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Brandon,
My trees have been froze since last Sunday, I thought I was going to get a Thaw on Wendesday, The temperture was 47 degrees at Spruce Knob at daylight, I never got over 34 degrees for the day. And it rained like crazy all Wendesday mourning and froze on everything it hit. Wendesday night back down to 17 degrees, Thursdays it warmed up to 41 degrees they still didn't run, Thursday evening 28 degrees by 8 PM, I had to come back to Harrisonburg to my real job, I checked the weather station for Upper Tract WV ( the closest one to my camp) before 6 AM friday it was 46 degrees, If they didn't run today then they are not going to run. High temp for the day was 49. I'm going to try and get a hold of my helper by phone to see what happened, I need a web cam like the Procter Maple Research Center, The one thing that I did accomplish on my two days off, I got some more trees opened. I'm should be around 1600 plus now, Hoping to finish up Monday or Tuesday. It sure looks like syrup weather and we have the moisture.
Mark 220 Maple
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Mark,
It got up to about 47 here today with lots of sun until around 1pm and then clouds. Trees should run up to 8 or 9 tonight before shutting down. It was all sun here yesterday in low 40's with no wind and the sun felt hot, but the trees probably didn't run 20 gallon from 350 taps due to being froze. They were running good this afternoon, not full blast, but good and steady. I picked up 200 gallon and that was from last weekend. I hope to get another 150 to 200 gallon by tommorrow evening and boil it off tommorrow. Looks like it may run all day Sunday and Sun night into Monday before getting cold until Wed. Hopefully I can get another 200 to 400 gallon from Sat evening until it quits on Monday and boil that off on Wed. Next Wed thru Sat looks good, but too early at this point.
Good luck and I would guess you got a good run today! Keep me posted!
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Picked up another 290 gallons yesterday from the 350 taps. It was running really good yesterday, especially the new bush I tapped on Thurs, it was running like gangbusters. Wind picked up last night and very high today, so it will likely shut down things. Supposed to get back to cold tommorrow night until Wed and then some warmup again.
Boiled off the 490 gallons yesterday which included the 200 gallons I picked up Friday evening which was 6 days old but still nice and clear and good sap.
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Dang is sugar season here already?????? Yawn just woke up from a long winters nap :) :) Go get em Brandon !!! our cell phones don't like each other huh... they keep leaving msg. on each LOL
Talk with you soon
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Welcome back Mr Jim, glad the groundhog could get out of his burrow.
Picked up 210 to 220 gallons of sap today that run from Sat evening thru Sunday night. Supposed to be cold here into next week, so appears won't be any sap flow until sometime next week. Hopefully boil off what I picked up tommorrow or Thurs.
I did get two sap samples today, 1 prior to UV and one after UV. Will store these in a controlled enviroment and check progress on each one each day and see what happens. Hopefully I can get a few more samples as the season progresses.
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Boiled off 210 gallons today that I had collected on Tues from last weekend. Canned off everything so far that I had drawn off today and it was about 18.5 gallons. Everything was medium and had a very lighter flavor. I boiled evaporator down to about 1/4" and drained it and ran everything thru filter press after I had ran the second batch thru it and dumped everything back into the syrup pan and flushed out the flue pan with a water hose and drained out the water and left it empty. Aprox 15 gallons in syrup pan and none in the flue pan ready for a run hopefully next week.
Still watching the UV sap samples I have stored in my garage which is aprox 50 degrees and dark. Untreated sap appears to be getting a little cloudy aprox 36 hours later and the treated sap is crystal clear. Be interesting to see what happens, I hope to be able to do 3 or 4 more samples at least thru the end of the season.
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Picked up close to 300 gallons this evening from 350 taps that I have in so far. Should run into the night tonight and then warm back up overnight and start raining. Will probably shut down sometime tommorrow with the wind and rain and cold tommorrow night. Hope to get another 200 to 300 before it quits and boil off everything on Wed.
Looks like the other 175 taps going in on Sat which will be all my taps and 4 weeks after I tapped the initial 237 and 15 days after I tapped the second bush of 113. At this point, it looks like it will be "bar the door" Sunday thru Tues. Hope they move it up a couple of days until like Wed, but we'll see what happens. The 175 are all on the north side with a lot of slope, but they pour the sap.
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Brandon-
What's your totals so far? Never give up, PMA, remember.
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I picked up another 100 gallon this morning to advoid any runovers in the bush with 113 taps. Hope to have a couple hundred more gallon by the time it quits running this evening between the two bushes which would give me about 600 to boil off tommorrow. I will collect the remainder tommorrow afternoon.
Matt, so far I canned 18.625 gallons from the 1,050 gallon of sap I have boiled and there is probably about 2 gallons left in the evaporator that is all in the syrup pan which is about right for me aprox 50+ to 1 ratio. I boiled it down really low last time and ran it thru the filter press and flushed the pans. I have about 3 inches in the syrup pan and none in the flue pan. I will start out with fresh sap there and boil the syrup pan down to level before pulling plug to the flue pan.
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Brandon,
Nice job, glad someone is making syrup!
We are froze up and waiting by the lake!
Chris