Done for the season

[woody1117]

Made 18 gallons with 118 tps. My dad was starting to look pretty worn out, we were low on wood, and our last batch was just starting to taste a little buddy. Noticed the buds opened on some of the silver maples at my brothers 3 days ago. Good year though. Now I get to start planning for next year.

[supersapper]

pulled 60 gallons off 22 taps today! emptied 3 times, what a run! had made 3 gallons previously, 1 1/2 gallons today. i am going to pull taps tommorow as i empty. i am more than happy with my success this year.

[sk8heaven]

I have had a good run the last two days - looks like more today and tomorrow - then nothing below freezing in the 10 day forecast so......
Started slow but swimming in sap now!

[SilverLeaf]

Yesterday a few buds (on silver maples) started to open up here in SW MN, so we're done as well. Glad to hear others have had a good season. Ours has been disappointing. But, there's always next year! ;)

[warners point]

Heading up to the sugar bush tonight to boil off the last 300 gallons of the season.

[sk8heaven]

Well, pulling my taps tomorrow. After inconsistent weather made for a sputtering start, it finished with a pretty good surge the last two days. 80 gallons of sap on Tuesday, 65 yesterday. Bottled almost 4 gallons of syrup today - still nice light amber. I only had one batch that was medium amber all season. Weather is going to hit upper 50s and even 60s with lows around 40 for the near future. Time to clean up and get ready for open water fishing!

Finished with just 10.5 gallons from 100 taps so it wasn't gangbusters but it will do till next year...already planning what improvements I can make!

[buck3m]

And the frogs seem to be agreeing with the timing having just starting croaking today. I was surprised to see some trees still dripping pretty good after two nights that barely hit 32 degrees, briefly. A good time to call it a wrap with some warm weather coming up. Can hardly believe it's all over but the final boiling, bottling and clean-up.

Once again, excellent help from the family for this final gather of the year.

[tomslusher]

I had a hell of a year for only my 3rd try at it. It helped moving my stove inside. Syrup started out the season as light as beer and ended up as dark as coffee, but it all seems to taste the same.

With 29 taps out, I finished 13.5 gallons of syrup, and best was that I never burned or ruined one drop!!!! Yeah for me!!! That's **** near a half gallon of finished syrup per tap, about double what I had been told to expect.

I didn't get a season average but the last batch was 50 gallons of sap for 1.75 gallons of syrup. Early on, I know it was even better than that.

Now time to clean up the mess and wait for next year. Maybe I can buy some new and better equipment with my profits from selling my syrup for the first time.

tomslusher

[eschoon]

We had picked up our buckets on Sat 4/9 & washed everything up, finished off syrup in the pans and put cleaning water & vinegar in them. Yesterday's weather forcast was for several nights with freezing temps so we got the buckets out again last night and plugged everything in again. Sap is running well today! Will try to make a little more syrup this weekend.

[Minnesota Acer]

Had a very good year :) Had 18 taps and pulled in 224 gallons of sap which boiled down to 5.5 gallons of syrup. :D Definitely much better than last year when I had the same number of taps and pulled in one third of this year's total, although, I did get out earlier in the run this year. Found it interesting this year, had light amber, then medium, then dark, then had some trees wake up and it went back to medium, then a small boil was light, then medium, then dark again. All taps pulled by April 5th, which turned out to be two days too early, because of the unexpected freeze April 6th/7th, but such is life. Have enough syrup this year to sell most of it, some I'll give away. Looking forward to next year. :)