Tapping in Somers

[DaveB]

With 5 out of the next 7 days having high temps above 40°, I decided I needed to do something to get going on tapping. With snow at 24" in open sunny areas and over 3-4' in the woods this year is going to be a challenge. A lighter buddy of mine was able to walk on top of the frozen snow for the most part so while he tapped 70 or so trees I was digging a path to my sugar house and getting things going there.

Still lots to do, but the taps are starting to go in here in Somers. No sap running today....maybe tomorrow with temps in the mid 40s. I'll add more in Stafford and my other bushes as the snow goes down and time allows.

Dave

[DaveB]

Thought I'd give an update since things have changed so much in the past month.

Took me two weeks after I started tapping on 2/13 to have enough sap to boil. That was mainly because I only had 100 or so trees tapped. I used the time to get the sugarhouse and area ready. Been adding taps as time and snow allowed. Up to about 550 now. I have two more bushes in Stafford to finsh tapping and I should be able to do that this weekend. Everything in the valley is tapped now.

Sap flowed real well this week. Collected well over 2 gals per tap where as last week I was only getting about .5. I boiled last weekend and even though I was close to syrup, I had to shut down because the feed tank was running low. I'll fire up again later today and run through the weekend into early next week.

Long range forecasts still looking good and there is still snow to melt in the woods. Next few weeks should good! So glad it's not like last year and as bad as I thought this year could have been!

Dave

[DaveB]

Sap still flowing here on trees that I tapped later in the season but seems to have stopped on trees that I tapped early when we had that one week of good weather followed by a cold week.

Next week looks **** perfect:

My Forecast (http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=41.9580859285653&lon=-72.30689191870624&site=box&smap=1&unit=0&lg=en&FcstType=text)

I even have some trees that I could not get to but gave up on because of the snow and I'm thinking of tapping those this weekend. What the heck....it's only March 17th, right?

[DaveB]

No sap running today, but I added about 125 taps in a bush that I couldn't get to earlier because of the snow. This weeks weather looks really good so I wanted to try and collect some extra sap. I think this week will be it...I hope we go out with a bang!

I had a little mishap today while boiling....my feed tank stand collapsed or at least started to. It just started leaning toward once side and the tank slid off. Luckily, I didn't have a lot of sap in it so I didn't loose much and I was able to get a cross member on there to support it. I'm just glad that it wasn't full or anyone was hurt. I hope that was my "incident" for the year!

Dave