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Still getting good sap in the Thumb.


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My husband is a MSU Extension Educator here in Michigan and adapted a cost of production Excel spreadsheet to make it maple syrup specific. He did this several years ago for a Michigan Maple Syrup...

Commercial tapping bit. They're not too costly and you want a clean, healthy hole that doesn't invite bacteria to close it up too quickly.


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I came here to ask the same question. Our daughter and her friend gather roadside sap from trees they rent and bring it to us to boil. We were wondering if the agreement we have is typical or not....

Good questions, Cedar Eater. Yes on good vacuum. Bagged and gravity trees are tapped by our kids and are mostly roadside so I know they'll naturally produce better. Bucket trees are right in the...

Exactly. We were at 1/3 production until this week and have customers clamoring for syrup so anything more we can get is great as long as it remains good quality.


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We had an extremely unusual run here in early March where it ran continuously 4-5 days in freakishly warm weather. Usually it's 1-2.


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We're in the Thumb and we're back in business again as of Sunday.


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Do you live somewhere where grading is mandated? I'm in Michigan and our state department of ag does not require us to grade syrup so we don't.


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Thanks, Dave. It's still good. We pulled taps from the only three soft maples. We made 8 good gallons yesterday and 4 today.


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We're in Michigan and fortunately our trees didn't bud during the two-week warm spell so we're once again making syrup. However, we are getting very little sap coming into our vacuum tubing. It's not...

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Clay! I'm not far from you. I'm from Capac and married into a sugarmaking family in Cass City. If you feel like making the drive up tomorrow, we'd be glad to show you our...

$54 gallon
$29 half gallon
$17 quart
$10 pint
And $5-15 for specialty bottles


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We are in our 8th year of hosting a field trip for homeschoolers. The first year we had 200+ attendees over two sessions (repeated morning and afternoon). Now we average 100 and I'm going down to one...

I'm not in Ohio, but found this:
http://aglaw.osu.edu/blog-tags/ohio-cottage-foods


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No! I wouldn't recommend using your pan for something as strong-tasting as tomatoes ... unless you like tomato-flavored maple syrup. Certain flavors can give your syrup an off taste real quick. It is...

Nope. Nature does the work.


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Hannah, we're not pulling taps yet here in the Thumb. A couple of us in the family are eternal optimists. Our annual open house is this weekend so if nothing else visitors can see the taps.
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Woodey, sap will still run, but the question is whether you want to keep the sap you'll get. If the trees have used too much of carbohydrates in the sap to produce their buds, any syrup you produce...

Love your name, ThumbBum. We're not too far from you and always welcome guests to come out and see how we do things here. Beginners seemed to enjoy coming out to get ideas once they get hooked. We...

We got all 600 taps in the tubed trees yesterday (with the exception of a few trees whose lines were knocked down by winter). Still need to do 100 5/16th metal taps for buckets and bags.

My...

We're going to use sap bags this year on some road trees. Which brands and types have been your favorites? Which didn't work so well? A concern for us is ease of emptying them.

We also write the date on the bottom of each container with a Sharpie so we have a batch number. 031113 = March 11, 2013. 031113b = second run in the same day, when that happens.

Cass City, heart of the Thumb.

The only thing I know for certain is that the trees will have access to plenty of moisture once all this white stuff melts. That is all I would put money on.