It's Over here, in south central Ohio

[buckeye gold]

Well I pulled the plug today. I had about 40 gallons of new sap from over night and the lines were barely running. It is now 71 degrees F and what sap I was catching has turned yellow in just a few hours. I am not waiting on a cool down and reset. The forecast is calling for a week of temps in the 50s and 60s and a day or two of 70s. I cooked about 35 of the 40 and shut down the evaporator, flushed the sweet and finished it. After the arch cooled enough I added all the spoiled sap and she'll set and turn to snot and I'll clean the pan in late April. I will start bleaching tanks tomorrow and pulling taps and flushing with Hydrogen Peroxide solution later this week.

I am super happy with my 3/16th tubing. I ran one line from fall until now. It was only running .5 gal per tap the last week,but hey it was sap. If only my sugar content had been better. It stayed at 1.3 until the last 10 days. I ended up boiling ~1080 gallons of sap and made 18 gallons and 1 quart of syrup. My end sugar average was 1.46 This is the cleanest best filtering syrup I have ever made. I don't know if it was just a good year or the new tubing made that much difference. Over all I had an excellent year.

I also had a record mud year. It will take a lot of work to smooth out my field from hauling sap across it.

[newman_maple]

Same here in Adams County. I am going ahead and boiling today, but I will have to look at tomorrow's sap to see if it is worth my time tomorrow night. I will collect around the house this evening and boil it off. Most of what I brought in today was clear, but some taps starting to yield some yellow sap. My tracks to the far trees are a huge mess and if it rains before I get home from work tomorrow, I may just forget about it. I hope to get to it tomorrow and boil one more night. It has been better than the last two years, but well below past years. The are calling for 4-5 inches of rain this week so it will be awhile before I can pull the taps.

[esetter]

Over here too. I ended up collecting 74 gallons of sap. Added 10 that I had frozen from last year. It made a couple pints shy of two gallons. Best year to date for me. Buckeye , what do you do with the peroxide and why? Trying to learn all I can!

[buckeye gold]

esetter, the peroxide is for cleaning my 3/16th tubing. I will pull taps, and flush the tubing with a peroxide solution to kill as many of the microbes as possible per Univ. VT Proctor Maple centers (Dr Tim Perkins) recommendations. Their data indicates cleaning is even more important for 3/16th tubing. I will disinfect when I pull taps, let the lines air out a couple days then plug them off and hope the dad blame squirrels leave it alone until next fall.

[esetter]

Good to know! I will do the same. I had been using bleach / water. Peroxide makes sense. I thought maybe you were disinfecting the tap holes.

[karl evans]

Over here too. I ended up collecting 74 gallons of sap. Added 10 that I had frozen from last year. It made a couple pints shy of two gallons. Best year to date for me. Buckeye , what do you do with the peroxide and why? Trying to learn all I can!we are sure hoping it's not over in northern Ohio yet, but our forecast is sure scary looking. Many of us that did some later tapping,( I tapped 1 woodlot early & the 3 Rd woodlot a week ago) may only get 1 run if our weather pattern doesn't change.

[bmbmkr]

Buckeye, I'm glad you liked your tubing. I put up another 5 rolls this year, for a total of 7000' I collected 3200 gallon of sap, boiled about 2500 and came out with 27 gallon of Syrup. We finished up on the 19th also, - had 175 gallon of sap the 20th but it looked like lemonade- and it was 80F. I started pulling taps. Still some sap running yesterday in the laterals I haven't pulled, have to tote my 6' ladder back in the holler to get to some of my hi taps out- had to keep my lines runnin downhill! I had zero squirrel chews last year on 3000' of tubing, this year they terrorized my new tubing, and some of the old. I just flushed with tap water last year, no bleach, peroxide or any other thing they said squirrels like. This year they chewed the new tubing between putting it up and tapping. I went through a pile of connectors repairing it. We had a short season, 24 Jan-19 Feb-froze up for ten of those days- The good news, I sold out yesterday- we kept 2 gallon for us, gave away another 3 gallon to family- sold 22 gallon in 6 days and people are still calling and hitting us up on facebook. We got $12 pint and $20 per quart- sold 6 one gallon jugs for $60. Never stepped foot off the farm to sell any- all word of mouth and facebook. Made enough to pay for the dairy tanks and the RO- still in the hole on containers and more SS plumbing lol but we'll get er next year. Adding another 200 or so taps, maybe more.