2008 Season West Virginia Mapler

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I tapped about 230 taps this morning. It turned into a beautiful day. This is about a week earlier than normal, but I have too many taps for a full time job and living almost 30 minutes from the sugarhouse. The bush I tapped today was a south side bush and should run good if I can keep the squirrels out of it. It had a ton of damage this year, nothing like I have ever seen before. I fixed everything about 4 to 6 weeks ago and they got creative this time. They chewed the tubing in two and then drug aprox 6' long pieces down to a nice flat spot and then chewed away. I have never seen anything like it before and I hope I never do again. They hit about 3 places like that since I had fixed everything. I sanitize all the taps with alcohol, so maybe that will deter them.

It is about 45 today, no clouds and no wind, a beautiful day but no sap was running when I finished tapping about 12:30. It is supposed to be 46 tommorrow, 48 monday and 60 tuesday before getting colder again.

The plan is at this point to try to tap the other south side bush that has about 115 to 120 taps on it in about 10 to 14 days and the other bush which is on the north side and has about 160 taps, I would like to wait until Feb 20th or March 1st if possible to help drag out the season. The north side bush runs really good, but it is always much colder and the ground stays frozen sometimes 2 weeks longer. This way I can drag out the season a little longer and I am not covered up until March.

Season usually is over here around March 20th, but if I can wait until around the first of March to tap the north bush, it could help extend it some if I an not sick of it by then. I would like to have 500+ gallon to boil off next Sat, but with the squirrels and the weather, who knows. I have never had much luck making syrup this early, but we don't normally get weather like this either. The sun sure felt awful powerful today.

[tapper]

Good Luck Brandon and enjoy the season!

[Fred Henderson]

Have fun and we will keep our fingers crossed for you.

[Homestead Maple]

I hope you find an answer to those squirrels, that's down right aggravating to have to do that kind of repairing. Do you use anything to clean your tubing that might be inviting them to chew the tubing looking for something inside?

[220 maple]

Brandon,
My wife has a friend who's husband is a Semi-Professional squirrel hunter. He killed a basket full of them bastards one day on my place, in Grant County, I wish he would have killed two baskets full. I still had unbelievable damage this year. I tapped one section on Jan.30. They was running pretty good before they froze up that night, however my season maybe finished due to the ice we had Friday, After it quit raining friday I rode back on the mountain on the four wheeler, Didn't stay long, trees were crashing all around me, extremely dangerous, Then to add insult to injury it started snowing at dark Friday and the wind picked up! I had to work at my real job Sat. Planning on checking the damage on Super Sunday. I don'tknow how much stress a Maple can handle. Leaking from all those broken branches and tapping also????. I've never experenced this before.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

I hate to hear that and that is terrible. Fortunately for me the wind blew very hard all night and the next day, so it kept the water off of the trees so it didn't have much time to freeze.

Sure hope it won't be as bad as you expected. It should run like gangbusters the next 3 days.

As far as tubing, I guess I have a squirrel adicted to chlorine. I have flushed for years with a small amount of chlorine when I flush my lines. Won't be doing that again. I am not sure that is what it is, but I would guess it likely is. I have killed 3, guess just not the right one as the squirrels were more scarce this year than I have ever seen them.

[andyp]

Brandon
Sounds like you need to sponser a big squirrel hunt.

Andyp

[peacemaker]

alot of the people around here i know have switched to peroxide instead of bleach .. we get moose eating and ripping every where
think a squirrel can drag line off can u imagine what a moose will do i also think i had a bear dump a tank on me ...and once i found a red squirrel in a bucket just standing in the drinking ... as i walked up the bucket was movng way more then the wind was blowing .. and anyone ever have a bird fly out at u

[gmcooper]

Brandon I've had plenty of squirrel damage over the past 19 years. It did not matter whether I had washed with chlorine or not. Some of the worst I had was 1 yr old tubing and and not rinsed with chlorine at all just plain water.
Years ago we were feeding a lot of ear corn and we had a rat and squirrel problem. We put out some of the rat bait bars. No more rats, and some how the squirrels disappeared also.
Mark

[Breezy Lane Sugarworks]

squirrels are pretty much rats too!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I picked up about 250 to 275 gallons of sap this evening that ran since Sat afternoon. It was still dribbling sap little and will collect whatever it runs between now and Wed and try to boil off everything on Wed. It is supposed to be 60+ tommorrow and then get back to colder for a few days.

Might have to try the rat bait bars.

[Sugarmaker]

Brandon,
Hope the boiling and start up goes well on Wednesday. You should get a good run tomorrow. This should be prime weather for you. It is similar weather here and if we were tapped we would be boiling. Hope you make some nice light grade.

Chris

[nhmaple48]

Brandon,take tuna cans,cat food cans etc. tack to tree,fill with toxic anti freeze,it's sweet and they love it.

[markcasper]

That is a great idea!! Think I will try that this season!

[Dave Y]

I have a better idea, instead of spending so much time chasing deer, take a few days and spend squirrel hunting in your sugar woods and shoot some of them for squirrel pot pie. I would never advocate laying poison about the woods. You have no control over what consumes it!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I agree, I don't like the poison idea as you never know what will consume it and probably things you don't want to. I have been there several times hunting, but I can't seem to kill the one causing all the problems.

[NH Maplemaker]

A producer Near me screw a rat tap on side of the tree with peanut butter for bait !! He said it works real well, a lot better than poison! If you get there very soon after the CLAP , you can still have squirrel pie.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

That's a great idea, I have to try that. That sounds like the best idea yet!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

As Van was talking earlier, I got over to sugarhouse yesterday and started tractor and proceed to change clothes. About the time I got ready to go, bright white flash then a bang. This can't be, thunderstorm, sure enough. Rained about all day yesterday and I have never seen mud this bad before. I has gotten progressively worse the last 4 or 5 years. I don't mean the road or anything, I mean the amount of precip. After a drought last fall, it hasn't hardly quit raining and snowing for 3 months. It is horrible so say the least. You can't hardly stand up on dry ground.

[sweetwoodmaple]

Yeah, and we are in for more according to the Radar. Plus, with the huge temp swing and moisture, everything in the sugarhouse is just like it's been in the rain. Yuk.

Fortunately, last spring I put a gravel road to the sugarhouse. At least that is better.

Maybe I can retrofit snowshoes for tapping this year?

[hard maple]

Maybe I'll get to use my new Tubbs snowshoes this year.....

[220 maple]

Brandon,
I got back in Harrisonburg late last Night, too late to get on the Net. My maples somehow survived the ice storm, The Big Man above slapped Mother Natures fingers and told her to behave, That's the only explanation I have, anyhow Open about half of my taps, Needless to say, after that 23 degree Sat. nite they ran, They didn't stop Sunday night, They ran Monday pretty good, then they ran all day Tuesday, I kept the vacuum pump running all day Tue. And the water kept coming, So we fired the the beast up Monday night and was at full boil by 7:30, at 9:42 the auto-draw opened up and the season was on. It took 175 gallon of water before we got any syrup off. We boiled Tuesday Night also. I have three milk can to finish down already, It looked pretty lite, after it's finished I'll see were it ranks in the Breneman Hall of Fame, You probably know what I'm talking about, the glass leafs of syrup the people bring in and leave at his store there in Salisbury. I left one of my best and it's not close to the others that have been left there. Hopefully I can get more trees open this weekend, I'm off Friday thru Sunday, We have another cold wave coming and then it's going too run hard again.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

Glad to know you are up and running. Sure glad your trees survived, it is discouraging when an ice storm hits for sure.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I picked up aprox another 100 gallons of sap yesterday morning that had ran since I collect on Monday evening and boiled off 350 gallons total that had ran from Sat evening. I drew off about 3 gallons and it doesn't appear to be any more runs in sight for a few days as it has gotten cold again.

[Slatebelt*Pa*Tapper]

Brandon you are a early bird this year, but it is paying off for you.. sounds like your getting some sap ...I'l be tapping soon..Just about ready, but holding back...only need about 3-4 gallons for personal use...Gues the sweeter stuff should be coming with these earlyer runs?? been out of sink with tapping, gonna be like starting all over again..

Talk to you again soon..

Charlie

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Thanks to NH maplemaker, I was able to possibly catch the victim today, or at least one of them. It was a flying tree rat. He went for the peanut butter and that was all she wrote. I have one trap pointing up the tree and another one pointing down the tree, so will see what works best. I had not seen a flying squirrel in probably 20 years or more. An old time sugarmaker told me many times they always played terrible havoc on his tubing. I am sure I had fox squirrel problems too as I saw one last year visiting my taps when I was driving up to collect, but I just thought he was curious and didn't think much about it until a day or two later and I wasn't getting much sap. Then I found all the damage.

Hope this takes care of problem and will keep the traps in place probably until the season is over.

Walked the bush today and found a little damage, but very minimal, only 2 or 3 spots since I tapped and they were very minor places. Sap was running good this afternoon and hopefully will tommorrow before it gets down cold tommorrow night and close to 10 on Sunday. Probably leave everything and let it freeze up in the tanks until it starts running again next week if it does.

[NH Maplemaker]

Brandon, glade to hear that the trap worked for you !! But I don't think one little flying squirrel will make much of a stew!! LOL But it's a start. Keep us posted on your trapping. Jim L

[Parker]

Brandon-has it been runn at all down there?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Not much going on, been too cold for the most part. I boiled off 350 gallons last Wed and then it ran about 200+ more from Fri thru Sunday that is still in the woods tanks as it got cold and froze it up some. I will probably gather that later today and put in about 115 more taps and hopefully will get a little run today thru Sat. Boil off what I have and what I will get on Saturday hopefully and go from there. Next week looks better, but the forecast may not hold out. This season is looking like it was 3 years ago which was a really good year at least in this area.

I am hoping to hold out until close to March 1st to tap the north side bush which has 170+ taps in it and runs really good.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I put in 113 more taps yesterday which puts me at 350 so far. I have another aprox 170 taps that I hope to wait another 10 to 15 days to tap them.

It got to low 40's yesteray with nothing but sunshine and it got the holes thawed and they were starting to run a little. Lots of sun so far today with 47 as high and clouds this afternoon. Hopefully get a little sap today and tommorrow so I will have a good boil tommorrow. 200+ gallon still in woods tanks with ice in them from last weekend waiting to be picked up.

[220 maple]

Brandon,
My trees have been froze since last Sunday, I thought I was going to get a Thaw on Wendesday, The temperture was 47 degrees at Spruce Knob at daylight, I never got over 34 degrees for the day. And it rained like crazy all Wendesday mourning and froze on everything it hit. Wendesday night back down to 17 degrees, Thursdays it warmed up to 41 degrees they still didn't run, Thursday evening 28 degrees by 8 PM, I had to come back to Harrisonburg to my real job, I checked the weather station for Upper Tract WV ( the closest one to my camp) before 6 AM friday it was 46 degrees, If they didn't run today then they are not going to run. High temp for the day was 49. I'm going to try and get a hold of my helper by phone to see what happened, I need a web cam like the Procter Maple Research Center, The one thing that I did accomplish on my two days off, I got some more trees opened. I'm should be around 1600 plus now, Hoping to finish up Monday or Tuesday. It sure looks like syrup weather and we have the moisture.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

It got up to about 47 here today with lots of sun until around 1pm and then clouds. Trees should run up to 8 or 9 tonight before shutting down. It was all sun here yesterday in low 40's with no wind and the sun felt hot, but the trees probably didn't run 20 gallon from 350 taps due to being froze. They were running good this afternoon, not full blast, but good and steady. I picked up 200 gallon and that was from last weekend. I hope to get another 150 to 200 gallon by tommorrow evening and boil it off tommorrow. Looks like it may run all day Sunday and Sun night into Monday before getting cold until Wed. Hopefully I can get another 200 to 400 gallon from Sat evening until it quits on Monday and boil that off on Wed. Next Wed thru Sat looks good, but too early at this point.

Good luck and I would guess you got a good run today! Keep me posted!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Picked up another 290 gallons yesterday from the 350 taps. It was running really good yesterday, especially the new bush I tapped on Thurs, it was running like gangbusters. Wind picked up last night and very high today, so it will likely shut down things. Supposed to get back to cold tommorrow night until Wed and then some warmup again.

Boiled off the 490 gallons yesterday which included the 200 gallons I picked up Friday evening which was 6 days old but still nice and clear and good sap.

[mapleman3]

Dang is sugar season here already?????? Yawn just woke up from a long winters nap :) :) Go get em Brandon !!! our cell phones don't like each other huh... they keep leaving msg. on each LOL

Talk with you soon

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Welcome back Mr Jim, glad the groundhog could get out of his burrow.

Picked up 210 to 220 gallons of sap today that run from Sat evening thru Sunday night. Supposed to be cold here into next week, so appears won't be any sap flow until sometime next week. Hopefully boil off what I picked up tommorrow or Thurs.

I did get two sap samples today, 1 prior to UV and one after UV. Will store these in a controlled enviroment and check progress on each one each day and see what happens. Hopefully I can get a few more samples as the season progresses.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Boiled off 210 gallons today that I had collected on Tues from last weekend. Canned off everything so far that I had drawn off today and it was about 18.5 gallons. Everything was medium and had a very lighter flavor. I boiled evaporator down to about 1/4" and drained it and ran everything thru filter press after I had ran the second batch thru it and dumped everything back into the syrup pan and flushed out the flue pan with a water hose and drained out the water and left it empty. Aprox 15 gallons in syrup pan and none in the flue pan ready for a run hopefully next week.

Still watching the UV sap samples I have stored in my garage which is aprox 50 degrees and dark. Untreated sap appears to be getting a little cloudy aprox 36 hours later and the treated sap is crystal clear. Be interesting to see what happens, I hope to be able to do 3 or 4 more samples at least thru the end of the season.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Picked up close to 300 gallons this evening from 350 taps that I have in so far. Should run into the night tonight and then warm back up overnight and start raining. Will probably shut down sometime tommorrow with the wind and rain and cold tommorrow night. Hope to get another 200 to 300 before it quits and boil off everything on Wed.

Looks like the other 175 taps going in on Sat which will be all my taps and 4 weeks after I tapped the initial 237 and 15 days after I tapped the second bush of 113. At this point, it looks like it will be "bar the door" Sunday thru Tues. Hope they move it up a couple of days until like Wed, but we'll see what happens. The 175 are all on the north side with a lot of slope, but they pour the sap.

[royalmaple]

Brandon-

What's your totals so far? Never give up, PMA, remember.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I picked up another 100 gallon this morning to advoid any runovers in the bush with 113 taps. Hope to have a couple hundred more gallon by the time it quits running this evening between the two bushes which would give me about 600 to boil off tommorrow. I will collect the remainder tommorrow afternoon.

Matt, so far I canned 18.625 gallons from the 1,050 gallon of sap I have boiled and there is probably about 2 gallons left in the evaporator that is all in the syrup pan which is about right for me aprox 50+ to 1 ratio. I boiled it down really low last time and ran it thru the filter press and flushed the pans. I have about 3 inches in the syrup pan and none in the flue pan. I will start out with fresh sap there and boil the syrup pan down to level before pulling plug to the flue pan.

[Sugarmaker]

Brandon,
Nice job, glad someone is making syrup!
We are froze up and waiting by the lake!


Chris

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Picked up another 250 gallons of sap today and boiled off 640 gallons. Boiled it off in record time and then just went ahead and canned everything that I boiled today instead of storing it for a couple of weeks. 13.125 gallons of beautful Light amber syrup. The 18.625 that I canned last week was medium and today was light. I have eliminated all of my black plastic mainlines but one and it is short and has a lot of taps and this is definitely helping with the syrup grades because sometimes I can't boil sap for 3 or 4 days. The bush I tapped on the 14th has ran 600 gallons of sap from 113 taps in basically 5 days. Not too bad for gravity taps with two 5/16" mainlines with 40+ taps. I have one section this year that has close to 90 taps on a 5/16" line and I am anxious to see how they do. They haven't done much in the past on a mainline, so they can't do any worse and hopefully this will help them kick a little harder. Either way, it will definitely increase sap quality a ton and in turn, the lower bacteria count is seeming to add up to a slightly higher sugar content. 2 years ago it was 57 to 1, last year it was 53 to 1 and this year I am running about 50 to 1.

I did set a record with the evaporator today. 640 gallons in 10.33 hours which include startup and shutdown which is 62gph. I had a bad startup playing with it some or I could have likely down even a little better. Will keep tweaking it as Jerry(802 maple) has been helping me some. I don't know if I can do much better, but might get it to 65gph or a little better, but if not, I am very happy with 60 or more gph.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Just a side note, I didn't have hardly any sugarsand the entire boil. 640 gallons of sap later, the syrup pan looked almost like it had been cleaned. I ran the 13.125 thru the filter press and it hardly got to 20psi and I could have probably ran 50 to 100 thru it as clean as it was.

I know others disagree with me, but what I have almost always seen is that the better the sap quality, the lower the sugarsand. I really think a lot of what we call nitre or sugarsand is dead bacteria. The darker the syrup, the higher the bacteria count, the more "sugarsand" as we call it.

I know this is not always the case, but has always seemed to be that way for me most of the time. The sap that I had boiled before today wasn't as high of quality due to holding it for longer periods of time, thus more bacteria, more sugarsand and medium syrup.

[Slatebelt*Pa*Tapper]

Brandon, sounds pretty neat what you are doing there. What ever you are doing is working..all that fine fancy stuff..yummy

what we call nitre or sugarsand is dead bacteria, i think you are correct with this, what else could it be>>
When i started i never could figure out what sugar sand could possibly be other than bacteria...

Charlie

[markcasper]

brandon, what are you using for mainline now instead of the black plastic?

[mapleman3]

Keep going Brandon... those 5/16 mainlines seem to be working well! super experiment. I will be interested on how your season turns out in the end. sure would put a twist on the bigger is better and less taps per lateral thinking.

I'm sure everyones bush is different, but as you were telling me on the phone, you don't have a tremendous grade on that bush... very interesting.

Well I will tap Sat morn.. maybe start getting a run early week then it cools down again... yep global warming right?? I'm not too worried(yet) this is my normal time, usually get my first boil between the 1st and 6th of march.
Last year the taps went in early but waited for the thaw....

Last night spent time doing a quick rinse of my bucket drop lines.. and a few buckets that looked like they needed a cleaning(top of the pile) few more things to rinse....

After I set out some taps sat I will do a water boil just for final hot rinse of the evap and make sure everything is ready.. then LET IT POUR SAP !!

Next year..... hopefully 500 taps all tubing !!!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Tapped my north side bush yesterday and put in 158 more taps which puts me just over 500. Seaon is usually over by 22nd of March here, so I am hoping for average of 1,000 gallon of sap for the next three weeks which would give me a good season as I boiled almost 1700 gallon in Feb.

More north side trees run really good, and by tapping them this late, they should survive a big warmup for several days which is very much a reality for me this time of year. 50's tommorrow and Monday after we had a deep freeze for 3 or 4 days and a few inches of snow. Tanks will likely be running over early Monday morning before I get to collect them as it is not showing a freeze tommorrow night. The next 2 weeks are usually about the best two of the year, so here we go.

[TapME]

good luck Brandon, Looks like you are into BIGSAP MARCH.

[220 maple]

Brandon,
It is amazing the difference we are experiecing this season in comparsion to last season. Last year we boiled the first time on Feb. 25th. This year on Feb. 25th we was within 100 gallons of the sugarwater almount that we processed the whole season last year. We usually get some big runs around the first couple weeks of March. If the weather holds I believe we may break the camp record. The next two weeks will tell the story on that however..

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I guess yesterday was big sap day for me. I went over and started gathering about 2:30 this morning due to most of my trees being on other family members property and it is off limits on Sunday. I went over yesterday afternoon and checked out everything and transferred some lines to additional overflow tanks and the sap was running as hard as I have ever seen it run. It ran a little Saturday evening and then froze and picked back up yesterday morning. From yesterday morning until about 2am this morning, it ran close to 1,000 gallons of sap. Small freeze this morning from 2 to 8, and now the temp has spiked up to about 50. I gathered close to 800 gallon from 2:30 to 6:30 this morning and left close to 200 more in the woods. I imagine it should run fairly well for a while today, but will start tailing off this afternoon as temps are supposed to be 61 and wind is suppossed to pick back up. Cold from Wed until Sunday with temps as low as the teens and lots of precip which should fire the trees back up to do it again. Fired up the evaporator about 6:15 this morning and turned it over to a helper about 8. Another helper coming to boil from 9 to 4 and then the other helper will take over. I need to try to hold about 600 gallon of sap for the open house on Saturday. I am going to try chucking about 25 gallon of ice/frozen sap daily and with the very cold temps, it should be fine.

Yesterday was the type of run you only see maybe once every 3 or 4 years if you are lucky. I have elinimated almost all of my 1/2" mainline and the sap just roars the the 5/16" in mph. Sure makes for really good sap quality too.

[hookhill]

Brandon,
We were thinking about you yesterday when we ran 40+ taps on one 5/16 line. Those 40+ are on the end of the mainline and we wanted to grab as many as we could. Most of the tubing gurus say 5-10 taps on one 5/16 lateral. All ours are gravity so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Best.

Jim

[mapleman3]

Off limits on sunday??

You may be on to something with the no mainline mainline on gravity thing. That's a whole lot of sap my friend!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I ended up picking up another 525 gallon of sap yesterday evening, that is over 1300 gallon of sap I picked up in one day. Most of it ran on Sunday and a little on Saturday evening. Funny thing was it was high 50's on Sunday with lots of sun and it ran close to 2 gallon per tap and it was nearly 65 yesterday with high south winds and lots of sun and the sap kept on running, go figure.

Boiled off 850 gallon of sap in 13 hours/65gph. Never thought I would get the evaporator running that good, but it just eats the sap thanks to the help of Jerry(802maple). That's about 15 gph better than I have ever done before. I am holding most of the rest of it until Sat for the open house as the sap was crystal clear and I am chucking 6 aluminum sap buckets with frozen sap into the milk tank once or twice a day. It was still running some yesterday evening and hope to collect that and boil off some more tommorrow as I have been too sick to do anything today.

Thru yesterday, that puts it to just over 3000 gallon of sap so far. Hopefully we can get another 1,000 to 2,000 gallons over the next 2 weeks before the season ends.

[mapleman3]

your like a well oiled machine this year Brandon.... I'm just glad to be boiling finally!! I may have to hold sap for a day if I don't get my oil tomorrow .... got that Lapierre 310 gal stainless tank I got from Chris(the Maple Guys) last year... may finally put it to use.. it's there as a backup... with the truck tank and the 2 stainless I can hold around 830 gals in a pinch


OH HEY STARTING TO SMELL LIKE MAPLE HERE !!! THE PANS ARE GETTING SWEET !!!!!!!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Bout time you are boiling there buddy. Good luck, it is getting ready to kick into high gear in the next 10 days.

[Sugarmaker]

Brandon,
Not sure how you have had time to post. Nice work! Wow lots of SAP! And the grade is still holding for you too. Keep it up. Hope you are feeling better.

Regards,
Chris

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I am feeling a little better this evening as I have been really sick for about the past 24 hours. Everything we drew off yesterday is in 5 gallon buckets and I would imagine it is likely light and maybe medium worst case.

Hope to gather what is in the tanks that ran from last night tommorrow afternoon if I am not too sick and boil off some more. Supposed to be 15 Saturday night and with all the flooding today, it should run like gangbusters again next week.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Picked up 440 more gallon of sap that ran from Monday night thru Tues. That is 1750+ gallons of sap without basically any freeze in 3 days. On top of that, we got tons of rain and some minor flooding and the ground it super saturate and it is supposed to get to the low teens this weekend, so next week should be a good run.

One of my helpers is going to boil off 380 gallons tommorrow and I am trying to hold 500+ until Saturday morning for the open house. Supposed to 26 tonight and 54 tommorrow, never know might get a good run tommorrow which would be nice so I can boil off the old sap on Friday and put the new sap for Saturday. I let the big tank recirculate thru the UV for close to three hours this evening, so hopefully that will help it and may do the same tommorrow.

[Sugarmaker]

Brandon,
Have someone take some pictures during the open house for you. Hope you get a good crowd!

Regards,
Chris

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Picked up another 200 gallons yesterday and my helper picked up about 300 more today which is 2,200+ for the week. One of my helpers boiled off around 365 yesterday and is boiling off aprox 250 to 300 today and that should leave us aprox 700 to boil off tommorrow for the open house. Best sap week I have ever had, but been very tough as I am still sick and have been pretty sick since Monday and so has the wife and both kids. Hopefully I can get better before next week which looks like another pretty good run starting about Wed as I am going to be short my main helper about the rest of the season.

Canned off 13.325 gallon yesterday of ultra light syrup that we boiled off on Monday.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Finished boiling off last night everything that had ran from the week and what a week it was. I just glanced at the water meter before leaving last night and it appears we got over 2400 gallon of sap last week with most of it coming from Sunday thru Tues. Funny thing was that I got more sap in 3 days than I got in the entire month of Feb. Pretty good to make over 50% of the best crop I ever had in 6 days worth of sap. Sap quality was really good and everything this week would have been probably light if I wasn't trying to hold sap all week for the open house and being sick all week. It looks like everything after Monday will be Dark from holding it so long and getting behind, but a good flavor. This coming week looks like we are going to be swimming again. For the year, I am at 4100 gallon of sap and aprox 80 gallon of syrup. It looks like we made close to 48 gallon of syrup this week. Wood pile is getting small as I have never gotten to 5000 gallon of sap in the past and I figured before the season started, I would have enough wood for close to 6,000 gallon of sap and that still looks to be the case. It appears we should be at least at 5500 gallon of sap by the end of the week and possibly 6,000 as the ground is swimming with water from 2 large rains and snow this past week and it got down to about 13 or 14 last night, so once it warms, it should pour again. Interesting thing is that the best I can estimate, I got 1,150 gallons of sap in 6 days from the new 157 taps I opened last Friday and this doesn't include what ran on the ground.

If we don't run into any problems, looks like it will be a record year this year and I wish the same for all my other syrup brothers. This Saturday may be it for me as it will be within about 5 days of the end of the season. If there is still wood, I will keep on going, if not, then we'll call it a year.

The weather got really bad yesterday but we still did have a pretty good open house with 60+ people in attendance. I am still sick, but hoping to rest up today and not go at it too hard tommorrow.

[mapleman3]

WOOOHOOO BRANDON !! :)

Record year for sure !! 60+ people too Wow you must be tired , hope your feeling better, still plenty of season left for you.. Keep going Man !!!:)

[TapME]

That's really great, hope you break the record. That would be a sight for me for I have never seen more that 600 gallons at one time and it was not mine.

[220 maple]

Brandon,
I believe my season is winding down, Trees did not run very good off of a two day freeze. I could pull my inserts and get a couple more weeks if the weather is right, but we have made a ton of syrup already, well in actuality over a ton at 11 pounds per gallon. I need to top off a barrel of grade c to take to are friend Henry, I'm running low on supplies. My tap holes usually only run 4 weeks, has that been your experence also?

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

I am on week # 6 with one bush, week 4 with second bush and week # 2 with third bush. I can usually get about 6 weeks if there is not a lot of warm weather. Nothing was setting the world on fire this morning, but after that deep freeze, it is going to take a little to get them going. They were running better around 12:30 and I imagine kicking butt this afternoon. Hopefully it will freeze some tonight like they say to keep some of it from running on the ground before I get to collect tommorrow afternoon. This may be the last week for me too, just have to wait and see.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Looks like the fat lady will sing here tommorrow. I picked up 440 gallons yesterday and another 175 today, but everything is about shut down, even the new taps I put in less than 2 weeks ago are about done. They have pumped out about 10 gallons of sap per tap in less than 2 weeks, and I think they are saying that is enough. We got a good freeze over the weekend and tons of rain end of last week put a ton of moisture in the ground. I thought it would run good this week, but shows how little I know the longer I do this.

I pulled all of the tanks in the woods except the bush I tapped less than 2 weeks ago and I will pull those 2 tanks tommorrow when I collect for the last time. Temps in 50's yesterday and 60's today and the weather looks like it is done. Mud completely disappeared in 2 days and the ground is mainly nice and dry which is a good indication season is over too. It is ending about 7 days early this year, but that's the way it goes. Hard to believe I started 6 weeks ago this coming Saturday and tommorrow will make 6 full weeks. Amazing how time flies and at the last boil every year which will be tommorrow for this year, I always wonder if it is my last. Never know, each year we get older and we have no promise of tommorrow. Just thankful for the opportunity God gives me and that in and of itself makes it a good year just to have the health and strength to be able to do it. Last week really knocked me for a loop and 12 days later, I am finally almost back to 100% from the bad respatory flue that hit me, wife and kids. Timing couldn't have been worse and the sickest I have been in 20+ years and I am still not completely over it, but we were able to pull thru it.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Finished up everything on Friday. I collect aprox 170 on Thurs and another 85 on Friday and boiled it all off. I ended up the season at 97.5 gallon from 4721 gallon of sap. That made the ratio of 48.42 which is the best I have had in a long time. Funny thing was I made aprox 50% of the season's crop from March 2nd thru the 6th's sap run. Season ended aprox a week early and could possibly make a little more this week, but basically no freezing and high temps make it difficult.

All in all a very good season and the most syrup I had made. Interesting is that last year I boiled 169 more gallon of sap and made 5 gallons less of syrup and a 53 to 1 ratio last year.

I have all my tanks in out of the woods and washed and stored for next year and the tanks in the sugarhouse are all also washed and sanitized and I flushed about 1/2 of my taps and tubing yesterday. Hope to get the remainder done later this week.

[220 maple]

Brandon,
I will start pulling taps this week, some of my taps are 3 to 4 weeks old and I will pull them last, I believe they will run this week if the weather forecast is correct?
Last Wendesday I rushed up to Henry's for some jugs and filter aid. They had only boiled once so far this season. They should of had some big runs the latter part of last week. Henry is still hoping to have a seminar in July, I think he is shooting for the week after the 4th. Henry said that their is a world wide shortage of Maple Syrup, or that what the brokers up north tell him.
He predicts that syrup prices will stay high due to that fact. That was good news to me because I have three barrels full that I'm selling wholsale to a producer that always buys from Henry.
My trees ran better than usual this year, but have never run like your trees. My sugar content has always been over 2%, that helps. My helper said it all depends on the location, he said my trees are mainly forest trees and are on very steep hillsides which drain real good. If I could get 4500 gals of sap per 500 taps I would be drowning in sap.
I still have some unfinished syrup in milk cans and some sap still stuck in the evaporator, I'll post my final total when I'm finished.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

Glad you had a good year anyways. I didn't do as good as Larry Harris as he got more sap than me from less taps. He tapped all of his trees a lot earlier than I did, 5 weeks earlier than 160 of my taps and they have 3 of them that are retired and they can boil every day and nothing runs on the ground. I don't have that problem and if I did, I could probably have gotten 6,000+ gallons easily from my trees this year. Either way, you do what you can do and what works best. I am like you, I live a significant distance away and work a full time job. I was happy with the season, especially the sugar content.

All I can say about your sugar content, it seems the further north you go, the higher it gets as a whole and you are aprox 4 hours north of me. It seems the harder the winter and the temps, the higher the sugar. Our growing season down here is much longer than the NE, especially Maine and upper VT, but they run 3% or more out of red maples a lot of time. I wouldn't know hardly what to do with 2% out of sugars.

[mapleman3]

Brandon, it would be like having a cheap RO for you !!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Finished up flushing the remainder of my tubing on Wed and Thurs. Everything is washed and cleaned for next year with the exception of the evaporator. I am going to try some the of the dairy milk stone remover this year if they ever get it in. I like to experiment with different things and it is about the same price for a gallon as 4 gallon of vinegar.

[TapME]

It's something to see you are finished and we are just starting. Any totals yet?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I had posted totals earlier, I ended with 97.5 gallon about 50% light and a little med and the other 50% dark A. 4,721 gallon of sap and a 48.42 sap to syrup ratio, the best I have had since I started keeping close tabs.

I feel blessed and thankful, especially since about 50% of it was made during the week when I was very sick.