85% maples. To my knowledge I was the only one to ever tap that woods, I found no evidence of previous tapping , but some of the 200+ year old trees could have been tapped long ago. There were only 5 such trees, all roadside and the county has now removed all but 1. They were all 3.5-4.5' DBH. All of the rest of the bush is maples up to about 20", with maybe 15 or so that are 24-30" DBH, those are along one old woods road or one the outer edge of the woods mostly.

[Chuck White]

Pete; We haven't tested individual trees, only like Dave said, just tested the tanks!

When the taps are all on lines with a mixture of trees, individual testing isn't always possible.

The Soft Maple will definitely test lower!


Today we bottled up what syrup we had from our first boil, we got 3 gallons, 2 half-gallons and 1 quart! 

[dustintheblood]

We are on the north side of Lake Ontario and won't be tapping until the 10th this year.  Much later than the last two years for sure.  We're not huge but the family has fun with about 1000 taps.  New RO going into the saphouse this week and yup - I'm gonna love it.

[welderskelter]

Treestand hunter. That is kinda what I built for my syruper only I believe you are going to need a hole for intake a lot bigger than that. Mine has grates in the front third and about a 6x6 hole for draft and then sloped it up to within about 4 in of the pan. Works great . A 10 in stove pipe about 8 ft tall and it will really go. You will really like it.Harold

[Chuck White]

Just waiting for the "warm up" so we can get into making syrup!

We were just lucky to get that last "itty bitty" run and made the 4½ gallons!

[Peter Drouin]

Warm up here some, Guys are calling for slabs.

[Chuck White]

In this area, we're all getting impatient to get started again!

Last year we had OVER 100 gallons in barrels and bottles by the 1st of March, right now we have 4¼ gallons!      :-\

[cbla]

The weather looks good next week for us.

[Stephen1]

In this area, we're all getting impatient to get started again!

Last year we had OVER 100 gallons in barrels and bottles by the 1st of March, right now we have 4¼ gallons!     :-\

AHHHHH Mother Nature. Isn't she grand. 
Patience!

[Ed_K]

 I got 26 taps in this morning but their not running :(.