To really make things interesting for ya only about 50 of my 160 are on the vac lines. You can bet that’s changing for next year. Also 15-20 of my last taps were only out for the last little bit of I guess our run this year.
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To really make things interesting for ya only about 50 of my 160 are on the vac lines. You can bet that’s changing for next year. Also 15-20 of my last taps were only out for the last little bit of I guess our run this year.
Ended the season with 63 litres of Syrup off of my 90 buckets. It was a strange season but all in all I’m happy considering I harvested 65% of my sap in 3 days.
Attachment 22300
Still collecting some sap here..... No buds on my trees yet, and I really want to boil some more... Big Flow yesterday afternoon, but the Sugar is way down at 1.4% though... Glad I'm not in the "business"....
Couple more freezes this week... Going to stick it out to the end and see what we get.
We were very similar, got total of 54l off our 84 buckets. We normally average about 1.2l/ bucket!
Finished bottling today - ended up with 110L from 137 taps = 0.8L/tap. Normally over 1.0
Glad I left my buckets up after the heat wave, as we got a couple more runs.
My very last batch wasn't "bad", the sap was still sweet although it had a tiny bit of cloudiness, hadn't turned sour, but the last batch has very little maple flavour - its sweet but tastes more like toffee or caramel than maple. My kids say its "not maple syrup".
Two new things this year that really worked out well - first my firewood - I switched to using tote cages to store and move wood I split through the year with the tractor forks - this is a real time and back saver!
I also jumped into a homemade RO similar to what others have built on this site, and I have to say that it was a complete game changer. I didn't run it real hard, around 50% recovery at 120 psig = HALF the wood & HALF the boiling time vs a bit of membrane system flushing and the occasional caustic clean. I normally run out of wood before I am done, and find myself looking for standing dead or scrounging pallets, and with this year's short season + the RO, I have enough wood for next year already (I cut wood this winter before going down the RO path....).
Nothing left to do now except label the bottles! Hope you all have a great spring!
Next year check the sap sugar of your trees half way through the season. Sometimes the small trees' sugar is low
by then and they bring your total sugar down...and you end up with lengthy boils and dark syrup.
My large trees had good sugar right 'til the end. I never collected the sap from the small trees the last few boils and
continued to make amber syrup in short boils.
Well I hope everybody is doing well. Wondering thoughts about this upcoming season. Was a cold start to the winter but temps look to be on the warmer side of things for the mid to end of February in my area. I’m getting the itch
Yes, plan to put in taps on Feb 20, hope I'm not jumping the gun!
This 10 day forecast didn't look that great for Milton.
https://www.wunderground.com/forecas...on/IONTARIO200
https://i.ibb.co/FBFBhnh/Screenshot-...-11-165541.png
Yes, but starting on 21st they're showing swings from plus daytime highs to nighttime lows so I suspect (hope!) the sap will start running!