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Not tapped here yet. A couple warm days but the 14 day has it cooling down to some double digit minus temps. Most of my bush is north facing and we are always a couple weeks behind the lower elevation areas. A few hundred ft in elevation can make a big differance . We still have 4ft of snow in the bush and this past weekends warm day had no ill effect on it at all. right now im looking at Mar 7th if the forecast warms a little or the 11th .
Well i managed to get sap wagon emptied and did the rounds, collected the rest of a the sap from my 5 collector stations ,
I couldn't use my normal sap collector wagon the 4 wheeler is still stuck in the snow . I collected with the use of my trusty bravo longtrack sled and my ice fishing sleigh, it took a little longer then normal but managed to collect 68 gallons in 24 hours. I would of had about 20 more gallons to add to the total but a little mishap and I lost a bunch of sap when the sleigh tipped over and spilt its contents :mad:
Now as far a the stuck 4 wheeler and sap wagon the forecast for mext 2 days is going to be 15 degrees or more, I should be able yo drive it out with luck after the snow melts a few more inches.
As far as the convo with my wife about a new razor with tracks she says "Yep as soon as I win the lottery I can have it , till then I have to use the play toys I have" . (THE LIST OF LOTTERY PURCHASES GROWS BIGGER ) lol:cool:
Caught right off guard! Built new sugar shack, installed 3x12 used d&G. Increased mainline by 3800ft. Last year we were at 250 taps.
On weekend we raced to get in the 250 plus another 150. Collected 2300l of sap since Sunday. First boil is today.....
Will there be enough time to finish tapping this year????
Well, collected 200 U.S. gals by noon today. Sap started running 2 days ago but I forgot how to assemble my pump...so the vacuum wasn't working. Got that fixed today, and also the Bosworth Co. told me they are sending me a new arm for my Guzzler. Apparently this will improve the life of my diaphragm.
I didn't fire up the arch with sap in it, instead filled it with fresh water, got it boiling, and gave it a final cleaning. Its now full of sap and ready for my first boil tomorrow. This sap, which looks like it will continue for another week in my area, is an amazing blessing. Last year I overfilled my 400 gals of storage on 3 different occasions, hopefully with this early flow the chances for those ridiculous flow days are lessened.
Good luck to everyone.
Didn't collect yesterday as not enough to make it worthwhile, but have 26.4l on the boil now. Sucks that I have to work in Ottawa tomorrow, won't be home til afternoon. May have to get a sap chucker to come by!
I finally gave in and put 10 taps in this afternoon with the kids to see what was going on. The sap was running good on the old silver maples and sugar content tasted ok for so early. I guess I'll get ready to tap the rest this weekend. I usually do 50-60. I might only do 40 or so this year. Still lots of syrup left from last years haul!
Ok guys.. serious question.. the sap ran all day today.. temp up to 12 degrees or something. Tomorrow gonna be double digits again. Buckets overflowing but can't get to them.
Question is, if I don't collect during that time. Will sap spoil as it's sitting n the buckets? I always thought you should keep sap cool.. but what if you can't get to it for a few days?
Lespetras,your sap should be okay,best place for it is in the buckets,smaller quantities won't spoil as quick as larger quantities. If you were to gather it up it would definitely spoil on you at higher temperatures
Nothing , zip ,ziltch my trees all stopped running after a good start, I may have 20 gallons to collect Friday total,
Add that to the amount i have in storage and I dont have enough to even sweeten the pan.
Weather has been rain then fog all plus 5 and higher since tuesday and no sign of more freezing temps in sight till next wed .. till then rain clouds and even a thunder storm.
The next cold wave I thinkin might be too little too late.:(
Gathered 175 Gals. today boiled it in had an issue with my diagram pump which is a 100SE from Goodrich had to order the arm and bearing put me out of buisness for 3-4 days.
Collected 100 gallons yesterday and another 100 gallons today. Thank goodness for vacuum pump or I doubt I would have collected much without any freezes. I'm gonna have a busy weekend getting caught up.
Hey clinkis...
What you can't or don't want to boil i will be happy to take off your hands ,,,,, i am more then happy to help relieve some of the boiling stress !! lol
Thanks for the offer and I may take you up on that! We'll see how it goes. I think I might have bitten off more then I can chew with 250 taps on vacuum with my current setup for ROing and evaporating.Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffB
Thanks Bruce,Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce L
I'll keep that information in mind. Just been so warm out
lol i have a 400 liter tank waiting to be filled so it be no problem lol
Clinkis, I think it would be a good idea to take up JeffB on his offer, or you'll soon be wearing floaties and up all hours trying to manage. It's early in the season, if you're swimming now then wtf are you going to do when the REAL sap tsunami hits later, usually mid-late March?
ETA: Lesley, if you have any snowbanks, esp on the north side, maybe try and dig some bunkers in the snow. Mind this would mean transferring all the sap to suitable holding tanks of some sort, like 15-18l water bottles or 5g food grade tubs. But this simple setup has helped save my behind a few times!
I think I would respectfully disagree. It takes a lake a lot longer to warm up than a puddle. Assuming both the storage container and buckets are in similar shade settings, I would want a larger quantity. Furthermore, I used a trick similar to Galena a couple of years ago during a warm spell. I placed a 2nd barrel beside my barrel of sap and shoved the 2nd barrel full of snow. Both barrels were in a shaded location and you could feel the relative coolness in the immediate area around the barrels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce L
I think like most people this early start to the season has caught me off guard and is now overlapping with other commitments (mainly my sons hockey which will be over in a couple weeks). I'm normally very organized and prepared but this year I have been scrambling to get everything setup and organized. I've got everything pretty much ready now so I can start committing my time to turning my sap to syrup. And in a couple weeks I will hopefully have some more free time. We will see.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Hey don't forget abut me lol, I live just south of Campbellford, and work in Codrington. Tonight after work I plan on starting to tap my tree's.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clinkis
I was gonna tap this weekend.. Now I may wait... Seems cold coming back.
Welcome back Al! Looking forward to hearing about your sugaring experiences for 2017 with your boys.
So had a busy day and managed get through 250 gallons of sap and made about 20 litres of delicious light syrup. Sugar content a little low but still take it this early in the season.
Sorry Jeff and Al but no extra sap at the moment but a good possibility that I will be drowning in sap once the season picks up at which point you will be welcome to my overflow.
No worries Clinkis, I was able to get 17 taps in yesterday, 12 were running, the others are always late starters, may go over today and put in more so I am ready for the next wave of warm weather. Took the oldest boy to the bush with me yesterday, but he didn't really want to be there, all he did was complain, he made it so enjoyable lol. It is snowing here now, only reason it got cold again is because I tapped yesterday lol.
So i boiled off the sap I had and went thru 75 gallon in 3 hours, I still have about 60 liters of raw sap in storage tank. Managed to drain pan of 40 liters of concentrate. The 40 liters is now a good start to sweeten the pan next boil ,kinda hoping sap flows this week so i can boil next weekend if not concentrated sap will sit in freeze till I get enough to boil and not have to worry about running out of sap and burning up my pan.
WTF!!!!!! Is everybody's sap running but mine ,, ,, Not a drop in collection sites since last tuesday !!!!!!:mad:
Same here. If this forecast holds we'll be waiting almost 2 more weeks to tap. Still snow on the roof of the house and more than a foot in the bush. Not really even pulling away from the base of the trees yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vandy
Attachment 15736
Surprised to see that my trees did run yesterday but not consistently. So will probably leave frozen sap out there for another day or so. Still tinkering first batch of syrup, about 4 marks under Brix. But got more than expected, almost 2l.
Jeff, Mines not running ! we havnt even tapped yet, aside from tue and wed this week the long range for me is cold as far as i can see to the 13th. Even with the high tue and wed of 6 there is rain and wind , i always look at the "feels like" forecast as well . . I am hedging on around the 17th maybe even later. Thats in line with previous years.Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffB
Mine was riunning pretty good yesterday afternoon, not enough to collect, but it was nice to see it running
Wouldn't quite call it a sap tsunami but after three days of not collecting, good to see that I'll get at least 20l from today. So far!
Just got back from forest, collected 26.5 L from 6 trees. Probably closer to 50L if I brought it all back, but quite honestly I didn't expect to bring as much back as I did, so I was limited to what I could bring back.
As of 4pm today I had collected 200 gallons. I imagine my 240 gallon tank will be full by the time I shut the pump off tonight. Really wasn't expecting this. Was only supposed to get up 3 today but high reached 8.
Well, we dumped close to 200 litres on Friday.. temps were too warm and sap didn't taste right! Was sad to do it but got back on track yesterday and today.. currently boiling down 188 litres.. smells great!
Leslie, sorry to hear that you couldn't keep up and had to dump bad sap. That's crazy for February!
I seriously have no idea what on earth the forecast has in store for us, but I'm just rolling with it. I got 43L in the past 36 hours which is just about perfect for my boiling method. Nice and manageable. I thought I'd be regretting tapping in mid-February, and I got some serious eye rolls :rolleyes:directed my way at home when I pulled out the drill, but I feel somewhat vindicated now. I've got more trees that I can tap if I need to ramp up my production toward the end of the season, but for now I'm content with what I'm gathering. I still have quite a bit of syrup left over from last year's haul!
Have a great night boiling. And to Galena - get well soon!
Brought in 278L of sap today - I had not collected since last Thursday. This brings the season total to 1300L of sap. That's already 26L per spile and it's still February!!! Currently boiling today's haul and it is a fabulous boiling night as the steam is just flying off!
In terms of syrup, last week's collections produced a little over 23L although I'm going to have to re-filter most of it due to pesky niter. Is anyone else having niter issues so far??? I filter through an Orlon filter with 2-4 pre-filters in it and I'm still getting niter that settles out after a couple of days. This is the same way I have filtered each of the past 4 seasons but I can't seem to catch all of it. I finish on the fire and filter immediately into a stainless steel pot. I then quickly decant from the pot into hot glass bottles warmed to 200F. I think my next course of action may be to double up on the Orlon filters for next time as I've got a new one and the older one still seems good (at least it's not clogged). This seems silly to ask but does February sap produce peskier niter?
Karen, first off, I think all of us are glad to be sugaring despite all the misgivings earlier. Looks like another cool spell rolling in but I don't mind, it means I can get some work on new sugar shack done. Kudos to Lesley for being sensible and dumping sap that smelled off...painful to do, but save yourself all the hard work of making it into horrible-tasting syrup. You're learning, girl! :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!
And thanks for the well wishes and yes much better, the TLC and care package resulted in a miracle cure, though I still played safe and cancelled work today in case it was flu too. Just some extra-nasty food poisoning wreakin a little more havoc than usual on me. New man in my life is fantastic. He owns a neighbouring property that I keep an eye on (which includes a sizable sugaring op but would take major $$$ to get going again). We've always gotten along well just as friends and been able to talk. Now, things have progressed and only get better. I still can't get over how kind and considerate he is. I feel so relaxed and safe with him around. After making countless bad decisions over the years in this realm, I'm so glad he's in my life.
Thx Karen,Quote:
Originally Posted by Run Forest Run!
It's sad to dump so much. But yes Susan, I am learning. Another huge haul today for our tiny sugar bush.. can't believe it's February. As for the eyes rolls to tap in mid February.. the climate just isn't what it once was... we'd be foolish to ignore such warm spells in my opinion. I did get a few comments also 'never tap before march' etc. But look at what we are doing in February.
Also, I'm running into the same problems with temps not being able to keep sap cold, we don't have any snow even on our property left so we've actually resorted to ice blocks. I am not gonna let today's haul go to waste. Only going down to 9 degrees tonight.. not cold enough for sap.
You're definitely right about the warming trend, Lesley, and we're best to heed it. I think it's in that book on sugaring, The Sugar Season, that came out a few years back that showed part of a chart where temps and collection dates have been kept since the 1920s. Definitely important to learn from the past but sadly we can't live there. Best to do what we can, when we can, while we still can.
Batch number 3.. 188 litres of sap, 5.1 litres of syrup. Sugar content 2.3%, ratio 1:36
Batch #1...55l sap, 1800mls syrup, 3.2% sugar. Batch #2 in nearup stage.