Sap Tsunami has arrived in southern Indiana!!

[kiteflyingeek]

Someone noted that due to the extreme cold, we would have a sap tsunami when it finally warms up. Well it has arrived here in very south-western Indiana. I have 65 taps out this year (so far) and I just collected 130 gallons of sap.

This is not the first run by any means -- I have about 7 gallons of syrup in the freezer (waiting to work out kinks in my homemade water jacketed bottler). But this is a big run as we go into some days with high 60s forecast.

Well, I wanted to share that the Sap Tsunami arrived here. May it arrive at your place soon!

--andrew

[MapleLady]

A sap tsunami is good news! Looks like you are going to be very busy! :D

[happy thoughts]

Thanks for the heads up!! I'm getting out the floaties. Good luck keeping up Andrew. Hoping we are all very busy soon :)

[gibsonman]

Andrew
we have been collecting and boiling the last two days. So for from our 24 taps we got 80 gallons this week and they are still running hard. Usually after the pancake breakfast we stop boiling but this year we figured why not make what we can.

[sawyerkirk]

I have way more sap than I can deal with. I got 325 gallons on 75 taps over the past 2 days and. I haven't been out yet today. 1/3 of my buckets had fallen off the tree from being to heavy. I have a logging job that I have to get done ASAP and it is taking precedence over syrup. Yesterday before lunch I was cussing and fussing about carrying buckets of sap through the woods thinking "I won't do this next year." Little bit later my daughter had a kitchen table full of teenage girls just beside themselves about how good my syrup was. It made some of the fussing and cussing a little more bearable I do have to boast, It is the best syrup I have ever made

[Indiana-Jones]

Today is going to be our first boil of 2014. We have had 50 taps on tubing running on-off for one week and 75 bags and buckets tapped since Wednesday. I'm hoping that we have 300 gallons of sap to start off this morning.

Not the run that sawerkirk has had, I'm about 60 miles north. A few trees have been filling the buckets and some not much at all.
They are calling for 45 and sunny today, maybe we will get the sleepers woke up.

Chris

[southernharmony]

Running decently here in SE Indiana - getting about 1 gallon per tap, per day. Planning on boiling most of this coming week.

Syrup is a beautiful amber color. Everything I made last year was dark - this is much lighter in comparison.

SH

[sawyerkirk]

Everything was dripping pretty steady today. 75 taps made 80 gallons between 6am and 6pm. Just stuck it in the tank with the rest. I have got to get cooking. What I have made so far this year is a beautiful light gold.

[Indiana-Jones]

We have a good run in the last 24 hour, it has slowed now. My best guess is 250 gallons from 125 taps. Some really nice sap.

Yesterday we turned about the same amount of sap into about 5 gallons of some very light syrup. My son is our "Steam Engineer", I had to get the hydrometer out and prove to him that the thermometer was right. He didn't think that the syrup was brown enough to draw off at +7.

Hoping for a couple more weeks of temperature swings before spring.

Chris

[lpakiz]

Hey Chris,
Very happy to hear that things are going so good for you. And a bit jealous. Any chance you have a pic or two of the tubing in your ravines? What are you collecting in down there, and what are you using to pump up to the top?

[Indiana-Jones]

Hi Larry, one heck of a winter, one for the record books for sure. I'm not convinced that things are going as good down here as they appear. I'm afraid that we might have a short season, but Mother Nature only knows for sure.

There are some pictures on the PhotoBucket, they are hiding under a tab "Syruping 2011". There is a sub-tab 2013. They are not too descriptive. I have some I-Pad video that I have to upload someday.

There is a picture of a pump in a pink foam insulated box. That is a 1/2 HP electric pump that I got at Harbor Freight. It works OK for now, it is on it's second season, paid for the extra lifetime warranty. When she burns out go and get a new one.

We collect into a 300 gallon stock tank and pump up to a 1000 gallon poly tank. I insulate the tanks with foam board top and bottom and rapped the sides with that silver bubble rap, then tarp them.

Good luck up north.

Chris

[Indiana-Jones]

It has been about as good of a week here as a guy could ask for. A good run last Monday-Tuesday, cold snap Wednesday, down to low teens. Then back up to 60 today. I think that I have better than 500 gallons in the sap tanks.

It is to be warm and sunny tomorrow for a boiling day and back to snow and cold Sunday. If Mother Nature would please repeat this cycle about three more times I would quit my complaining.

Yesterday the frost in the ground and the ice on the pond let go about at the same time. This evening I didn't slip and fall once while collecting.

It is kind of nice how sugaring gets you out doors, thinking about and tuning to nature.

Good Luck!

[lpakiz]

OK Chris, I found the pics. Seems like you got the hang of the tubing thing. Pun intended. Bet that saves some time and effort on those steep slopes. Glad to hear that the season at least started well for you guys.
Up here, not a drop yet. No sap weather yet, to speak of. I did put in about 80 taps, 120 more to go, but with the weather forecast, still plenty of time, and nothing missed yet.
Snow is down a lot-usually not over the knee, but a crust on top that you have to smash down with your foot before you move forward. Slow going, sure glad I don't have to carry pails thru this.
Good luck on the rest of your season!

[Indiana-Jones]

Well the sap is still flowing here in Terre Haute. Tonight collected about 150 gallons from 72 bags & buckets. The sap is still crisp and clear, bugs are not bad. The hard maples show no sign of waking up. I have saw a few soft maples in town looking to bud. There is just not any real signs of spring, no peepers, no thunder storms. The mud is starting to dry out.The weather man may give us another week of good temps.

This last weekend we ran 585 gallons of sap through our 2X5. We have three refrigerators full of syrup waiting to be bottled.

I'm thinking that we are going to make average or better for the year, I have hopes that everyone up north will have a good year also.

Chris

[TonyL]

Well the sap is still flowing here in Terre Haute. Tonight collected about 150 gallons from 72 bags & buckets. The sap is still crisp and clear, bugs are not bad. The hard maples show no sign of waking up. I have saw a few soft maples in town looking to bud. There is just not any real signs of spring, no peepers, no thunder storms. The mud is starting to dry out.The weather man may give us another week of good temps.

This last weekend we ran 585 gallons of sap through our 2X5. We have three refrigerators full of syrup waiting to be bottled.

I'm thinking that we are going to make average or better for the year, I have hopes that everyone up north will have a good year also.

Chris

Amazing the difference between our locations. I am approx 35 miles east of you, and while I am finished with syrup for the season, I started getting cloudy, yellowish sap late last week, the hard and soft maples are trying to bud out, and the peepers in our ponds are screaming like crazy.

[Indiana-Jones]

Amazing the difference between our locations. I am approx 35 miles east of you, and while I am finished with syrup for the season, I started getting cloudy, yellowish sap late last week, the hard and soft maples are trying to bud out, and the peepers in our ponds are screaming like crazy.

Hi Tony,
It sounds like a big difference for such a short distance. We are very near the state line with Ill. West of us is a flat straight shot to the prairie. There was several times this year the we had the lowest temp in the lower 48.

Maybe you are protected a bit by the hills and hollows there south of Spencer. Are you on a south facing slope?

You are so close maybe you could come over and visit. There are not a whole lot of sugar makers in these parts, we need to stick together. No pun intended.

Chris

[red maples]

send some to New Hampshire please!!!

[TonyL]

Chris, you're dead on about the location.......all hills and hollers, and I tapped the trees on the south facing slopes trying to get an early start.

Thanks for the invite! I'm new to this and always ready to learn a thing or two. If time permits before you're finished, I would enjoy seeing your operation. Hope you have a great season!

[jbhummer2]

Well it has started to run up in northern Indiana. I have 10 taps and yesterday i got 25 gallons. I know i missed some sense the buckets were all overflowing. I have two taps going into each 5 gallon bucket.

[DougM]

We had a great day yesterday, too. 445 gallons of clear sap collected in the morning, 13 gallons of finished syrup in the finisher and around 4 more gallons we need to check density and finish but it's close. If we don't have to boil it too much to finish our sap was around 3% yesterday.
We didn't collect in the afternoon, most of the bags were only about 1/3 full so we left it out there as a counterweight to the 30 mph winds we were having. It was blowing the steam back into the hood yesterday.
With the overnight freeze we should have another good run of sap today. No freeze in the forecast until Monday, but next week looks good, too - we hope.
So far we haven't seen any buds, either, just a whole lot of mud.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Doug,

Great to see you on here. What is season totals so far?

[DougM]

Hey Brandon,
So far about 30 gallons. We really hadn't had a good day of sap before Tuesday/Wednesday, so we'd only done 6.75 one day, and 7 another.
We held off tapping until it started looking like a thaw, then it still froze for a couple of weeks & we just haven't had the flows we usually get. Some trees that we have tapped in the past haven't run at all. Yesterday we only got 150 gallons, and most days have been like that. It didn't freeze last night and won't tonight, so it doesn't look good for getting anything today to boil tomorrow, but the forecast for next week looks good.
On the plus side, I have to say that adding a filter press this year was a huge benefit. Even though we've only used it a couple of times so far and it's a big investment, not having to deal with pre-filters, filters and so much cleanup has been great.

How about yourself?

[bowhunter]

I had about the same flow here this week, but overall it looks like you're doing a little better than I am. I had one 36 hour period where I got 210 gallons on 108 taps, but I've only made about 16 gallons of syrup on 108 so far. Next week looks fair, but I think that's will be the end of the season for me.

[DougM]

You're only about 30 miles north of us, so we're probably on the same time line. Before this year the latest we'd ever boiled was March 15, hopefully next week will help make up for lost time.
We're down to 170 taps due to some trees not running, but we've averaged around 70 gallons the last few years and it's going to be hard to get there.