Price for Sap

[TexTheDog]

I have a friend who wants to bring sap to me to boil...not sure what arrangement is fair as he wants syrup. I know providing him syrup at 40:1 is a straight rip off for me (I have the shack, evaporator, split wood etc. etc.)...what are other producers doing?

THanks!

[wiam]

Here in northeast VT going rate is 50% of the syrup made from the sap. This does not mean sap is kept separate.
Northwest VT seams to be the sap seller gets a higher %.

[maple flats]

I give 50%. Take sap sugar %, calc syrup made and they get half. If you don't have an RO this might be too high for you to pay because your time must be factored in. Others might pay more or many pay less. For some I pay cash using the rate table that is printed in the Maple Digest each Jan. For that I use 50% rate.

[spud]

I'm not saying anything.:)

Spud

[SeanD]

Fifty percent sounds really high.

On the one hand I think a sap agreement is "fairer" than using a tap count because it allows for swings in up years and down years, better trees vs. duds, etc. On the other hand, as you think about everything you do all year to make a gallon of maple syrup, you realize that getting the sap from the bush to the pan is only a portion of it - a very important portion, but not 50% of the process.

It's hard to quantify such a labor-intensive hobby/job. When you are actually doing the boiling, it's easy to forget the stuff you have been doing for the last year like cutting wood, splitting wood, stacking wood, scrubbing buckets, cleaning taps, cleaning filters, bottling, spending money on taps, tubing, fittings, building a sugar house, buying an evaporator, making trips to Bascom's, scouting woods, making drops, cleaning pans, cleaning the sugarhouse again, ... the list goes on and on. All of these things take hours upon hours that no one really sees. The typical person just sees you turn a valve and syrup comes out.

I boil at about 20 gph on a good day. If I got 86 gallons of 2% sap from someone, that means I'd be firing the evaporator for two hours on top of everything I'd been doing for the last year before I got any syrup. Then after four hours, one gallon would go out the door, while I get to keep the one.

So, what's a better agreement? I don't know. I stick with a tap count - 1 qt. per 25 taps when I do all the collecting on someone's property. That's a ratio I gleaned off of this site. I'm not in maple country, to there is no area standard. For the one person who delivered sap for me for the first time last year, I just doubled that rate. I'm not around during the day to test the sap and I provided all the taps and buckets. I wish I could say I had hard math to help me make that decision. It's something I wrestled with.

Sean

[spud]

I'm still not saying anything but it hurts real bad.:)

Spud

[rchase]

there is a good article on either cornells web site or uvm proctors site about sap prices.

[jmayerl]

Here's the real deal. This question gets asked about four times per year and each time there are 50 different answers. It ranges the the high tech guys who have lots of money to spend, who pay 50% of bulk; to the guy that gets all his buddy's sap from 500 trees for a gallon of syrup.
Do what you feel is fair. I have made a few people happy by buying sap brought to me for $.13/gallon/point, and my two current leases are 1 quart for ever 25 trees I tap.

[Randy Brutkoski]

Yes, we all know you get over paid for your sap, spud. I pay out just shy of 50% at bulk price.