I tapped a small sugarbush (8 trees, 9 taps) at a middle school in High, Point NC, on January 20th, 2011. We already boiled-off 6 gallons of sap on Monday, January 24th, 2011, and produced 20 ounces of syrup.
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I tapped a small sugarbush (8 trees, 9 taps) at a middle school in High, Point NC, on January 20th, 2011. We already boiled-off 6 gallons of sap on Monday, January 24th, 2011, and produced 20 ounces of syrup.
What type of maples are you tapping? Congrats, that figures to 2.24% sugar in the sap. You are most likely the farthes south of any producers. What are your lowest temperatures? I'm surprised you can make syrup that far south!
Thanks, maple flats.
I tapped all sugar maple. We are outside the natural range of sugar maple; however, I believe that like a lot of maples they were planted for aesthetic purposes. I will boil another 15-20 gallons this Monday. Based on the refractometer that I used, the first batch of sap had a sugar content of close to 3% (I may need to recalibrate it). The syrup was very light, and tasted like caramel/butterscotch.
I can say confidently that we are the southeastern most producer in the Southeast, there are, however, a few commercial producers in the southwestern part of NC at much higher elevation (we are at 850 compared to 2,500 plus ft above sea level)
I suppose there must be some producers in the elevated sections SC and GA as well.
Wouldn't you do better to tap Southern Yellow Pine and use turpentine and lard as a condiments on your waffles and grits.
It wouldn't surprise me if the Vanderbilt Mansion (Biltmore). near Asheville. has a sugarbush plantation. A number of agricultural specialties, formal landscaping, and forest management efforts are part of the large complex.
It's possible.
Southern Yellow Pine, also known as longleaf pine, is mostly a coastal plain species, therefore, that would probably be difficult and not extremely tasty. Further, I'm a Yankee, and do not like grits.
Today is our second boil-off of the season with 12 gallons of sap at close to 3%. We have had great weather for sap flow over the couple weeks and I'm collecting a lot more sap than anticipated. High Point, NC, has on average, 30 days between 1/1 and 3/1 of ideal meteorological conditions that would facilitate sap flow.
I am in central NY and I have never had 30 days sap flow in a season. My best to date is 23 days. You might do very well.
That is based on the weather records over the last 10 years. We will see what happens, so far, so good!
Second boil-off produced 1.4 quarts! We have 15 more gallons to boil Thursday. No sap flow over the last two days, temperatures have not gone below 35 degrees F over the last 2 days.
Fall and winter pictures of our sugarbush:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5906881...ki%40gmail.com