Should I be tapping

[Big Stoney]

We have about 300 taps on natural vacuum. We are located in Greene,NY. The current weather forecast for Sunday through Wednesday has highs in the upper 30's to low 40's. Should we be tapping now to see what we get or is it too early and tapping now will hurt us in the long run?

[Urban Sugarmaker]

I emailed the guy that runs the Uihlein Sugar Maple Research & Extension Field Station in Lake Placid, NY about this. His response was to tap whenever you are ready and the weather is conducive to sap flow. He also said it wouldn't hurt anything if things froze up for a while after you tap, and earlier is probably better this year with El nino. I personally don't think bacterial contamination followed by the "drying up" of the taphole is as much of an issue if you get two weeks or more of below freezing weather. It seems like most people in with tubing in NY are tapping right now.

Weather.com just put out a long-term forecast for above average temps over the next three months. Weather people are good at being wrong, but I went ahead and put half my taps in yesterday as an experiment. So far I have 25 gallons from 50 taps.

[wnybassman]

I emailed the guy that runs the Uihlein Sugar Maple Research & Extension Field Station in Lake Placid, NY about this. His response was to tap whenever you are ready and the weather is conducive to sap flow. He also said it wouldn't hurt anything if things froze up for a while after you tap, and earlier is probably better this year with El nino. I personally don't think bacterial contamination followed by the "drying up" of the taphole is as much of an issue if you get two weeks or more of below freezing weather. It seems like most people in with tubing in NY are tapping right now.

Weather.com just put out a long-term forecast for above average temps over the next three months. Weather people are good at being wrong, but I went ahead and put half my taps in yesterday as an experiment. So far I have 25 gallons from 50 taps.

Thanks, I was all set to wait for a few weeks...........................then I read this. Now I am just as undecided as I was a couple days ago. lol

[Urban Sugarmaker]

Thanks, I was all set to wait for a few weeks...........................then I read this. Now I am just as undecided as I was a couple days ago. lol

I hear ya. I don't mind being the guinea pig with this. So far I got about 25 gallons from 50 buckets. This was after a fairly long freeze so I didn't expect more than that. I am thinking this weekend will be better. After that, who knows? It could be a while. By the way, the sap was at 2%.