Done for the year

Grant Township

Pulled the last 40 buckets on Wednesday. My property is divided between by a ridge. The open south side on top, the flow starts 1 to 3 weeks earlier. Below, north, and dense, the ground stays frozen for weeks longer. This year, with the colder weather it was closer to the 3 week differential.

There was significant ice in the buckets when I pulled them and I recovered 50 gallons of sap and discarded the equivalent of 30 gallons of ice. Usually I will melt the ice and combine the liquid sap and melted ice and reduce the total to syrup.

When I would measure the sugar content in the ice it would be nearly the same as the liquid sap. This time i put the ice in buckets after 1 hour of melt I added to the sap, then let the ice sit for an additional 8 hours before checking the sugar content. Wow, I sure have wasted a lot of time, sleep, and firewood, not to mention effort to cut, split, carry the firewood when there has been a lot of ice in the buckets... after the initial melt the sugar content dropped to .5%. Ouch!

Anyways, a day older and a little wiser. Now for the season totals

4th year, home made evaporater that looks suspiciously - a lot - like pictures of a hobby unit from an state east of Michigan. With a separated 2 x 3 pan from Smokey Lake. Great pan!

75 5 gallon buckets about 600 gallons of sap 12 gallons of syrup. Lots of quality time hanging out in the woods. Priceless!