tapped in northfield ct

[markct]

i tapped in my 325 taps here in northfield on saturday, only flowed a bit over the weekend and probably wont till a week or so unfourtanatly, probably not the best timing but there in!

[DaveB]

Good luck Mark...you never know, you might get some good runs. Even a little bit can help.

I tapped early in February last year thinking I would get some good runs based on the weather forecast and they never materialized that well. However, my sap flowed until the very last week of March, so I get sap here and there until that week of February all the way through March. I finished boiling the last week of March and even had some run the next week!

Dave

[markct]

yea last year at the end of march most of my trees budded out, and being such a small scale i stopped boiling since there isnt much market for just a couple quarts of commercial buddy syrup. but the trees flowed a week or so after that so if i was on the scale i am this year i surely woulda boiled it all and sold it bulk at the end

[markct]

so did i mess up and make myself miss out on the sap later in the season by tapping too early, its been a week now and so far out 325 taps i got only about 75 gallons total, and it doesnt look like it will warm up for another few days, then just a couple days and cold again. i hope this doesnt mean im gona miss alot of the end of the season, the only good thing i suppose is that almost all my taps and tubing are new so i have heard that makes them run longer so maybe i will be ok for this year? atleast i have been gettin all the little things done in the sugarhouse that were usable but not complete if ya know what i mean. i might make a skimmer and scoop outa stainless if it doesnt flow for another few days. last week i made a 2 inch dia tall hydrometer cup, last year i just had my homemade 1 inch dia short style cup since i had a much smaller evaporator. just today i steam cleaned my stainless barrels, two 7 gallon and two 15 gallon ones, beer kegs that i cut the neck out and welded in 2 inch threaded bungs, pressure tested them with soapy water and found one tiny pinhole in a weld so gota touch that one up before it gets syrup! then during the first time i pumped out my sap tank, it just had a tiny bit in it, the recoil starter housing on my brand new 2 cycle techumseh pump broke off the little round part that the rope spool rotates on, so some creative machining and thats as good as new! glad it happened before i had hundreds of gallons waiting. i do have a backup pump, an old homelite that i used last year, but i hadnt had the camlock fittings in it yet but now its ready to go too for being thrown into action when needed

[Mike Van]

Mark, the weather's always going to be a crap-shoot, you just don't know. When it's this cold [teens at night, barely 32 daytime] I don't think any tapholes are de-grading, it's just too cold for bacteria to start. As wacky as it's become, a few 70 degree days in early or mid March could end it all then. We should be running Thursday - Friday this week - Keep the faith!

[DaveB]

Mark,

I was up at Bascom's on the 16th and they told me that they started tapping in January because they have so many taps. They have a crew of people and it's all they do. They have over 50,000 taps. They make syrup until April, so if they are tapping so early, I don't see why you would be effected so much.

I'm in the Northeast Hills (I think you are in the NW Hills), so our weather is about the same and my rule of thumb has been to tap the second week of February IF the 7 day forecast looks good. If not, I'll tap on the third weekend (like I did this year).

I know that we'll get good some runs later this week so hold in there!

Dave

[markct]

well today i finaly got some meaninfull amounts of sap from my trees, not a great run, but about 45 gallons in my tank with 150 taps fed to it, and about 20 or so on the tank with 75 taps, not great but enough to run the evaporator for a little bit atleast, the last few times have been barely enough sap to warm up the 2x8. and they were still running strong today when i checked them at about 7 pm so maybe there will be a decent amount by morning and by tommorow afternoon since it looks pretty warm tommorow altho not very sunny

[ebourassa]

I hope to boil tomorrow night, i have roughly 100-125 gals in my tanks with 390 taps, i thought i would have more but hopefully it will run good tomorrow, its not suppose to freeze tonite so maybe we'll get an alnighter run, looking forward for tomorrow.
erik

[swierczt]

I was a little dissapointed with todays run too...I expect at least a gallon per tap once the temp gets over 40...hopefully tomorrow will bring enough to boil for the weekend...but rain usually doesn't help the sap run.

[zippy1wood]

Hello to everyone taped and collected some today have 70 buckets out
also only 1/4 full thought it would be better. I went out to close up chicken coop and checked a bucket it was dripping good at 7.00 pm who knows might go some tonight raynham MA