Tapped in Victor

[backyardsugarer]

Got out 1,000 taps today. I am exhausted. We may get a small run tomorrow and Wed./Thur. RO is rinsed and ready to go.

Cold for the weekend and then some good long range temps. I hope it holds, if not the bacteria won't multiply while it's cold.

All new seasonal spouts should help. Good luck to everyone .

Chris

[backyardsugarer]

Collected 975 gallons of sap. Gravity did not run too much but everything on vac produced just over 1 gallon of sap per tap.

Fired up the new lapierre turbo 120 and concentrated to 9% on one pass. Boiled from 6 to 9.30. Sugared the pans and drew off 4 gallons of real light stuff. Let the ro finish concentrating and went to bed. Got 75 gallons of 9% to boil today. Rinsed the membranes and I am ready to go again

Sap started running around 11. Should have 2 good days before a cold snap.

[lyford]

This may be a stupid ?, but being a new guy I'll ask, what do you guys mean when you say you sugared or sweetened the pan. Btw, tapped for the first time ever on 2/9 and I've collected 16 gals from 12 taps so far, gonna boil it tomorrow, I'll let you know how it goes. All reds, haven't checked sugar percent

[psparr]

With a decent sized evaporator it takes a good bit of sap to just fill it. Then say on a 2x6 you need to boil about 100 gallons of sap off just to get to the point where you can start drawing off syrup. Once your at that point, your pans are "sweetened".

[lyford]

Psparr thanks for the explanation, got it

[backyardsugarer]

Exaclt. The first couple of hour you boil to build up the sugar. Then you start to draw off on a regular basis. Collected another 600 gallons yesturday. Same thing good yield on vac gravity not doing much yet.

Should have a huge run through the night. Then 4 to 5 days of cold and another thaw.

Chris

[lyford]

My first boil ever today, homemade block arch with two steam table pans, 19 gal turned into 3.5 pints, all red maples, had a blast!

[bowtie]

what a difference 70 miles and vac must make. here in allegany county i have about 150 of my 300 taps in and have only collected about 35 g of sap, and 15 of that has come from 9 "yard" taps. i collected today and got about 20 gallons from about 135-140 taps. i did throw some ice out but still very slow. my taps are buckets and i have alot of reds that do not run good on gravity, i'm told that if i vac them they will produce quite alot more, also the taps i have out are on top of a hill, i have not tapped any of the trees lower on the hill, yet, probably next mon-tuesday. hopefully it will be "normal" year and my hill taps will run later in the year, as opposed to last year when i had only about 4-5 good runs before "hot" weather shut them down.

[JSEDLAK]

what a difference 70 miles and vac must make. here in allegany county i have about 150 of my 300 taps in and have only collected about 35 g of sap, and 15 of that has come from 9 "yard" taps. i collected today and got about 20 gallons from about 135-140 taps. i did throw some ice out but still very slow. my taps are buckets and i have alot of reds that do not run good on gravity, i'm told that if i vac them they will produce quite alot more, also the taps i have out are on top of a hill, i have not tapped any of the trees lower on the hill, yet, probably next mon-tuesday. hopefully it will be "normal" year and my hill taps will run later in the year, as opposed to last year when i had only about 4-5 good runs before "hot" weather shut them down.

I noticed you mention a hill. Do you see a difference in taps on hills vs flats? I have about 60 taps out on a hill and have been pulling about 30 gallons a day from them. Another 20 on a flat that produce, but not as much. I also notice on the hill that there are groups of trees that will give me 1 gallon a day while others give a quart. I try to make sense of it but can't.

[LukeDawg11]

lyford -- glad you enjoyed it!! That's what it's all about. If it's not fun, you're not doing it right. Remember that for us smaller producers, it's a hobby with a sweet reward!

[backyardsugarer]

Vac makes all the difference. My gravity hardly ran at all. The 2 areas I have vac and run about 23 inches ran hard.