Tapping Central Ohio

[bowhunter]

Just put in 135 taps on Friday. Had my best run in a long time on Friday and Saturday. Collected about 250 gallons of sap on Saturday and Sunday. Did my first boil on Monday. RO worked great. I added a blower to my 1/2 pint this year and it really increased the boil rate and kept it consistent between wood charging. It was very helpful at the end of the day as I was able to boil vigorously with just coals. Was able to cool the evaporator while I rinsed out the RO. I have about 170 gallons of sap from yesterday and today. Will boil again tomorrow. It looks like Friday and Saturday are going to be excellent and then too warm for about a week. In any case off to the best year ever for me.

[buckeye gold]

I hope it holds for you. I saw my sap ( southern Ohio) start to cloud a couple days ago. I am pulling taps today because I have to leave for a week and figure everything will be over by the time I get back. All those 60 degree days really hurt. I had some really big runs, but more down days due to warm and windy. I doubt I would make a lot more syrup even if I could stay with it.

[bowhunter]

It looks like it may be over here. Nothing seemed right after the 8 straight days of 60's in February. The last two runs have been ok for volume, but the sugar content has been extremely low. I boiled 320 gallons of sap this week and only got 5.25 gallons of syrup...that's a little over 1.4% sugar. We typically have been 1.8 to 2.0% in years past. There's only one more run predicted for the remainder of March and it's not anticipated for another 8 days or so. I'll evaluate next week, but I think I'm all but finished. This is by far the worst yield per tap for the 5 years I've been making syrup here.