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Left this am before things thawed and came home at 5pm to just under 1 gpt. Had to chase a few leaks but got the vac. back up to 27" and sap is still flowing well. Should be an interesting few days with warm temps. and then some sugar snow for open house weekend. Looks like I'll be boiling tomorrow...
.75 gpt today testing 2.6, sap moon!
Sap ran last night and I woke up to 4500 gallons in the tank. Sap is still running at 150 gph but should pick up during the day. My vacuum is down to 25.5 in the woods so today I plan to find and fix the leaks.
Spud
we had hoped for an all-night run, but we ended up freezing around midnight with temps as low as 22F. I went down around 1:30AM to find pump cavitating due to the freeze. I hadn't bothered to set the regulator, thinking we'd stay in the mid 30's all night but no luck. hopefully this cold valley will work to our benefit in a few weeks...
Moderate freeze up here on the hill. Sap ran all night lightly (just some areas froze, others didn't). About 8,000 gal of sap at 2.6 Brix being concentrated right now. Will most likely boil tomorrow.
Realized I should include a cautionary note....we store our concentrate in a refrigerated bulk tank until we boil. If we didn't refrigerate it, we would boil it immediately -- concentrate does not store well.
Trees woke up finally yesterday, bunch of 1/2 full buckets, one overflowing and the 3/16 ran all night ! Looks like I will have my first ( and latest ever ) boil this weekend ! Hope the temps stay good for at least next week !
3rd boil of season. And, our first barrel ever.
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Philip Young, a teacher at Essex Middle School, in Essex, VT, sent me this photo earlier today of the sugar content in the sap bucket from one of their trees. They do a unit on maple. This is straight from the tree - NOT concentrate. He's called me in the past to talk about the sweet trees there. You don't find them like this real often.
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Sweet Jesus!Quote:
Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins
Holy Mackerel, imagine having 100 like that