West Sumner Sugar House 2016

[West Sumner Sugar]

Well after a very odd winter of warm, below zero, snow rain etc the maple season is finally here. It really feels like we are getting a late start but I think that's just due to the weather. Things for us should be pretty standard this season. No big changes beside adding more taps & tubing. We converted a small bucket run in Auburn to tubing a few weeks ago which will make things easier to collect. We added 50 new taps in Lewiston as well. As of right now we are 90% tapped. Just a handful of buckets to get out there. Should have our first boil this weekend to get the pans sweetened then its game on! Let hope Mother Nature has a sweet tooth this year and gives us a nice long season! Have fun everyone!

[boondocker]

Yes it has been a strange winter to say the least, I tapped in just over a week ago and had some ok runs last week and over the weekend. I sweetened the pans today and made 5 gal. I will boil the rest of it tomorrow morning and fire up the finisher and bottler. Sugar content was a bit low but it is early and I'm not complaining. Good luck with the season and let's hope the weather holds out.

[West Sumner Sugar]

We got off to what felt like a very slow start. Seems like it took well over 200+ gallons of sap to sweeten the pans and get our first pull but we got there. We found our what we thought was dry wood turned out to not be. We rigged up a blower fan to raise the heat and also dug back in the wood pile and got into some nice dry wood.

Thanks to our hard working crew we pulled off a 24 hour boil this weekend, got all our sap through the evaporator as well as over 200 gallons of solid ice. Pulled out of the sugar house tonight with just over 16 gallons all bottled up and ready to sell. If the temps fall below freezing at night we should get some decent runs this week and hopefully another strong weekend of syrup making next week. 16 gallons puts us just over 25% of our annual goal. Hopefully the sap gods are with us for the coming weeks.
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[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Congrats on getting the season started. We have 375 on gravity in Peru and haven't got more than 50 gallons of sap yet.

[West Sumner Sugar]

Despite a very warm week, we were able to pull out another 14 gallons of syrup this weekend putting us at 29 gallons for the season. We did add a draft blower which really helped make some heat and increase boil rates. We were pulling syrup just about every hour on the hour for a while. Looks like the end of this week we will get back into some favorable temperatures for some sap production.

We will be hosting our annual Maple Sunday on March 20th where our friends and family come up to see how we spend much of our time.

Mud season is most definitely here. I was a little concerned when I was pulling into the sugar house on Friday night with about 2200lbs of sap in the bed of my truck. By yesterday when we left it was getting pretty soupy out there.

[Mitchman]

Hey MaineBacksWoodsSyrup, Are you getting any action as of late ??

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Not bad but not blockbuster. Made 5 gallons of syrup so far and I'm boiling again tomorrow. The 5300 tap operation we help with is rocking and rolling. We made 175 gallons up there Saturday. Not sure where they are at but right around 400 gallons syrup I think.

[Mitchman]

Well, glad your getting a pc. of the pie, no matter what size the slice !!!!

[abbott]

We will be hosting our annual Maple Sunday on March 20th where our friends and family come up to see how we spend much of our time.

Mud season is most definitely here. I was a little concerned when I was pulling into the sugar house on Friday night with about 2200lbs of sap in the bed of my truck. By yesterday when we left it was getting pretty soupy out there.

Are you guys boiling today or saving it all for tomorrow? I was thinking of popping in. At least there won't be much of a mud problem this weekend.

[West Sumner Sugar]

Ah sorry I didn't catch this sooner. We boiled a little bit last night and finished off 150 gallons today. Looks like another good week if we can hold onto the cold. Might turn out to be one of our best seasons...but...we are just about out of wood.

[abbott]

We were over in your neck of the woods for a birthday party and we thought about stopping in on Sat. But between naptime and suppertime there wasn't really enough time anyway. If I can get away I might stop in some other time.

[West Sumner Sugar]

Sounds good. We are typically there on Sunday's. Saturday this week due to the holiday.

[West Sumner Sugar]

For as crazy of a weather year it has been, the sap has really been on our side. We are on tap for a record year at this point if we can get 1-2 more boils out of it. We are currently just over 40 gallons of syrup all bottled up and seem to be selling it just as fast. We have completely burned through all of our wood supply and are now burning hardwood pallets. Hey...you gotta do what you gotta do right!

Plastic
1 – ½ Gallon - .5gal
103 Quarts – 25.75gal
61 Pints – 7.625gal
38 ½ Pints – 2.375gal

Glass
22 - 12oz = 2.0625gal
15 – 200mL = .793 gal
25 – 250 mL = 1.651gal
2 - 100 cL =.53 gal

Total: 41.2865 (7.692gal increase from last week)