I'm out.

[harrison6jd]

am all done here and will clean everything an and clean lines this weekend. I hope everyone got to make at least a little syrup. have a great year. its time to plan improvements.

[RIFoster]

I'll probably pull tomorrow or Sunday, I have 10 gal in buckets to boil, and might get 1 more 5 gal bucket when this is over. Hopefully the heat tomorrow won't spoil it.

This year was a waste of time and money, I ran a few hundred feet of line, spending much more time than recovering buckets would have taken.

[harrison6jd]

I hear the frustration in your post. but it will pay off. I have been on tubing for a few years now and I think I have been spoiled. a neighbor let me collect his 60 buckets a few time and I forgot the time and work it took to use buckets. I am appreciative for the sap but was a lot more work than I am used to. I used to collect 100 buckets in a couple of hours and now its 6 minutes.

[RIFoster]

I spent $300 this year in parts and propane, and ended up with 5 pts. of syrup. There will be no next year.

[harrison6jd]

YIKES! that is expensive syrup.
let me know if you want to sell some stuff and maybe I can help offset some of the cost.

thanks dave

[harrison6jd]

people wonder why real syrup is so expensive..............


I spent $300 this year in parts and propane, and ended up with 5 pts. of syrup. There will be no next year.

[thecabinguy]

Yeah, this was a tough year. Seems like we only got a couple of good sap runs here in RI. I only got to collect sap twice. The entire process was complicated by the deep snow. I put in much more work this year than usual. It was nearly impossible to get my quad through the trails with all the snow and had to use snowshoes to tap initially. I was reduced to only 2 marathon boils this year. Oh well, if it wasn't for bad seasons, we wouldn't know what a good season was.
The syrup tastes extra good this year.

[foursapssyrup]

we had a great year this year. made some improvements, the biggest being a pump line from the woods direct to our head tank. what a difference in collection time!! we tapped in snowshoes and many of our bucket trees were not tapped at all this year because it would be to difficult to collect them. some of our tubing taps were 8+ ft in the air after the snow melted!

we made more syrup in 4 weeks this year than we did in 7 weeks last year! sugar content was high (4% for the first few collections) and our last boil was at 2%. i believe that is due to the fact we didn't have a january thaw this year so the trees kept their sugars.