Eastern Ontario 2023

Set my spiles somewhat after work yesterday. All but one of the spiles was hot. As anticipated, my three little Surprise trees in the back 40 were the ones really pumping it out! Even #6, now down to only 2 spiles, was keen to get going. And now that #2, my biggest and often best tree, is back on the line, it also wasted no time showing me that there still plenty of life in the old tree yet :-) As they should be frozen this morning, have to hammer a few spiles in a little bit deeper. Didn't have the chance last night!

Wow...that's great! Only one of the test taps i put in ran on the weekend. My area weather shows a 1 and 2 degree day trend so
I may be tapping on the 20th?

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Originally Posted by Galena

Set my spiles somewhat after work yesterday. All but one of the spiles was hot. As anticipated, my three little Surprise trees in the back 40 were the ones really pumping it out! Even #6, now down to only 2 spiles, was keen to get going. And now that #2, my biggest and often best tree, is back on the line, it also wasted no time showing me that there still plenty of life in the old tree yet :-) As they should be frozen this morning, have to hammer a few spiles in a little bit deeper. Didn't have the chance last night!

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The overflowing buckets and hot spiles have me jealous. Do you have much snow in your area? I know your days would be warmer, and warmer longer than mine up here, but my taps although flowing, have never raced.

I am averaging maybe .7 of a litre per tap. It is still total winter here with a couple of feet of snow in the forest. All my taps are on slopes that face east.

1ft+ snow. recently fallen, was bare ground 3 weeks ago. Been a warm winter, only 1 day of -30. The Canal didn't even open in Ottawa!

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Originally Posted by Swingpure

The overflowing buckets and hot spiles have me jealous. Do you have much snow in your area? I know your days would be warmer, and warmer longer than mine up here, but my taps although flowing, have never raced.

I am averaging maybe .7 of a litre per tap. It is still total winter here with a couple of feet of snow in the forest. All my taps are on slopes that face east.

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Oh yes there is a lot of snow in my area atm. Let's put it this way, it's a 3-ft drop for me to get in and out of my old woodshed lol. Where the snow has come off the roof esp north side, I probably have about 5ft.

No need to be jealous, your time will come! The spiles certainly are doing nothing at all today, very windy though not all that cold otherwise.

Well it's go time in the Ottawa area! Going to get the rest of my taps in on Saturday and get the pump set up etc.. Should be boiling next weekend!

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Annoying season so far. Stop and go.

All my trees should be running good by Friday
Mon. 20th looks like a good day to start the season...we'll see

Checked and all the test taps are running good today by 15:30 (tues.) The sugar in the small trees (14")
is barely above 1% after filling the pails 5 times since Feb. 8th. I found this last year too but the big trees all
stayed above 2% right 'til the end. I may tap tomorrow now,

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Originally Posted by Galena

Annoying season so far. Stop and go.

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Yes.. today looked promising with the sunshine, but it's still below zero with a strong wind out here at 1PM.. probably only get a few hours of run I think..