Tapped in the Berkshires 2025

[berkshires]

Got all my taps in today. Everything went perfectly. I didn't forget anything, didn't break a bit, didn't run out of batteries in my drill. And the snow wasn't too bad. I even got a chance to try out my new chainsaw. Wow. The difference between my new saw and my old Homelite is like night and day.

Only bad thing is that the sled that i use to tow barrels of sap got blown over from where it was leaning against the house. It is completely filled with ice and frozen solid against the ground. I don't know how long before it defrosts. I will try to use the play -sled i have at home (and hope my daughter doesn't notice it's missing), in the hope that the big sturdy one there will defrost soon.

Forecast now looks like it may be too warm this week. I don't see a solid freeze after tonight until Friday night! Should be better up your way, BigSchuss.

GO

[bigschuss]

Got all my taps in today. Everything went perfectly. I didn't forget anything, didn't break a bit, didn't run out of batteries in my drill. And the snow wasn't too bad. I even got a chance to try out my new chainsaw. Wow. The difference between my new saw and my old Homelite is like night and day.

Only bad thing is that the sled that i use to tow barrels of sap got blown over from where it was leaning against the house. It is completely filled with ice and frozen solid against the ground. I don't know how long before it defrosts. I will try to use the play -sled i have at home (and hope my daughter doesn't notice it's missing), in the hope that the big sturdy one there will defrost soon.

Forecast now looks like it may be too warm this week. I don't see a solid freeze after tonight until Friday night! Should be better up your way, BigSchuss.

GO

Awesome Gabe. Nice job.

Yes, a little colder up here. The temps. look perfect. But we have quite the snow cover though so we'll have to see if the trees warm up enough to run.

Going to finish up tapping today after work.

Blair

[berkshires]

Awesome Gabe. Nice job.

Yes, a little colder up here. The temps. look perfect. But we have quite the snow cover though so we'll have to see if the trees warm up enough to run.

Going to finish up tapping today after work.

Blair

Yeah, there's a solid foot of snow in the trees, and the bases of the trees will take some time to melt out, so a warm start will be helpful for us too. I wonder if all that snow might even help with local night-time freezes - like cooling down the air more quickly at night - I don't know how that works.

Good luck getting the tapping finished, and let us know how it flows for you this week.

GO

[bigschuss]

Yeah, there's a solid foot of snow in the trees, and the bases of the trees will take some time to melt out, so a warm start will be helpful for us too. I wonder if all that snow might even help with local night-time freezes - like cooling down the air more quickly at night - I don't know how that works.

Good luck getting the tapping finished, and let us know how it flows for you this week.

GO

Hey Gabe....sap is flowing in Savoy. Not a lot...but my buckets are all about half full over the past two days. We have 100% snow coverage...maybe about 12 to 16" on average. But temps. have been perfect. Nothing flowed Monday. But yesterday and today we got some sap slow.

Probably collect on Friday.

[berkshires]

Hey Gabe....sap is flowing in Savoy. Not a lot...but my buckets are all about half full over the past two days. We have 100% snow coverage...maybe about 12 to 16" on average. But temps. have been perfect. Nothing flowed Monday. But yesterday and today we got some sap slow.

Probably collect on Friday.

In Chester there's something around nine inches to a foot. More in drifts. Or at least there was on Sunday. Probably shrinking fast this week.

GO

[berkshires]

Pretty decent first week in the Berkshires. About 35 gallons of sap from 15 taps. Plus another eight or ten I have collected from my two trees at home over the last month. Didn't quite sweeten the pan, but came close. Should have my first draw next week.

Only bad thing is that all of my trees seem to have very low sugar. Maybe a result of the drought last summer. Hopefully the numbers will come up.

Gabe

[berkshires]

Too cold this last week in the Berkshires. Kinda light week at around 2 GPT. Home trees flowed well, as it's warmer here. Overall I collected 36 gallons total on my second week, and put 32 on the evaporator (the rest was ice I tossed). Was enough to draw my first gallon of nearup.

This week looks like the first week warm enough for my trees in Chester to really open up - I expect to see along the lines of maybe four gallons per tap there. And more from home trees, that have had a huge weekend. Hoping for close to 6 GPT from my two home trees.

Hoping the sugar comes up, right now it's way below overage.

GO

[berkshires]

Long term forecast looks terrible. Two weeks of heat, and then *maybe* back to normal around the end of March.

I may try something I've never done before, which is to attempt to "pause" mid season. This weekend I may do a "final" boil on my evaporator, rinse it out, bring home all my buckets, rinse them out, and then wait.... If the weather cools down again I'll make the two hour drive to my sugarbush to set all my buckets out again to see if the trees produce anything after a week or two of heat. It's a lot of work - after being warm for two weeks, I would not be surprised if all the tapholes close early. And it will all be a gamble anyway, as there's no knowing whether we'll get another cool spell in a few weeks or not. But I only tapped a couple weeks ago, and I hate to have such a short season.

GO

[DrTimPerkins]

Good luck.

[berkshires]

Good luck.

Thanks Dr. Tim! An "interesting" season for research, LOL!

Hypothesis: After tapping, the producer has two-and-a-half weeks of near-normal temperatures, followed by two weeks of above average temps with little to no flow. Then temperatures revert to normal. Producer anticipates (with a lot of hope) that sap flow resumes, since taps have only been exposed to four-and-a-half weeks of air.

My experience for taps in the woods, where they don't get sun on the taphole, and have a drop tube into a bucket rather than an open spile into a hanging bucket, is that I usually get a solid six weeks or more of good flow in most seasons. But I've had seasons where that wasn't the case, probably due to very warm days (hitting seventy) early in the season.

GO

[berkshires]

Okay, after pulling all my buckets in last weekend, I have rinsed them and will set them back out Saturday night. Forecast looks good for next week. Fingers crossed.

GO

[berkshires]

Okay, after pulling all my buckets in last weekend, I have rinsed them and will set them back out Saturday night. Forecast looks good for next week. Fingers crossed.

GO

Got all my buckets put back out last night. Looks like a good week coming up, with freezes on most nights. Forecast has been worse than usual this year, probably due to the cuts at NOAA, but hopefully after a warm week we'll have a good run this week.

GO

[Aaron Stack]

Got all my buckets put back out last night. Looks like a good week coming up, with freezes on most nights. Forecast has been worse than usual this year, probably due to the cuts at NOAA, but hopefully after a warm week we'll have a good run this week.

GO

How did it end up going? If I did the same I might have had a couple good days.

[berkshires]

How did it end up going? If I did the same I might have had a couple good days.
It was worth it. I had one more good week, with around 60 gallons of sap. Then this last week was poor, with only 12 gallons of sap. I pulled taps and boiled those 12 gallons. Unfortunately as i was simmering down the end of it, without even any coals left in the evaporator, just residual heat, and with the cover on the pan to keep the steam in, I was getting a start on splitting wood for next season when i got that smell. You know the one. Burnt sugar. I ran inside and dumped water in the pan. Kept the pan from warping, i think, but pretty sure the syrup in the pan is ruined. I'm going to finish it on the stove and see if i can use it for something where i didn't mind that caramelized sugar flavor. We'll see how bad it is.

Anyway, difficult season, but i guess i will wind up somewhere in the neighborhood of four gallons of syrup from 17 taps. Not a great season, but it was enough.

GO

[Aaron Stack]

I'll have to think about that when the weather does something like this year again. From what I've read you are now a professional, hope the pans survived!

[berkshires]

I haven't finished, filtered, and bottled anything yet, so I don't know my totals, but one thing I can say for sure is that I made the right call to come back after that warm spell, even though it meant pulling my buckets, washing them, and putting them back a week later, which was a bit of a pain. After the week off, I collected 1/3 of my total sap for the season! So it would've been a much smaller season if I hadn't done that.

The only remaining doubt in my head is whether, in retrospect, I needed to pull the buckets at all. It turns out that that "warm" week was not as warm as predicted. I'm not sure the little bit of sap in the buckets would have rotted and then spoiled the sap for the next good week. Maybe yes, maybe no. I think if I had to do it again, with the forecast available at the time, I'd do the same thing, but if I knew what the weather was really going to do, I'd have left all the buckets out. That first week, I might have had to dump spoiled sap from a few buckets in the sun, but I would have collected a little good sap from a number of buckets. Then the next week, which was my last good one, would've been the same.

Oh, and Aaron, I'm sure the pan is okay. Because the sap was barely simmering, I don't think there was enough heat to warp the pan. I've had worse disasters other years - you can see small warps in the pan in other spots. It's just the lost sap that's the pity.

GO