Tapping in Ontario

nothing happening at all here today. did pretty well yesterday. The only thing flowing today is the mud rivers in the field

Sorry to hear nothing happening down their Brent Things just started today for us, got all 350 taps in on the gravity, we got about 30 gallons of sap, we will see what happens tomorrow.

well I can now say with some real world authority that 130 gallons is not enough to sweeten and take your first draw on a 2 x 6. Got it up to about 45% and ran out. Nothing running in the bush today either.

Did play with the air injector, had a blower on one and you could see the fire change colour to a whiter brighter yellow and the roar went up . I put in two tubes. Only had one going today. Going to make some kind of rig so I can have both blowing for the next boil. Looks good so far. No backdraft even with the doors open and one fan on. Stack temp went up about 50 degrees.

don't feel bad Brent it dried up here too. 33 taps and only about 40 litres in 24 hours it ran like mad for the first few hours then pretty much stopped. It's good for me though I haven't finished building my arch yet, probably won't be ready to boil till tues or wed.

Tapped 97 on Saturday morning - most were flowing pretty well. Didn't freeze Saturday night, so only the larger trees continued to run on Sunday. We collected 25 gals Sunday evening after the 2 days. Weather looks good for this week though.

As an aside - I have a mix of large trees (30" plus) and smaller trees (under 18") and I have noticed a definite trend where the smaller trees always start first after cold weather, but the larger trees flow for longer. Interestingly the total amount of sap per tap seems to be about the same regardless. Wonder if others have noticed similar trends.

Weather here is
cold, and forcast is cold all week, hardly going above freezing at the best,
mostly minus's.But we all know that can change. Weather is very regional,
went to Ottawa yesterday, 40 minutes north of here, they still have snow
on the fields, here bare except for along the fence rows and in bush.About
the tree sizes, the big ones seem to be the best.What I don't get is why there are some trees that are "duds", just won't run no matter where you tap
it, but still produces leaves and grows? I don't worry about tapping untill March 17, but will admit, Thursday and Friday's warm days got me "stirred".

We got 3400 taps in Saturday & Sunday. We only had 2 tapping crews going and decided yesterday afternoon to get some tanks washed and check for leaks instead of tapping the last 600 in the upper bush. The sap ran some both days but it barely froze Friday & Saturday night so it didn't run well. With the forecast for the week it looks like we'll boil on Wednesday.

I tapped last thursday night and boiled about 12 gallons on saturday afternoon to make a little more than a quart of syrup. The taste was great.
New evaporator lesson # 1 - 12 gallons of sap is definately not enough sap to start a boil as I was frantically shoveling hot coals out of the firebox after 2 hours to keep my pan from burning!
Lots to learn!

Does someone have a good way of filtering small batch lots of syrup?

I had a couple of trees drip today. I have two cups of sap now. At this rate will be May before I have a bucket full.

We got 750 buckets tapped and hung Sat. 250 buckets and 200 pipe line tapped on Sun. So I'm just waiting on my new stack base tomorrow and the sap can flow/run/pour!!