Eastern Ontario 2015

So I know many of you are finished for the year... And I was starting to pull some more of my spiles this morning -starting with the poor performers... Low and behold, sap started literally gushing out of a few of them ( like the sisters of diddly squat that probably gave me a grand total of 6 litres between all three this season are gushing sap?)So my husband being the syrup hound he is.. Put the spiles back in place and by 1:30 today we did a full collection of 42 more litres of clear, coolish sugar tasting sap. I'm starting to think we may have tapped them wrong.. This is crazy right? Like its 16C outside and no freezing temps... What the heck? Like the buckets are still filling like crazy, I anticipate another 40-50 litres by this evening.... I just can't bring myself to pull my spiles with this sap flow... So yes, trucked off to costco and purchased more propane! I really don't think things will last like this but as I am a maple syrup virgin I can't help but wonder just how long this is gonna carry on for..
Les

Could carry on for awhile, Lesley. The Sisters of Diddly-Squat suddenly gushing forth? Well, tree #9 - who is like my George Harrison tree, definitely there but not calling attention to himself (during Beatles phase obviously) - but now giving superstar #6 a run her money. Ditto #1 is now challenging #2. And #5 is still chugging along in the middle as it usually does this time of the run.

I'm guessing, but as your trees are all quite a bit smaller than mine, I'm guessing that they may stop fairly gradually? Mine started a bit later than yours and only just got up to steam last week, so I think they could just blow out any time by next weekend....ETA as they indeed did, went from 20l down to 2.5l overnight. So mine are likely to just hit the brakes, but in the meantime have given me between yesterday and today 30l...yet more work...*groan*

Will see what the virgin bush does, though of course it's only 3 trees there compared to your 30. But with only 4 spiles left wondering what there will be, esp as I am currently boiling a virgin batch so should add as much as I can to it....btw I named those trees...#3 there is Big Sugar, cause that's what it is ;-) #2 is a split-trunked red, and one spile would either produce heavily or not at all. The other spile on the other trunk produces consistently. So they are Two Be and Not Two Be. And the #1 tree there is...actually I don't have a name for that one!

Went around this afternoon and pulled a few remaining buckets and, lone behold, most were over half full with clear sweet sap. Kinda kicking myself for pulling the plug after yesterday's debuckle. If I'd held out for one more day perhaps I could of redeemed myself....oh well. Time to move on to the many other responsibilities around the farm.

Well I spent the day washing buckets, pails and all the other stuff. Next is the pans and put all that other stuff away. Very big job, but I used the evaporator to heat up the water, so endless amount of hot water.

I made the fatal mistake of washing up and storing away sap-storage containers on Sunday...since then have had to press-gang two of them back into service!!!

It ain't over til the fat tree (in my case #2) stops dripping ;-)

Oh my... Just finished batch 16! 64 litres made 2300ml. Sugar content 3.1%. I had full intention of carrying on to make sugar but got tired and bottled... Would have been good had my one bottle not broken! ----!!! I lost an entire litre
Lesley:mad:

Oh no, not an entire litre! What happened?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!

Oh no, not an entire litre! What happened?

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The bottle broke, it wasn't hot enough for the syrup I put in and totally cracked.. Then when I tried to move it the bottom fell out:cry:
Just sucks when you work so hard and boil so long... But it's all good.. I've leaned a valuable lesson! And I'm gonna try for the sugar tomorrow night.. I will be shocked if we get another run like today... Apparently the temp went up to 21*C today.. And isn't going below 5*C tonight so I'm thinking this is the end?
How about there?

Thank goodness you didn't hurt yourself with hot syrup or broken glass. I can only imagine the mess you had to clean up. :( Temps here tonight are going to be the same as where you are. Not ideal for sap. Sometimes you still get a surprise, but they become few and far between at this time of year. You will start to notice the sap becoming a little more opaque, but still not cloudy. Then one day you look in the bucket and the stuff looks gross and smells a little funky. I think we are only a few days away from gross and funky. :lol:

Today might or might not be our last boil - depending on how the syrup tastes and smells. We made beautiful light and medium until Saturday. Sunday we finally got some amber. Today's will definitely be amber - maybe 'C'. While most around us haven't gotten a freeze-up since Friday night we got a decent freeze Saturday night and a light freeze Sunday night - the benefits of being beside a lake still covered in ice!. As a result, we're still getting close to 3/4 gallon of sap per tap for each of the last 3 days. The sugar content isn't great but it's definitely worth boiling - especially when you can RO 75% of the water out of it!

Doing some quick math - we made 50% of our crop in 7 days and 75% of our crop in 10 days. We were well rested until Good Friday and we're now exhausted! At least we're exhausted with a lot of full drums in the basement.