The Mangy Moose is hangin' on

[GramaCindy]

Well, after tapping my 87 taps just 11 days later, I had to pull them. The reds are all budded out with this crazy weather. I did manage to collect 9.5 LOUSY gallons of questionable sap. It's in the freezer for now. Yesterday I got permission to tap a neighbor's Sugar Maples! No buds, Dripping like crazy. Most of the bags (74) had a good 2-3" of sap in them within a few hours. I will go collect and cook it off today, and hopefully, the weather forecast calls for some cooler weather with a possible freeze tonight and maybe Wed. Keeping my fingers crossed. Still haven't boiled in the new sugar shack and that hurts.

[WI Sugarpop]

I hope you're able to collect a lot of sap the next couple of days so that you can have a good boil in your new sugar shack. We didn't have the best year but we did get 31 gal. of syrup from 196 taps and pulled in 1300 gal. of sap all in about 5 days. We lost about 4 gal of syrup because the sweet in the evap. turned sour. It was so warm here and I didn't get the sweet finished soon enough. We have asparagus 2" high already. What a weird year. We too built a new sugar shack and used our new evap. for the first time. We had a great time. We boiled outside for 10 or 12 years. Good luck.

[wilfredjr]

You tempt me to break out the gear again, but it's no go here: Sugars are in leaf high up.
Boiled that maple beer yesterday, and 5 gallons are in the fermenter; 3 gallons of sap left for the next batch, too.
Good luck with the new shack.

[GramaCindy]

Sap update. 13 gallons the first day, 24 gallons the second, 26 gallons on the third. Yesterday, not much, left it there, freezing temps last night, High today in the 50-60's. Keeping my fingers crossed. Hoping to do our first boil in the shack on Saturday.

[Brandy Brook Maple Farm]

Good luck to you, GramaCindy! I hope you get some wonderful syrup in your new sugarshack!!!!!

Joy

[Vermont Creation Hardwood]

Sugar buds are plump, but not open. The temps are right for sap to flow. But it wasn't flowing.

So I tapped two sugars that I hadn't before to see what new taps would do. They started running really well, sap is clear, sugar at 2%. But the rest of my lines weren't running.

So I got an 11/32 bit, 1/32 larger than the 5/16 I bored with originally. I pulled taps and rebored. The holes didn't look bad but weren't dripping. Rebored they immediately started running. I went down all my lines reboring. Now the sap is running.

I got close to 10 gallons from those three new taps in one day. I went around to my collection barrels at the ends of my lines and dumped them as soon as they had enough so the lines were flushed with new sap. New sap is now gathering.

Tonight the forecast low is 25, the high tomorrow 43 and sunny, low tomorrow night 24, high on Saturday 48 and sunny, low Saturday night 30 and high Sunday 50. I am so hoping for a couple good runs.

Maybe the season isn't done yet.

[GramaCindy]

Today's collection another 24 gallons, the high was only about 47* and it was cloudy. I can't wait for a sunny day!!!!! Thanks everyone for the nice posts.

[GramaCindy]

Sap update………Did our first boil on Saturday. Started up evaporator at 6am and did a very small drawoff at 8:30am! I couldn't believe it. Boiled aprox 97 gallons in about 8-9hours. Drew off a total of just over 2 gallons. Finished it up on Sunday, 29 8oz bottles! Still collecting, low yesterday of 21*, low this morning of 27*. I will collect later today and do the last boil. Pulling taps, trees are starting to bud. I figured out my sap to syrup ratio was 52 to 1! I don't even care….it was just great to actually do a boil.