Starting over

[argohauler]

I've been thinking about this for a few days now. My syrup is now dark, but has a good flavour.

Now that our weather has turned cold, I thought about finishing off what I have in the pans and then start with fresh sap when it starts to run again to see if it will lighten the syrup, plus clean the syrup pan.

Now reading the stressed trees, dark syrup thread I'm not so sure.

I'm also going to rebore the trees because our week of warm before this last freeze really cut down our sap production and our season has been poor and I want more.

I rebored a few years ago and it really worked well. It got really hot and people around here gave up. I kept watching the 2 week forecast and they said cold in early April. It actually froze up a few days and we had very good sap runs of clear sap. I had made 66 gallons in March and I made another 77 in April, but the problem it was all mersh, but I also didn't finish what was in the pans from before.

So is it worth a shot?

[michiganfarmer2]

I dont like to redrill trees. If Im gonna tap them for the next 40 years I dont want that may holes in them.

Abuot the dark syrup. If it tastes good, just talk to your customers and explain. They wiil be happy wwhether the syrup is dark or not.

I wont pull my spiles till the trees bud. I dont care how dark the syrup is. If I cant sell it, I will blend it, or eat it myself. I can always store it, and blend it next year. The stuff is too hard to come by for me to not make every drop I can make.

[argohauler]

About the reboring. I go just a little bit deeper in the original hole.

[michiganfarmer2]

I guess its worth a shot. Let us know how it goes. Im curious

[argohauler]

I got to the bush yesterday afternoon. Went to the line tank and the mainlines were dripping. We had a high of -1/30 yesterday with lots of sun.

The few buckets I had around the shanty were dripping a bit if they were in the sun. Rebored them a little deeper and they were almost running like new taps even with the cold temp.

I redid one mainline and found where a limb had come down and broke the blue line 6 inches from a tee and also broke that tee. Will need to get help to stretch it back together.

I then did some more buckets in the neighbours bush.

I checked the mainline just after 6 and that line was trickling while the others were just dripping.

Looks like we'll get at least 4 days run, starting Tuesday.

Will bore some more out today.