2010 Season Overview

[Dan W]

Jan 19, I tapped and hung 160 buckets.

Mar 5, Reamed all taps.

Mar 7, Moved about 24 buckets from the reamed holes that weren't producing.

Mar 11, Last day of collecting. Hasn't been below freezing since.

March 15-19, Cleaned evaporator, washed buckets and spouts, cleaned all pots and other supplys in sugar house. Put everything away and staightened up.

Sap collected
Jan 19-26 215 gallons
Feb 20-25 242 gallons
Mar 1-11 730 gallons

Sap
1187 gallons @ 7.4 gallons/tap

Syrup
20.5 gallons @ .128 gallons/tap

Even though the season only produced half of what I hoped for, all in all I had a fun year with the new rig and sugar house. Sure hope Mother Nature cooperates and treats us better next year.
I AM OFFICIALLY DONE FOR THE SEASON

[Dennis H.]

Here are my results for the year.

The only thing that the log doesn't show is the little over 1 gal of syrup that I lost in a major booboo that happened while trying to finish it!!! Long story.

I ended up making 5 gals of syrup.

[waysidemaple]

tapped 2-20-10, 95 taps. Pulled all the taps today and finshed what i had left. Grand total of 13 gallons of syrup.

[Russell Lampron]

Dennis how many taps do you have on the vacuum? The sap totals seem rather low to me.

[Dennis H.]

I had 71 taps on vac this year. The vac was running at 22"

Compared to last year where I made 10 gals this year sucked. Last year was on 150 buckets.

The sugar content of the sap was terrible. Last year I was always above 1.5%. I am wondering if all the rain we had down here last year was the reason for the low sugar content.

I think also snow had a role in limiting the amount of sap I got per tree. Right before the big freeze that we got in Feb we got 2' of snow. The temps went to prime sugar'in temps but we still had 1 1/2' of snow on the ground but once the snow was gone the night time temps never went back anywhere near freezing. That is when I started to get cloudy sap and made some real DARK syrup and the sugar content went to 1%.

I hated to see what I would have gotten if I was still on buckets!!

In a weird way I was kind of happy I didn't get much more sap each day because my tiny evap wouldn't be able to handle much more than that but it could have went a week or two longer.

[deacm]

1. Tapped and hung 39 buckets on March 4th
2. Had only one week of the sap running well enough to collect
3. Pulled taps March 21st.....the last two weeks I did NOTHING but hope the sap would flow enough.......never did.
4. Total production: 3 gallons of syrup in three separate nights of boiling

I pulled my taps yesterday. I guess the good news for this poor year is that I only had to work a week to get my yield (about half what I usually make). I tapped on March 4th, boiled three times in the next week (hardly getting 45 gallons of sap each time out of my 39 taps) and ended up with 3 gallons of syrup. I give it away for gifts each year so there are going to be some disappointed relatives this year.The sap hardly flowed at all weeks two and three and never got 40+ gallons of sap again. It was strange only working one week to get my yield. THAT'S never happened before.

[theschwarz1]

These are my totals of sap that I collected and delivered to my boiler. This was on about 30 taps
28 gal at 3.2% 3/5/10
20 gal. 3/9/10
10 gal. 3/10/10
18 gal. 3/12/10
10 gal. 3/13/10
40 gal. 3/17/10
40 gal. 3/19/10

Al the sap was at 3% to 3.2%.
I am leaving the taps in for this weeks weather forecast.