Who's still tapping?

[mickeydafinn]

My trees still don't have buds yet. Everything is froze solid, but I still seem to be producing sap. The weather looks good for the next week!

[dcast99]

I'm still tapped. Hoping to get some more sap after this cold snap. Looks like the next run should start on friday. The reds have all popped but I only have sugars. The sugar's buds are still small and tight, even on my field edge trees. Sap from the last boil on the 9th was still good but it did seem to be low in sugar. Hopefully this week long cold snap will sweeten up the trees. After tomorrows storm I'll have to see what I need to do to acces the property. Just plow the road or have my buddy bring up his tractor mounted snow blower.

[ash10383]

We still have taps out. Looking really good for 5 days starting Thurs. Talking it over about adding some more taps.

[wmick]

My trees still don't have buds yet. Everything is froze solid, but I still seem to be producing sap. The weather looks good for the next week!

Got an email this morning from a supplier in New Jersey, forecasting 18"-24" of snow for tomorrow. :o
Hope you didn't put your snowshoes away yet.....

[sugarwoodacres]

You should get sap running then maybe tomorrow with forecast of 37 high temp. I was thinking of retapping the sugars to get another run or 2.

[5050racing]

Was in Florida for a week did anybody start back up with any good sap,I still have not removed lines n taps was the sap any good from the sugars?

[mickeydafinn]

Seems to be running good today! As for the quality of the sap we'll know tomorrow.

[5050racing]

Take a small pot n boil it if it smells funny bad you will know.

[5050racing]

Micky how did the sap turn out this last tun?

[mickeydafinn]

Turned out just fine boiled 20 yesterday and finished last night. I should be finishing another 20 today. I got about half of the second batch done last night and Ran out of time. No idea where that message I just posted came from!

[dcast99]

Brought back 120 gls collected since Saturday's hard freeze. Will test the sap to see if it's any good. Will hopefully boil that down today then clean out the evap for the season. Tap holes are drying out and no more hard freezes in the forecast. Will untap this weekend.

[mickeydafinn]

So I am boiling down my last 30 gallons tonight. This will put me at about 3 gallons of syrup on the season! It is weird my mid week boil yielded some darker syrup, but the stuff i finished last night came out much lighter again! Anyone ever have that happen to them? Also I tried making maple cream for the first time last night. I think it came out great.

[dcast99]

Finished cleaning out the evap today. Made 2 1/4 gls of dark syrup from what was in the pans. Made 32.3 gls for the year with most of it being golden or amber. In several ways it was our worst year since we started cooking our own sap down in 2013. The extremely low sugar content in the middle of the season really killed our overall sap to syrup ratio. We normally get 45 to 1 but this year it went down to 56 to 1. In 2015 we made a record high of 73 gls of syrup but in 2016 we made a record low of only 41 1/2 gls. This year broke the record low record with only 32.3 gls of syrup. Hopefully next year will be a "normal" season with constant temps.

[5050racing]

Pulled all the 3/16" down this year to compare the work compared to fixing all the squirrel/deer damage plus easy to clean, always a sad happy day but can't wait till next year as I'm building a RO with some great help from here!!