Maple Sugar 2023

[Corley5]

That's where the vac should be 8)  8) RO's chewing through some sap.  Should make 30 plus gallons tonight. Looks like it's over by Sunday. 


 

[SwampDonkey]

Saw some boiling here today. Ice storm coming tonight.

[Chuck White]

We are currently at 20 gallons below last years total of 195 gallons!

It really looks like it's VERY close to the end, very little snow here!

[Corley5]

Last boil today. I would have quit a couple sessions ago if I'd done a taste test. Today's was probably the buddiest I've ever made. Yuck

[celliott]

Well, you got all you could then!
For us, it will make financial sense to produce some buddy syrup. It's not pretty but it will pay the bills. The big packers blend it in with a lot of good syrup.

We were 90 gallons shy of our single day record. 4275 gallons today. All good table grade golden delicate. We'll see how long it lasts but I have my doubts about this weekend.
We are not doing all that well, like I said earlier, slow start and fast finish. We are about 2.5 pounds per tap. Last year 6, most years we can manage 5. Is what it is, you can do everything right and it still won't pan out. 
Canada is not looking like they will have a good year either. No freezes in sight.

[chep]

I'll have my last boil tomorrow.  Should end up around 70 gallons of syrup for the year. Just over a qt of syrup per tap. Which we are pleased with. 
I added 50 more trees/buckets on March 11 and those ran gangbusters yesterday. Just under 2 gallons of tap per tap. 
I tapped the first 228 buckets on valentines day, the earliest I've ever tapped. I only hang one tap per tree, so its 268 trees/buckets total. Those early taps all dried up a couple weeks ago. When I did the math on how much sap I gained by tapping early,  turns out it wasn't worth it. If I'd had all 268 buckets firing the last couple days it would have far outweighed the early sap. Good lessons to remember, but the weather looked to good in Feb to pass up. Another challenge to using buckets. The window of sap run is much shorter then vacuum.  
I'm sorry to hear of the season up there chris. You aren't alone. I know/heard of a number of sugarmakers saying worst year ever. 
 

[SwampDonkey]

I saw some boiling here yesterday morning. But it's warmed into the 50's now. Aspen trees began to flower a week ago.

[Chuck White]

We had our last boil yesterday, boiled off what was in the back pan.

We'll "just" beat last years total of 95 gallons by a couple of gallons.

Better season than we thought it would be, a few weeks ago.

[Stephen1]

Last boil today. I spent the weekend cutting and splitting firewood from the sawmill bundles I had for next year. We had way to much sap! 8)
The rubber diaphragm in the guzzler vacuum pump split yesterday, so we pulled it out and started pulling taps. The weather is done here, buds are sprouting, a high in the 60-70F this week. 
We are definitely up this year and still have a day of canning to do. our usual year is 150 litres. If we get that much we are happy. Well this year so far and we are well over 200 litres. We had help in that we finally got the vacuum working like it should and that is why we ran out of firewood. Next year is a heated pump house so we can get an  RO.  

[SwampDonkey]

Saw my cousin haul in some more sap this morning on the wagon. It's only been spring here for 2 days. :D  54F here now.

[SwampDonkey]

Still hauling sap here to the sugar shack. Still boiling.

[Chuck White]

We finished during that "hot" weather spell we had.

We ended up with 198.5 gallons, 3.5 gallons more than last year!

[Stephen1]

We ran out firewood and finished boiling the day before I left for the Project. Cleanup starts this weekend. We will boil with propane what was not finished in the evaporator. So far a bonus year for us. I will have a tally next week. 

[Plankton]

Pulling taps now not a great season down here in western mass. Ran hard and made a lot of syrup in the early season then shut down fast and hard.
 
Plus side we and everyone else i know between here and central vt made almost all fancy. But everyone i know from 30k to 2k taps had a bad year. 

[SwampDonkey]

The New Brunswick Maple Syrup Association said yield was way down this year. Not as bad as 2018, but significant. Same for much of Quebec. Apparently south of us had a decent spring for syrup. New Brunswick is looking to double the acreage in production, but waiting for the green light since this would be off crown lands the government controls.

[celliott]

We are almost done pulling spouts. Next week we'll wrap that up and start the next project.
It was a disappointing production season for us, and most everybody who has a woods that's sits cold or is further north. Warmer areas did well, in March we were a few degrees off from running and others were running strong. Then it warmed up too much and too fast 🤷‍♂️ northern Maine and Canada did equally as bad or worse than we did. Such is the business. We did everything we could to maximize production with what we were given.
We have some ideas for next year too.
Tapping early certainly doesn't appear to have affected us. We're gonna start even earlier. More tapped with less snow is good. When we had that late December/early January thaw, our north slope high elevation trees ran the best we've ever seen them run. No snow and not frozen to the core. Gonna try and maximize that for the potential early runs next year, and not be waiting for those trees to thaw in deep snow come March.
Those same trees that ran in December, still gave us good sap flow after the warmup. 10 days with no freezeup and many days 70+ degrees. We dumped sap after the 4th day of 70 degree weather. Kept vacuum pumps on, got a freeze 6 days later. Started collecting sap again, flow came back and we made some more syrup. Wasn't a make or break kinda thing but still, it amounted to a little over $30k in product. Was eye opening that the trees had been tapped for 5 whole months, saw 10 days of no freezing and hot weather, and still produced sap. High vacuum and a fresh spout has a lot to do with that.
We're gonna aim to be all tapped by early January next year. Any early run, we get 100% of our taps online. Vacuum will be higher when the season does start. And we can hire out for other work after we finish.
This summer we will be installing about 10k new taps, possibly more. New pumping station near the sugarhouse. Trying to do it as affordable as possible due to the poor season.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, I was talking to the Hargroves, who are big producers, and he said production was down this year. Was still cold weather here last week, 40's, after them forecasting much warmer. Well, we have the warm now, 86F + today. Suppose to drop 20 degrees for tomorrow's high, then bounce back to the heat by Wednesday. A/C is on today.

[Stephen1]

We had what I call a good year. We finally after years hit a liter per tap. 
Mind it had something to do with finally getting everything working like it should. Then we ran out of firewood because we had so much sap. 

[celliott]

Yes, the Hargrove's are similar in size to our operation.
Doesn't matter how much snow is on the ground, 70-80 degrees is what the trees feel in the crown, and they start metabolizing the sugar. 

Seems it never fails. We pull the plug, and a week later it's back to good sugaring weather. Oh well. Next year!

I'll catch up with an end of season photo dump.
Had some lightning damage near the end of the season. Our vacuum monitor system made us aware of the area. Went there and found this, high tensile wire disintegrated, pipe melted where it was near a tree, 5/16 blew apart and melted.

























We made some dark robust for the first time. It was good! We lowered the sap concentration and deepens the level we boiled at. Slow. But if we'd boiled it per usual I think it would have been golden and off flavored. This still made table grade.




It's a family affair 😊 




A few pics from laying out the new section, and spout pulling. We do have some rugged terrain!








We think this is an old stone arch





Sort of shows the slope although the camera never does steep ground justice.




Small clearing job for our new pump station. Across that field is the sugarhouse, if you look close in the upper right corner you can see a steam stack on the roof. It'll be close by, and everything going to the sugarhouse will be buried.








Materials are starting to arrive, and we're bringing some to stage in the woods. This was 25k feet out of 200k feet of 1" blue mainline we got.




I'll try to remember and update this thread with some more installation pictures as we get rolling this summer.

[Chuck White]

Nice pics Chris, Thanks for posting!

I especially like that stone arch pic, a good metal detector might turn up something interesting!

Congratulations to all for another successful sugaring season.