-20c on the thermometer outside my kitchen window this morning. Brrrr. Forecasting 25-30 cm of snow on Friday. Not a great start to the syrup season.
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-20c on the thermometer outside my kitchen window this morning. Brrrr. Forecasting 25-30 cm of snow on Friday. Not a great start to the syrup season.
It was only -12° here this morning and will briefly reach +1 this afternoon. +3 Thursday and Friday, with more rain than snow in the forecast. Today I reheat and thaw my sap in the pan and may boil later on Thursday and for sure Friday depending on the rain. I should make syrup one of those two days.
Next week looks to be when the season will truly start.
An article in Orilliamatters on maple syrup:
https://www.orilliamatters.com/local...county-6711404
The temperatures are looking great for next week and the week after.
I made maple syrup yesterday for the first time in my new pan. Next boil will be Tuesday. We are getting lake effect snow right now and -13° tonight, but soon things will change.
I tapped today and some trees were dripping a bit, no big flow.
Thanks for the update. I think I will go to my property this afternoon and tap my trees as well.
My neighbour’s are tapping Monday or Tuesday, likely Tuesday.
I will be boiling Tuesday or Wednesday depending on Monday’s flows.
I had a 60 watt bulb in a trouble light under my pan. It did not quite stand up to the -15° temps this morning, so the sap partially froze, but it warmed to -2 and most of the sap is thawed now. I am not sure I will need to do that again, but I will try and get a 100 watt bulb for next time.
I will likely drain and clean my pan tomorrow afternoon.
We have 640 or so tapped as of 10 days ago- just enough sap so far to flush the lines modestly.
Looks like things will start in earnest this Wednesday
300 tapped. 200 to go. Will get on it tomorrow. Still have a few days before first boil. Sap has to be enough to be pumped up the hill to the RO tank and run through that. I only bring mine up to max 16 brix. Then into the the evaporator. Late start for sure. Hoping to do a filter demo for a friend later this week. He wants to build a vacuum filter rig like mine. He only has 100 taps so might scale it down for him. I am working on the simplest and cheapest version of it for back-yarders. Ideally it will come in less than 50 bucks. Inspired by a girlfriend that does 20 taps and needs a better solution than cone filters. Will see if it works.
For several days now they forecasted +1 for today, but it would be above freezing for about 7 hours. This morning the forecast said it would reach +3. It rose to +1 quickly this morning in the sunshine. But it clouded over and the temperature has stalled at +1.3. The snow on the roofs is not melting and the sap is not flowing, at least not yet.
It is amazing the difference the sunlight makes. Tomorrow is supposed to be +3, hopefully the sap will run tomorrow. My original plan was for the sap from today combined with the sap from tomorrow would make for a good boil on Wednesday.
Minimal flows yesterday for me. Today which had been forecasted to be +4 is now forecasted to be +2 and tomorrow which had been forecasted to be +8 is now +4.
The season will start when it starts. The clock is ticking on my taps. Next year I will wait to tap until mid March.
The taps I tapped back in December are still flowing. I am waiting for the lines to flow well again, so I can make a comparison from the December lines with the February lines with the March lines.
Mid to late March 93 taps in West Nippissing today. Now I'll just sit back and let nature take its course.
Some trees were dripping good some trees were not dripping at all.
The sun miraculously came out and it all of a sudden warmed up to 4.3° and in the afternoon the sap started to run. I collected 33 gallons at 5 pm and it was still running 4 hours later.
I will collect more tomorrow and boil tomorrow afternoon.
Some lines were streaming steadily for awhile.
Tomorrow should be a good flow day, but I am learning like fishing that the sap flows are unpredictable sometimes.
This is killing me. Only 1 partial boil so far.
I saved up 870L of sap this week. Ran through the RO to 200L at 11%. Fired up the evaporator and was finished in no time at all. Drew all of it off to finish it as a batch. The early, early season stuff is my daughter's favourite. It tastes like rice crispy squares. Hardly any maple flavour, only butter, vanilla and marshmallow. Wound up with 18 L finished and my pan is sweet now for continuous flow. That is if we ever get a proper run.
I'm getting antsy as well. I have minimal sap and nothing running today.
I have collected 43% of the sap I collected last year. Still no big flows and the only thing saving me is the number of taps. We have had a snow storm most of the day so far, but it is supposed to warm up soon and stay warm for most of the night, so there may be sap in the barrels tomorrow morning. The coming two weeks still look good for flows.
I have had three boils so far, next one scheduled for Monday. I made maple syrup snow candy for my neighbour’s kids this afternoon.i enjoyed that.
Edit: It is 4:30 pm, the snow (5 cms) has stopped and it is more a driving rain, almost freezing rain. Temperatures have not made it quite to +1 yet and the sap is really running in the lines.(“running” is a relative term) A fair amount has already collected in the barrels. There may be a decent amount in the barrels come morning. I always find sap flow a little bit of a mystery.
I tapped 60 trees last weekend. Walked out with my son yesterday to check it out. We got 35gallons, Not that much, but I think I might go boil it tomorrow. Not much to do in this weather anyways and I would like to try a small boil in my new sugar shack to make sure everything is ok. I setup a little blower on the back of the evaporator off a battery and invertor. Not sure how long it will last. But If can at least get it up and boiling quickly that would be nice.
The lines are still running at 5 minutes to midnight. It will drop below freezing in the next hour with the lines full of sap.
I know the one barrel I have been checking has the most sap in it yet this year. Once again the most is a relative term, I never see flows of a gallon a tap, but it will be considerably more than I have been getting. I never would have expected it from a day like today.
Tonight it will drop to -1. I hope maybe a little lower. It will start flowing again by 11 am.
The line I tapped on December 27th is still flowing as well as the other lines based on my observations on what comes out of the lines.
Yesterday which did not look like a sap running day produced my greatest daily total so far of 60 gallons. Go figure. I am boiling today with 90 available gallons of sap to boil.
Last night only dropped to -2, but there is bright sun today and the sap is running. Tonight will drop to -6 and +4 tomorrow, so that will be another sap day.
I have collected 50% of the sap I collected last year.
Today’s forecasted high was +4, but I think it reached +7. This morning I collected the most sap of the season and I am pretty sure that when I collect tomorrow morning it will beat this mornings count.
Tonight will be -7 and tomorrow +5, it should be another great flow day.
I made 10.75 L of syrup today.
I made 10.75 L of syrup last night. I collected 68 gallons of sap this morning, my season’s best to date.
Last night went down to -6 and although today was forecasted to reach +4, it is now forecasted to reach +8. The sap is flowing well again. I likely will have another boil tomorrow.
There might be a one day pause in flow on Thursday, (and a slow flow on Wednesday) but the rest of the two week forecast looks like good flow days.
I have collected 58.5% of the sap compared to last year so far and I have made more syrup so far than last year.
And the line I tapped on December 27 is still flowing well.
Maximum Flow Date/Dates (could be a day or two or three of consecutive dates ) are very handy dates to keep track of for use in the future! And very FUN dates to have lively taps in the trees on.
I have noticed over the years that they are rarely outside of a week of the average max flow date through the years.
Even in this craziest of years it was still almost spot on it for me.
Thanks I will keep track of that. These right now are matching my last year’s best flow dates. I may yet pay the price for tapping early and the taps starting to close, but I am ahead of last year’s sap and syrup.
Next year I will wait for March to start, but for this year, there has been a number of positives starting early, least of which was an early start to the divided pan learning curve.
I had a peak at my barrels and my collection tomorrow morning will be greater than this mornings which was greater than the day before.
-6 tonight and +5 tomorrow, so that should be another good flow day, then it slows down for two days.
Note to self from today, when you are pulling off the pan late at dusk, have your glasses with you so you can see the needle move down. I cut the draw off a little short as it was hard to see the needle.
Edit, the sap, was still running slowly at 10:50 pm.
My pan was also still steaming almost 4 hours after I stopped adding wood. Every drop of sap in my feed tank will be needed.
Sap just starting to flow here. Pumped 900 Litres out of the bush yesterday and ran it through the RO last night. Down to 200 this morning so time to fire up the beast and make some syrup. -10c on the thermometer this morning. Its a good morning to be in the steamy maple spa.
For reference, I can sometimes get 2500 Litres of sap on a very good day.
It started flowing for me too, collected a decent amount yesterday. The bush trees are just starting to wake up. Tonight should be a better collection.
I had my best collection day this season and just beating my last year’s best. I collected 86 gallons / 325 L. -8° last night and a forecasted +5 today, so it should be another good flow day.
I have collected 69% of the total sap from last season.
I'm all taped in as of March 19. Winter is still giving us some bursts of snow now and then but the days in between have been good. Made a couple good collections this week. First boil this week end.
Good luck with your first boil.
It warmed up here above freezing for about two hours, then a cold front moved in with colder temperatures, some snow and lots of wind. Our power is out. Our next flow day will be Friday and Saturday should be my next boil day, depending on the rain and wind.
Brrrrr. -10c on the thermometer this morning. Late start for sure. Last year by this time I had 140 L put away. This year I have 19L in bottles. Looks good on the forecast tho....
-11° this morning and likely no flow today. The next two following days will be interesting. On Friday if the forecast holds, the sap will start to flow at noon. The weather actually warms overnight, so the sap could flow all night and into Saturday. Lots of rain during that time. The temperature then starts to drop just after noon on Saturday. My plan if the rain slows, is to start boiling by 7 or 8 am with my stored 65 gallons of sap and then start collecting around 11 am and boil until the weather stops me.
Well the weatherman got that wrong. Yesterday around noon time it was supposed to warm up and the snow turn to rain. It barely warmed up and we received 8 to 10 cms of heavy wet snow. It did warm enough eventually for the snow to turn to rain, but not near as much as forecasted and not enough to make the fresh snow disappear. It also did not warm up near as much as forecasted. Sap flow was not what was expected.
I did boil today with sap I had stored, then in the afternoon the winds changed and strong, cold and snowy north winds came, cutting off my plans to boil longer.
Next boil will be Tuesday.
7 L of syrup made today. I have collected 81% of the sap I had collected last year. I am ahead in L of syrup made, but last year I made a lot in the first week of April, so it will be a battle to stay ahead.
I did my first boil today. I'm glad I was in my shack, freezing rain, snow and ice pellets.
I couldn't finish on the propane since for that I'm outside and the winds were crazy this afternoon. I will finish tomorrow morning.
I was in Sudbury yesterday and drove home despite warnings the roads would be bad, which they were not. This is a picture of my daughter’s neighbour’s driveway today. It was bare yesterday. I am sure glad we came home when we did.
I was thinking about how your boil went.
Attachment 23119
https://share.icloud.com/photos/040A...HVBx0agaYQd46A
Yikes I hope this changes!
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0ddt...3r9uC9_y10wdBw
Could be a hard stop without cool nights to hold the sap over
Collected by far the most sap after a slow day yesterday and a big day today. Collected 106 gallons. Tomorrow will be a big boil day with 156 gallons of sap available to boil. I only see three boils left including tomorrow’s.