Glutten for Punishment or False Hope?

[valleyman]

I've cleaned all my barrels, buckets, filters, pans, and everything is stored, EXCEPT for my spouts. They're still in and after Thursday it looks like a 2-4 night period of below freezing. As of today, I think the sugar maple buds are still tight but the reds are getting colorful.

I'm going to hold out in hopes for a 1/2 gallon (+/-) more of finished and put my buckets back out. What the heck? It's only once a year, right? :rolleyes:

[Mike Van]

I'm with you valleyman, Tomorrow night maybe, but Thu, Fri, Sat & maybe Sun for frost now shown on NOAA. :)

[valleyman]

yeah Mike thats what I saw. It looks to go well below freezing according to them. If I can get 2 or 3 days I'm thinking one last batch. I'm sure the sugar count will be low but I have a feeling it'll be a good run.:D

[Mike Van]

28 this morning, I'll know in a few hours if the wait was for naught ~

[DaveB]

Same for me over in Stafford. Temps the next few nights look good and I think I'm going spend a few hours tomorrow morning redrilling some of my taps to see what I can get. It's been such a poor production year I'll take what I can get. I chased the sweet out of my pan last week and got an additional 5 gallons making my seasonal total 15 gallons if you can believe that. I should have made that every week!

I saved 5 gallons of sweet that I can use to resweeten my pans and I'm hoping I can get a few hundred gallons this weekend. I can use every drop I get! Everything is still setup, so why not? In a good year we'd all be still boiling now so I don't know why so many people are giving up.

Dave

[Mike Van]

Well, everything I had running just 6 days ago is done - :cry: A week ago, I tapped 6 trees that were a long walk, those are running but thats it. There was 4 more there, I tapped those this morning. I'll see how much I can get out of 10 taps in the next week. What a crummy year.

[DaveB]

I went to one of my sugar bushes close to where I work to ream the tap holes and I was quite surprised to see the taps were moist. They weren't running a whole bunch, but they were doing something. I figure that it was only 29 or so this morning after having been above 32 for a while. I'm hopeful that tomorrow night's 15 will freeze them pretty good and give me one more run. Tomorrow I'm reaming the rest of my sugar maples. Heck, a day in the woods with my maples is better than a day at work, right?

I don't have any buds on my sugar maples....just the reds. I can always sell the syrup as commercial. :rolleyes:

Dave

[Mike Van]

Most of the taps I pulled started to run right after. There's a small part of the hole where the tap seals against the tree that never gets air. Putting the tap back in, seals it back up. They won't drip much or for long from this small area.

[batsofbedlam]

It dropped to 20 degrees here last night. The ground was frozen hard as a rock. I turned my vacuum on let it run all day. 21" at the start of the day until the lines thawed. Vacuum dropped to 12" by 5pm, probably sucking nothing but gas. Collected maybe 5 gallons of what looked like milk off of 340 taps.
My season is over!

[DaveB]

I still want to see what will happen on Monday & Tuesday after thawing out a bit. The high was only 40 here and and tonight's low will be in the teens again. That's a pretty cold stretch after having been so warm.

My understanding is that red maples stop producing sap after a while but sugar maples will still produce. I have about 150 of those that don't have any buds on them and I want to see what they will do.

Heck, the season may be over but we'll see. If I have something, great, if not, it's clean up time.

Dave

[DaveB]

23 this morning after a high of 41 yesterday. I don't think things that froze yesterday morning had a chance to thaw out much by yesterday afternoon so this has been a good long freeze. It would have been nice to have a couple of weeks ago, but it's what we have.

I have no idea how the trees will respond, but I know that my sugar maples have not budded yet. The red maples sure have....I was walking in my woods yesterday spotting maples that I had not seen before.

I have about 45 buckets hanging on trees around my church so they are all yard trees with big crowns. I checked after mass this morning and the ones I saw were running, so we'll see. The sap seemed clear and there was some ice in there from yesterday.

Dave

[valleyman]

DONE DEAL in Ansonia. It was false hope.

I gathered 5 gallons of pretty clear sap and thought I would get 8 oz or so for a farewell boil on propane. Boiling wasn't the same as usual. The pot had an excessive amount of whitish residue and the sap/syrup remained cloudy to the bitter end. Well I had my daughter do her usual taste taste and she looked at me like I gave her something unidentifiable like the blindfold taste game we played as kids.

She said it was horrible. Tasted like sweet oinions with an aftertaste of dirty water.:(

Oh well i tried. It was still nice to be staring at boiling liquid for one last time.

Now I'm going to be modifying my block arch to a brick oven pizza oven. I have a good plan on the new oven. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks everyone for sharing all the information this season.

[Mike Van]

I picked up 30+ gals the last two days from the 10 trees I tapped last week. I've boiled it down to about 4 gals. So far, it looks & smells good. In the next day or two, i'll boil it right on down. I'm all done, as they aren't showing any more frost 10 days out. Better luck to us all next year. :)

[DaveB]

Good to hear Mike!!! I haven't boiled (or collected from all my collection spots yet) so I guess I have a chance of getting something useful.

Dave

[DaveB]

I finally was able to get out this afternoon and collect the sap from last weekend. I would normally have done this in 'real time' but weather and other factors prevented me.

So, I collected about 22 gallons from the 45 buckets on trees out in the open and about 150 gallons from the trees in the woods (about 75 taps). Along with the sweet I have, I should have enough to finish starting tomorrow. The sap is cloudy, but does not smell buddy.

I'm glad I was able to get something and I might be the last person boiling in Connecticut?! :o

Dave

[valleyman]

You probably are You bum!!:lol:
I was pulling out some spouts today between bailing my cellar and they all were still running.:(

When I posted the other day when my daughter said my syrup was horrible tasting, she was eating gum just before so I think that had something to do with the off taste. I thought it was pretty tasty on my eggos with peanut butter and syrup.

Good luck Dave and I'll try to be the last sapman standing in CT next season!

[Mike Van]

I did the last 20 gal I had yesterday, going to vac. out the ash from the arch today & pour the vinegar to the pan.