Tapping by the calender

[markct]

I see a local nature center has hung there buckets already. They sceduled the date long ahead but it seems a little peek at the forecast might have helped change plans! Guess there is no harm in the buckets hanging there for a few weeks with lows around zero!

[Sugarmaker]

No harm other than chasing them if there is a wind storm.
Calendar tapping doesn't happen hear. I would call it forecast tapping. We would like to see a full week of good warming trends before we tap. I must say, if we go past mid February we do get a little more antsy.
If you find them boiling in these temps let us know whats going on:)
Regards,
Chris

[markct]

Yea i always go by forecast too. Few years ago i tapped last week of jan and it was perfect and dried up by late feb. I think that year they tapped by the usual time of 2nd week of feb and had a bad year so figured they would move up the date for future

[sr73087]

Can it hurt to tap too soon prior to a sap run? Meaning if I am looking at the long range forecast and see that 10 days from now we will finally have a day above freezing and into the 40s, is it better to tap right before the sap run or could I tap now since the temps will be very low until the run? I don't mean to hijack the topic but it is sort of related.

[markct]

It doesn't realy hurt anything to tap ahead if the weather will be cold little happens as far as healing in the taphole, altho some does thus your tapholes will dry up sooner at the end of season. Large operations start tapping far ahead, 3 or 4 weeks, but they are usualy using tubing and replacable taps so that is far better in that aspect than bucket taps.

[maple flats]

I always tapped by the forecast in years past, but this year I tapped by the calendar. I did because my 3 man work force was returning to college on 1/21 and if I waited for the right forecast I'd have a hard if not impossible time getting them all tapped with my other work schedule. However, I'm on vacuum and CV2's. Last year I used all CV1's and from tapping to tap pull I was 9-10 weeks, sap still flowed as I pulled the taps in over 95% of the holes. I just wasn't interested in making buddy syrup, I had to move on to my spring chores.