Disappointing Season? Sanford, Maine

[bussell]

Well, the taps have just about run dry and I have around 2.75 gallons. (Still a few gallons of watered down sap to boil - but not even enough for the arch. I'll have to use the propane tank.) Not bad for my first year of semi-serious boiling, but WAY below what I was hoping for or expecting.

Things were going ok until about mid-March when we got that warm spell that made all the taps dry up. My trees never produced what I was hoping for, and the sugar content was pretty low. I think my ration was 40 or 50 to 1.

Is anyone else disappointed in their yield this year?

[BRL]

Dissapointing year to say the least! Last year we made 62-63 gallons, this year we made 17 gallons, and this is on 400 taps! Next year will be differant, we hope to add another 1000 taps on vacuum. Its time to get serious:lol:

[red maples]

yes I did here it wasa bad year up there too. there was piece on the weather channel about a week or so ago about how bad it was. As low as 1/3 of normal as I recall.

[Revi]

We got about 2/3rds of last year, but it all showed up at times when we could boil it, was pretty light, we had a good time and nobody shot up our sugarhouse, so I think it's been a good season.

Short but sweet!

[boondocker]

very dissapointed, everything seemed to work very good but just not enough finished product. had 150 taps and ended up with around 7 gal. of med. amber and a couple pints of black sticky gooo:confused: but i am really looking forward to next season and stepping up a little more. i have some people in mind to talk to this summer about tapping on their land, found a great looking ridge not to far from my house that is south facing with very healthy good looking trees. the ridge i tapped this year did not pan out at all, but ya never know untill ya try.

[buxtonboiler]

I tapped 30% more trees and made the same amount of syrup. Oh well, there is always next year.

[tessiersfarm]

same trees here with 25% less syrup but only 10% less sap, call it what you will but I didn't get too excited about the whole deal.

[Maple Ridge]

I tapped a week earlier this year and added more taps, so I was able to make more than last year. I ended up with a little over 5 gal. I am sure I could have made more if the weather was better. But as everyone else says, there is next year. I am going to build my sugar house this year, and look for a 2X6 evaperator. I hope to post pics as I go if I can figure out how to do it.

[stephen wheeler]

Our taps pretty much dried up when the warm spell hit in March also.

We collected about 70 gallons of sap total this year and we finished with about 1 1/3 gallons of med. amber syrup.

Last year we tapped 7 trees with 5 gallon buckets. We boiled on a woodstove in the yard with a stainless turkey pan. -then finished on the kitched stove. We used coffee filters to filter the finished syrup. the finished syrup did not drain very well through the coffee filters. After a few days there was a cloudy mass at the bottom of the bottles.

this year we tapped about 45 trees with 5 gallon buckets and about 60 taps. Some trees gave almost no sap while others gave maybe a couple of gallons.

We decided to purchase a wool cone filter and paper prefilters this year. We boiled with propane this year and a large stainless pot. Before finishing the syrup on the stove we poured the "almost syrup" through the wool filter and then took it in the house to finish it. We put hot water through the wool filter first (we were told to do this where we purchased the filters) and shook the water out of it. when it was time to pour the hot syrup through the wool filter - it did not go through very well at all. We did this process on two occasions this year. both times with not very good results. we felt as though much syrup was wasted in the wool filter.
I wonder if anyone uses a filter (for small amounts of syrup) that works better than the wool cone filters.
I have read a number of articles about letting the syrup settle for a few days to get clear syrup. I would like to not have to do this if possible.

We hope to increase next year to maybe 75 trees (100 taps).
It would be nice to have a filter system that really worked well for a small volume of syrup.
I think it is possible too that I have not used the filters that we purchased this year correctly.
In any case this was our second year collecting and boiling and we have really enjoyed the process.
The Lord has blessed us with a wonderful piece of property that we enjoy living on everyday.
I have enjoyed reading many entries from Maple Trader.com

[Revi]

We wet our filters before we pour through them every time. We have a large flat filter and pour about 2 or 3 gallons through it at a time.

It seems to work. We wash it out after every couple of pour-offs.

I would not say that this was a dissapointing season at all.

We weren't expecting to do better than last year, because I have learned that there is no way to predict anything in the maple business.

That's what makes it so interesting.

We started early and ended early, which is fine by me.

[TapME]

shortest season here that I can remember, got things ready for the first week in Mrach and started to tap then and were done 16 days after the first run. Put in 150 more taps than last year and made about the same amout of syrup. Makes me wonder how this next year will be. Hope for lots of sun and average rain and an average winter and we may get an average amount of syrup. Looking to next year.