Grassy Meadows Maple Syrup tapped - 2009

[lharris1]

All taps in over a four day period and as of 2/8 have collected over 300 gal. with probably another 100 gal. plus in the field. Plan to boil on Monday the 8th. Average sugar content is around 2.0. Hoping for a good season. We added around 20 taps over 2008. Good luck to all.

I got bumped off the trader. Thanks to Jim and Brandon for help getting back on.

[lharris1]

We boiled around 10-11 hours today and will likely do the same Tuesday. All togather we have collected around 700 gallons and may get another few gallons on Tuesday. We had a valley freeze and the higher trees did not do well, but still got a respectable run with good sugar content (averaging just over 2.0). We now have a tap count of around 390. It is not looking real good for the rest of the week for runs unless we get a surprise.

[lharris1]

We had a better than expected run on Saturday, collecting just over 400 gallons bringing the total to around 1400. Don't expect much, if any today.

Looks like next runs will be Tue & Wed.

[lharris1]

I'm back home in Poca and finally getting around to posting.

Runs have been slow but they keep coming. Boiled of about 650 gallons lon the the 15th & 16, making grad B syrup. Boiled out and cleaned evaporator on Tuesday the 17th and canned over 12 gallons of Grad B. We only had a small run Wednesday in spite of being warm and sunny because it had been so cold. Thursday we had a slow run that continued overnight overflowing some of our tanks and we collected around 540 gallons, which we boiled of in about 18 hours on Thursday. Syrup was very light but have not canned or gradded it yet.

Today Saturday the 21st we will have temperatures in the low 40's but don't expect any run because it hase it has been getting into the low to mid teens. Next run expected about Wednesday.

So far we have canned 32 gallons and have another 8+ for canning

We now have a high and low level alarm in the head tank that, along with a water meter allows us to calculate boil off rate for about 50 minute periods. These calculated rates ranging from 34-38 gallons per hour.

[lharris1]

We had a four day run starting last Wednesday where the trees did not get reset with cold nights. We collected about 1100 gal. - not bad for one run on 390 taps. The last sap was low sugar content. Our total sap is about 3200 gal. for the season and we have made just over 60 gallons of syrup. We haven't had any problems keeping up with our small evaporator, so we are still looking for the real gusher that will give us some real challenges.

Looks like next Wednesday starts another warm up without cold nights, the turnning cold on Sunday.

We enjoyed a visit from my lawyer nephew and his wife, John and Julie from Columbia, SC over the weekend. They did some gentelmen maple syruping and did a little music - Guitar, mandolin, banjo and singing. I also had a great visit from friends Mike and Jill from the Charleston, WV area.

[lharris1]

We had a surprise run on Sunday, March 1st and we didn't check for a run. We barely got down to 32 degrees and it warmed up to around 37. Cold weather set in and now we have lots of ice in tanks. We estimate that we had at least 250 gal. It was in the low teens last night and should be about +5 tonight. Some of the ice will come in handy when it warms up into the upper 50's Friday and Saturday. A couple of tanks that filled to overflowing will be a bit of a problem. I plan to go back to the sugar camp Wednesday to get things cranking again.

[lharris1]

After the hard freeze early in the week things started to thaw out Wednesday and we started to collect and boil on Thursday and Friday boiling off around 400 gallons and we have another 300 in storage. Taps have not run hard but sugar content has been good. We may get another couple hundred gallons as everything stops running with the big warm up.

Three days with minimum temperatures in the 40's will be hard on our taps as they have been in four weeks anyway. Second half of next week could be good run weather - if anything is still running.

Total, we've processed about 3780 gallons of sap and canned over 67 gallons with 6-7 more for canning.

[lharris1]

We collected an boiled on 3/6-7-8 and boiled off over 1100 gal. This included a about 200 gallons that ran the previous Sunday and a lot of it had truned to ice. We had two cannings that took us just over 90 gallons.

We expected some sap after the temperature dipped to 27 F Last Wednesday (11th), but very little sap ran. Between Saturday and Monday (14th & 16th) we collected and boiled off about 120 gallons.

Taps are shutting down but we plan to stay open to see if anything runs following projected freezes Thursday and Friday. If we could get over 200 gallons we should reach 100 gallons of syrup. As of this Thursday our taps have been in 6 weeks.

[lharris1]

In spite of several days of ideal sap weather all of our taps have shut down. We collected the last little bit (about 15 gallons) and boiled out the evaporator. With some syrup from the last small run we canned another 7 gallons of very dark syrup, bringing the year total to 97.5 gallons. We will finish pulling taps and sanitizing today and call it a season.

Thanks to Brandon for some milk stone remover, we are trying it out in the syrup pan while using white vinegar in the sap pan. Boiled it yesterday and will probably let it set a few days.

[220 maple]

Grassy Meadows
Congrat's to a fellow West Virginia Sugar Camp on a suscessful year, we always want to make more but to have made some is what it's all about.
One of my favorite quotes from a deceased fellow syrupmaker, "There is only two seasons, Syrup Season and getting ready for Syrup Season", of coarse the getting ready season is the longest thats the bad news. Until next season enjoy that high quality WV maple syrup.

Mark 220 Maple