South east ontario tapping

Wow Bruce, I'm jealous of those sap numbers and amazed at the boil rate. Likely hauled in about 100 gallons sap with now about 160 taps, 40 of those tapped in the past couple weeks and doing a lot of the work. Found another screw up when i noticed my mainline full of sap about 15 feet from the tank. I had strapped a pre-filter to the end of the mainline at the start and hadnt changed it. Must have been a ton of stuff in a line somewhere i missed and it had clogged the filter. Oops! I had strapped the filter pretty tight on the pipe so it didn't have much surface area to clog. Going back to empty the tank shortly.

BrutemanAl, how much syrup have you made so far this year?

roughly 7 litres , been giving it away to everyone , and drinking it lol and putting it in my tea and coffee

That's a fantastic start! I hope you are flooded out this week. :) Thanks again for your help with my propane burner. Now, do you think you can do something to get the sap flowing for me so that I can use it again?????

I've just finished tallying up my sap for today. Of my 20 taps, only 10 had any sap in the bucket. I hauled off a whopping 16L of sap - total. (That's 4 US gallons) Pretty pathetic.

Still waiting......

You can come get all the sap you like from my taps , I have to leave to go to Montreal for 4 days this morning for a training course for work and I have no idea how I am going to collect the sap , the buckets are filling up so fast for me

Dangit Al, don't place temptation in my way...next thing you know I'll be looking up Codrington and borrowing a friend's pickup and as many 5-gallon foodgrade buckets from the local restaurant I can bum!!

Oh double dang, I can't raid your pails, I have to be somewhere this weekend. Dang.

Meanwhile had a slower run yesterday, got I think 6 litres total, boiled down the previous batch of sap into near-syrup to make room for more sap in the evap pan. But today it's meant to be +5 today...but with a slight breeze...so that could slow things further.

And then there's Codrington *rustle of opening map of SE Ontario*...;)

Boiled over the weekend - only had 75 gals of sap by end of Saturday and most of it had been frozen and thawed, so was super concentrated. Made for a short boil. Syrup was a little darker as some of the sap had been frozen in the tank for almost 2 weeks. Discarded the remaining ice, cleaned and washed all the tanks.

Collected another 30 gallons on Sunday. Some of the trees are flowing well, the north facing ones are still slow - it's not been getting warm enough to thaw out the trunks yet. Hoping it'll be good this week. I've been tapped for a month now and only boiled 3 times! Still over a foot of snow in my woods, but I was into Trenton yesterday and there was no snow to be seen.

Some of my buckets started dripping ten minutes ago. Fingers crossed.

Bigsap warning in Plainfield! About 150 gallons today and still flowing! Murphys law in effect. I cant boil tonite, have to go to work tommorrow and my father in law who does all the boiling has surgery tommorrow!!! At 10-15 gall per hour i need him. Weather looks good for tommor as well. Up to 38.5 liters so far of syrup

I ended up asking my neighbor to empty my buckets for me , I left him some empty culligan water bottles in the forest ( 4 of them ) plus 2 8 gallon water jugs the kind you take camping , I got a text saying the 4 culligan bottle's were already full and by tomorrow the 2 camping water jugs will more than likely be full , hopefully he has something he can use to store more if needed . gunna be very busy when I get home from montreal I do believe

Al, the floodgates are opening for us now. Your poor neighbour. hahahah

I'm one happy gal with 32 litres collected today. It was gaining speed throughout the day and I question how much it will slow down tonight. I'll start boiling 70 litres tomorrow morning and expect at least another 30+ of new sap will be in the buckets tomorrow. Good thing I've got 4 propane tanks to put in rotation.

BIG SAP!!

600L on 100 taps since yesterday morning...and really running strong.

Steve.

Slower day, maybe 50-60 gallons sap. Have about 150 or so boiled down so far. Frost on ground already. Up to 46 liters of syrup

I had a weird day. All the trees on my property were shut down. There was a breeze that was the likely culprit. However, the 7 taps that I have down the street in a sheltered forest were champs today. I got 37.5 litres from those 7 taps and they were showing no signs of letting up when I emptied them at 4 p.m. I'll have to go back first thing tomorrow morning to make sure they aren't overflowing. Big difference between the two locations today.

Yesterday was weak for me... on 16 taps I got maybe 4 gallons. The day before on all 26 of mine I probably did 25-26 gallons. Do you guys think this could be close to the end of it?

Kyle, it sounds like you and I had the same sap day. I can't imagine that we are nearing the end because we've barely even started. Hang in there. I'm sure there is more to come. Even today the trees on my property are sleepy. Thank goodness I've got those few down the street to help me over the dry spells here.

Can someone tell our trees to wake up!! We last boiled on Monday so my brother was ready for a massive day today. Turns out he'll have to run less than 1 gallon per tap - and that's 2 days worth of sap! It has great colour and flavour and we're approaching last year's total (per tap) so we can't complain - we just want to see it go so hard we don't know how to get it all processed!

This is why this type of forum is so helpful. If so many of us weren't having this unexpected dry spell we'd think it was just us and we either did something wrong or have crappy trees.

Ennismaple, I'm not sure exactly where you are in relation to Lanark village, but for you Lanark tends to be a couple degrees cooler than where I am which will hopefully work in your favor... hopefully mine too, but only time will tell for sure ;)
I know way up in the Lanark highlands where Wheelers is it always seems colder.

Monday I had to work late - sent the 2 boys out to collect on their own. Was wondering where they got to - they collected 111 gals from ~145 trees. They were tired when they got in.
Boiled Tuesday at a leisurely rate between various phone calls and work related stuff- boiled off 100 gals.
Collected another 35 gallons in the evening.
I think I have about 100 in the tank now - so all set for some more long boils.
Here's to some colder nights over the next week or so.

[QUOTE=Kyle Baker; Do you guys think this could be close to the end of it?[/QUOTE]
I wouldn't panic yet. There is still snow in the woods and frost in the ground. I checked the stardate log for the past 5 years or so and except for last year we are always boiling past the first week of April and there were much warmer springs than this one. Soft maple sap is still clear so the hards have plenty of time left

Just made it to the woods. About 120 gallons sap today. Not bad. Ill be boiling for days to get caught up and it feels cool back here already! More tomorrow?

Just hung 9 more buckets on some sugars I hadn't tapped earlier. Insurance incase my soft maples wind down early. Having a good boil with what I've got now though... Should finish a gallon more at least :)

Finished 10 litres. Getting darker. First year with flue and from the look of the dark niter on my filter i think i maybe should shut down, draw off the sweet and clean out the pan. Comments??

No frost out there yet.

Yesterday was slow here. Sap ran a bit in the morning then slowed right down with the snow and wind. I boiled 700L of the 900 that I had on hand. I should finish it today.

On the bright side, today and tomorrow should be big days. Cool nights, warm days...we shall see. Keep your Easter weekend open! It is Easter, right?

Steve.

Got almost 4 gallons on Tuesday in warm sunny weather. Yesterday weather was cloudy, cool, breezy and punky...and so was output, only 1.5 l. Fingers crossed for the weekend.

The past three days i have been getting atleast a gallon a bucket but getting swamped with sap. today should slow down and recharge the trees abit and let me catch up on boil in. I have already past last yrs syrup total.

I have been in Montreal since monday , had the neighbor collecting my sap , came home to 56 gallons that need boiling , did a boil of 8 gallons last night when I got home and ended up with 7 cups of medium maple syrup and it taste's fantastic , boiling another 8 gallons right now .

Al, thank goodness you're back!

hey thats what my neighbor said to lol

Anyone else sick and tired of washing out filters? It is the one part of making syrup i dont care for.

Almost caught up to the sap backlog. Bottled another 10.5 liters. Woodpile getting very low and we should only be 50% done.

Frost coming out of the trail making getting sap home a real challenge. Good solid frost forecast tonight so lets see what tomorrow brings

here is a few picture's of the syrup I have made over the last 2 days ......

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yellzee

Anyone else sick and tired of washing out filters? It is the one part of making syrup i dont care for.

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Me too. This year seems to be producing lots of niter. My filters are getting clogged up much faster. Or maybe I got to get some new ones. My Orlon filters take forever to filter thru, even with the prefilters.
And I hate to lose do much syrup thru them.

What a crazy season. Got nothing until today, the trees chugged out a couple gallons by almost noon. I collected and put it on to evaporate and turned down the temp on a batch of near-syrup that I had the stove, slowly (or so I thought) boiling down. Went outside to bring in some firewood and returned to see that lovely golden froth starting to spill over the top of my finishing pot!

So I did the only thing that made sense: dropped the firewood and sprinted full tilt into the kitchen, screaming at the cat en route to get the frig out of my way (and she did so, nearly tripping me in the process) and got the pot off the heat. Thank gawd it had just begun to go over so didn't lose a lot.

Poured it into jars through coffee filter/white cotton combo and the colour and taste are fabulous, but afraid I've got some sugar crystals in it...argh. But it is clear as can be so I can't complain too much.

As the pot that boiled over is now shiny with leftover cooked-on sap/sugar, I'll filter my next batch of sap collected into it and gently swirl it around to loosen up the good stuff left behind. Might even fill the sink with hot water to make an impromptu bain-marie so it dissolves a bit faster.

Yep, just another boring ol day sugaring...:D

Probably 100 gallons sap and still running a bit. On the last few gallons of early week sap then starting the new

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrutemanAl

here is a few picture's of the syrup I have made over the last 2 days ......

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Al, that's A LOT of syrup. Those are really large jars!

Got a surprise freeze last night,couldn't start the pump until 10:00 though,then it got too warm,managed to draw off 34 gallons of light syrup in 5 hours

Major screwup underway as our biggest batch of the year got way over boiled on us, Not sure how. Put the hydrometer to the level i want and it almost shot out of the glass. Added in sap and have refiltered 3 times trying to get it all thru a filter. Bringing it up to boil now for hopefully final test and filter. Never done this in ten yeArs.

Weird day for me too and a major screw up. I thought I had plenty of ways to go in my front pan (which is where my concentrated sap is) since it was pretty much new sap from 2 days ago. But it frothed up (the little brown bubbles type) on me before I could say boo and spilled over onto the concrete blocks. I have no idea how much syrup I lost. All I know is that the hollows of my blocks have chunks of burnt sugar all down the insides. The sugar content must have been a lot higher in this batch, because I had only about 300L of sap that went thru in a 6" full size steam pan. And I usually go thru much more than that to get to where I take it off to finish indoors. My pans are in great need of a major clean to get rid of all that crud around the top. I'll probably use tomorrow to do it since its supposed to rain and I won't be able to boil as I am out in the open. Fun fun fun :rolleyes: