Buds

[Russ008]

Sawsome buds on a small maple in TurnersFalls by the post office. What does that mean?
Does it hurt to get sub freezing temp's after the trees start buding ? Its probably to late to tap when the tree's are buding anyways ? Put out six test taps and the're running. Weather says its going to get above freezing for the next week.Seems like another crazy year.

[mapleman3]

might be over before it starts again this year who knows.. guess I better get crackin on gretting ready, I havn't done a thing yet :?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Some maples keep little things on the end of the twigs that look like buds all winter. Nothing to be alarmed about yet unless you have retarded maple trees in New England! 8O 8O 8O :lol: :lol: :lol: :oops: :oops:

[VA maple guy]

I have a few reds and two silvers that the buds have swelled up, my sugars are ok for now. I sure wish this weather would get back to normal.
I might not get to tap some of my trees if this weather holds. temps are
going to be in the sixties this weekind arround here.
Gerry

[Russ008]

Put out 20 taps thursday & friday, collected about 30 gals of sap, looks like warm weather i'm going to keep putting taps out. Last year we had a long cold spell after winter thaw.

[sweetwoodmaple]

Russ - sent you a PM since email was down.

Thanks,

Brian

[Russ008]

I was trying to log and boil at the same time, don't work, burnt my first batch. Boy the yard smelled good but it was alot of work cleaning the pan. The next gallon came out real nice, sweetest ever, nice color. Made some maple leaf pops to pass out too. I might have taped early but buy the looks of my firewood pile the whole winter has been alittle warm. Ran pretty good a few days last week and lookin at a possible run this week, But the weather made a fool out of me last year, we'll see.

[Russ008]

Sap runs for three days then we have a week to catch up boiling. Seems to be working out ok for me. Hope it doesn't get warm to fast.

[mapleman3]

Anybody in western ma. tap yet? I was told that Pomeroy's out in westfield are serving breakfast and boiling already... I don't know if thats true but it's what I heard, I'm still holding off, maybe by the end of the week here, not sure.

[brookledge]

Pomeroy's has tapped and they were on Channel 22 today. They are a little warmer of an area than I am. I planning on tapping latter in the week on days that warm up over 36.
Keith

[mapleman3]

yep me too, just was out in the woods, lots of branches down from the wind and a few broken lines :evil: just more work to do

[sapaddict]

yea, not a pro myself, but just got a feeling with no snow, little real cold, mother nature and teh sap just isnt going to really flow. Glad I dont do this for a living.

[softmaple]

well, we have been tapped since the last week of january down here in agawam with 57 buckets and have made 7 gal of syrup so far. it's all been light amber and tasting great. last year we made 8 gallons on only 24 trees for the whole season. the trees in our area have really big buds all over them, so we don't know how long our trees are going to last without affecting the taste of the syrup. with the 2x4 evaporator and no preheater, we are at our goal of one day of boiling for the week so far. we boiled for 14 hours or so yesterday, if we had anymore sap to boil in a week we'd go nuts and need to get more fuel (wood) to burn. we got about 65 gallons of sap per day during the past 3-day heat wave we had, so we would have to say the season is going how we expected

[MassMapleAdict]

I had my second boil yesterday, about 8 hours. Of course I spent 2 hours before that cleaning my pan I burnt the day before!! After the wind the other day I had to go searchin for some of my buckets!!

[mapleman3]

Well I did more cleaning and rearanging in the sugarhouse tonight.. I guess I'll tap my buckets on Wed Morning, and work on my broken and downed lines during the afternoon, hopefully get that tapped before the end of the week.maybe boil by the weekend?

[Mike]

Are the trees that have budded soft maples??? Ill gather as long as the sap is clear....Once I start making real dark stuff Ill call it a season....No sense in wasting oil on C grade....If i had a RO it would be different....

[mcsap]

Trees with bigger buds now will be red maples as you suspected. They have bigger buds all winter than sugar maples anyway, so there's probably no cause for alarm yet, especially with the cold that's coming our way.

John

[Beveti]

It is really??

[Russ008]

Year revolves around Maple syrup season !!!

[Russell Lampron]

Mike,

"C" grade is bringing pretty good money these days. I got $1.50/lb the last time I sold some. That was $174 for 10 gallons of stuff I would have dumped over the banking otherwise. It paid for the supplies I bought and some cash to put in my pocket.

Happy thanksgiving, Russ

[Russ008]

This warm weather really kills me !! I ended up tapping at least eight weeks last year. Boiled twice the sap and ended up with the same amount of syrup.
I'm going to let the trees sweeten up this year. I'll start looking at the trees mid Feb to march. Good Luck to all !!!!

[Russ008]

I think I'm going to tap the first weekend in March. That way I'll have a shorter boiling season and the sap will be sweeter. Is that were the saying Short but sweet comes from ?:rolleyes:

[KenWP]

So is there a time when trees produce more sap that a guy could make use of. I am asking because today I found a bunch of suger maples close by. I would have to haul the sap from them by 5 gallon pail because of where they are and such. I would like to tap them later when my silvers and reds give out and get some good sap for a few days as the work involved to tap them for weeks would be a little much.

[Russ008]

No early Buds this year. Gonna tap soon, cleaning up the sugar and equipment now.