Shawano county is running!

[jmayerl]

Both my test taps in the middle of the woods had a good run today. Soft maples tested out at 1.7%.

[treemonkey]

It's easy when the weather pattern is normal!!!! Either sugaring or farming, the calender is generally King. I ran some mainline mid December, it was running for a couple days. Ran some lats in Jan, was running then too. Sure is tempting!!!! But I'm holding back. Wish I had a crystal ball.

[Rhino]

Back to reality by late next week, tonites forecast says wausau wi. -3 for a low by next Friday, that means up here a low of around -10. This was just a shot across the bow telling us to get everything in order soon. No snowstorms forecasted either. Might be a year i don't have to plow all the trails and won't have to wear snowshoes!! What a time saver!!

[markcasper]

accuweather is usually way way off. They have bitterly cold being 11 above....thats something i have never seen before. The bitterly cold english never used to come out til it reached below zero.

[Rhino]

Forecast i am going by are just the local 7 day outlook forecast from wsaw waow and wjfw wausau and rhinelander t.v. All 3 have the same cool down this week but i see wsaw took the below 0 temps off the chart and put single digits for lows. still good to see winter is comeing back to us for awhile. Cleaned out syrup shack this morning so r.o can be delivered and set into room this week. Went back into the woods to look at the test tap i put out earlier in the week. Not a single drop, i think it's because we have a good amount of snow still up here.

[jmayerl]

The snow definatly will keep you guys up north cooler. The fields here are brown and the woods has 1-3 inches in it. If Jim gets my pans done soon I will tap in as soon as this coming cold spell ends. Test tap over flowed today and half my trees are budding out.

[jfroe939]

5279
C'mon, Mayerl... resist the urge! Early bird gets the worm. Early tapper gets the dry hole in April! I don't know about your trees budding out already. I mean maybe, but I'd have to think that it'll take a little more than a couple nice days to bring buds out. If so, that's not a great thing obviously. BUT, that being said, let the 7 day forecast be your friend at the end of Februrary. I do think there's some nervous folks that have a smidge of worry about being late to the party. I would LOVE to see some cold weather settle in and sink a little frost into the ground further than it is. I guess when you have 500 year floods occurring twice in 5 years in some parts of the country, that maybe you'll see some weather phenomena affecting the trees, too. Some years are late and some are earlier. Don't take my razzing to heart. DO tell us how things are progressing if you decide to tap. I'll let you be the canary in the coal mine. Worst case is someone gets to make fun of ya. Best case is you're smack-on and everyone else is late to the party. JF

[driske]

When to tap?? Good Lord, we go through this every spring. Many factors to consider.
Rhino, Where did you end up sourcing your RO?
I'm enjoying this warm, dry winter. Probably we'll start drilling some holes around Feb 21-22 with hopes to be done March 3. 1,000 a day is a manageable work load for our little crew. My 60YO legs won't miss the snowshoes.....but a lot can happen between now and then.

[Rhino]

Hi Doug, After looking at all other options for a r.o I went with membrane process and controls. This Thursday at 10:00 is their in house demo/learning how to run it at the factory. Looking forward to cooking concentrate. Our wash weekend for the evap. and tanks will be around the time when you start tapping, (i feel like we are behind now!!)

[jmayerl]

WLUK 11 is running a story right now about making syrup. 1000 preserve in Kaukauna is cooking away.

[jmayerl]

Test taps ran alittle bit today. Hope this cold settles in for awhile, still waiting for the new pans..........................

[jmayerl]

Thankfully we got 3 inches of fluffy snow yesterday. Hope this cold spell last for a few weeks, since we really won't be able to tap til march 1st by the looks of things.

[jmayerl]

This will go down as a very strange year. Today is the last day with a low temp under 40 degrees, so it looks like it will be over sat or maybe Sunday. Guess this was the wrong year to spend a lot of money and expand to triple our taps.

[C.Wilcox]

I'll second the vote for this being a strange year. I tapped 2 weeks early just on a hunch that if I didn't I might not see anything and I am sure glad I did. Our forecast also looks bad for the rest of March. I'm only at about 75% of my usual production in a given year, but should be at about double based on the number of taps and trees. At this point I'm pretty glad I got what I did.

[Jeff E]

This will be interesting to see what happens with all the different approaches to the seaon.
When it is all said and done we should do a wisconsin survey of tapping date, type of tapping (new taps, Check Valves, old clean metal taps, vacuum, etc), production per tap.
We could learn a lot based on all the variations we are doing.

The hard part will be for us optimists to be honest. Like-"I blew it, I tapped to early and my system sucks" instead of "the trees just didnt perform"

I finished tapping on the 5th, it takes me a week, so here I sit waiting for the warm up this weekend. I will post my experiences as the season goes on.
I have 3/4 of my taps with Check valves, the other 1/4 is health spouts with new adaptors. All on Vacuum.
I am buying sap. Some guys tapped in late Feb, some will be tapping this weekend. So personally, I should get some good info on what works and what didnt with this wierd spring.

[sbingham]

I tapped last Thursday evening and Friday morning {1st & 2nd} north of Tony.
All of mine are bags and pails - no vacuum.
The "forecast" at the time looked good for this week, of course it changed, hopefully it will change again for next week.
Let's keep our fingers crossed.

[Rhino]

Or Jeff, people might be like us and say,"boy did we screw up by not tapping in before that warm spell and missed a great week of sap runs". Today I am just doing syrup related odds and ends and thinking about our decision to hold off. I heard from a guy in Waupaca that he seen a extended extended forecast and Monday (19th) and Tuesday (20th) they might hit 70 degrees down there. C-mon now, that sure would be the kiss of death for us syrup producers. Jeff you have a great idea about getting all this info together and compareing it. The way the weather is going through these weather extremes it may be helpful down the road.

[markcasper]

Jeff, I was reading your posts the last week and thought "gee, maybe I should have some of Jeffs eternal optimism." I am not throwing in the towel just yet....my gut tells me it will get really cold the end of March and into April, the question is whether it will be buddy or not. It is nothing short of bizarre to go form 60 degrees one day, to too cold the next two days for sap to run, back to 60's the next day.

Its too late for me, I already started tapping my one vacuum woods after some thought. I have not got them done yet, but will finish there today. The check valves are going to be put to the maximum test this year. The check valves told me to tap, that was 100% of my decision to do those.The bags are absolutley on hold as far as tapping goes. I phoned one of my sap providers with all bags and told them last Tuesday to just wait until further notice. As I have mentioned before, I have seen weather like this during the middle of March before, though this appears to be a bit more of duration and on the extreme end, then along the 20th or 22nd, the pattern changes for the better for a few weeks, just my thoughts.This could be a blessing in disguise as far as prices go. I know the packers are sitting on a pile of syrup and a barrel buster year would most likely end up in prices diminishing greatly.

[mike z]

I just checked some neighbor bags (Tony Wi) they've been up all week - at most, 3". The sugars were starting to drip. I'm thinking hard about tapping some right now, and the rest tomorrow morning. 200 buckets total. I figure if this is the end, I might ave. 1 gal./bucket. 5 gal of syrup may get our family through the year. Can't stand the thought of having to buy syrup, and with this year, around here it will be very expensive.