Tapping in a river bed

[Mike1ranger]

Ok, so my go-to spot of sugars with a few reds mixed in ended this year due to the homeowner moving. So, I asked around and found a guy who let me tap his property. Turns out his beautiful 20 acre homestead has a nice creek running through his property, joining up to the Mississippi. Truly God's Country. However, the 56 taps I put in the trees are all along the creek bed in a wet but accessible area and are all reds and silvers. I'm nervous and don't know why...mostly, I guess, because I've always had sugars with limited reds so I'm worried about the lower sugar content and early budding of the silvers and reds. Plus, being in a creek bed, will the heavy moisture create even lower sugar content and cause earlier budding? I guess it's just a completely different terrain than I'm used to. I'd rather keep myself up at night boiling instead of worrying about my season before it even starts. My taps are 8 miles away so it's convenient and easy to get to but I'm nervous and don't know if I need to be? Thoughts to help put my mind at ease? If needed, I could possible scramble and get to another option that's more "normal" for me but is 25 minutes one way and probably fewer tapable trees.

[Cedar Eater]

The river bed will make it that much more likely that the trees don't suffer from droughts. That's good because it helps the trees to store sugar for springtime use. Reds are more finicky and usually shutdown before the sap turns buddy unless they are on vacuum. I think being wetter will cause them to run longer. I can't say about the sugar content, but syrup from reds has a rep for tasting better.

[bprifle01]

I have four silvers that are right along a creek bank. The early sap I collected from these tested 3.6 to 5.0. The rest of the season they ran well (two gallons per tap per day) and were averaging 2.0 until the warm weather shut them down. After we had a three day cold spell they all restarted and continued to run well until I pulled the taps this past weekend (because I only boil on weekends and couldn't keep up).