Western Wisconsin Tapping

[markcasper]

Slept for 14 hours straight, so was behind a half day. Have been up since 5 am Friday morning and its now 11 am saturday. Gathered 500+ gallons yesterday morning that ran on Thursday, pretty much all from vacuum due to no freeze on Wednesday night. Had a hard freeze on Thursday night and friday was a good day here. Got another 1100+ gallons last night while my brother ran the evaporator. Started at 6 last night and got done about 7:30 this morning. Also got a load of sap from the neighbor again which tested 4.3% this time.

Made 65 gallons in this stretch, mostly all light amber. BUT, noticed that different smell that I always notice as the season advances. It didn't have that "wish I could bottle that smell" kind, like the boiling had the day before. Kind of weird, its been pretty cool for the past 2 weeks, had 18 inches of snow, a few nights of zero lows and still you can tell things are changing. The syrup seemed to boil a little weirder than it did the day before and times prior. I can't figure it out, but I know it does this every year. Syrup tastes great however. Next week don't look good with highs forecast in the 50's and not freezing at night. Course the weather people have been wrong dang near every day and night this week.

Went back to change the oil in my vacuum pump this morning after cooking and out gas in the tank as it ran out sometime inj the night.
Unbelievable vacuum. Started the pump, went to do a little surveying, came bcak and the releaser was dumping every 55 seconds, before??? just a drip,drip,drip out of the mainline. Seeing is beleiveing.

Sugar content continues to fall and NO, it is not from the sap sitting around too long as the UV people suggest. The tank with the most red maples ran about 2.4 %, compared to 3.4 a week ago. Up to around 220 gallons syrup made now

Good luck yo everyone still at it.

Mark

Busy week for me. I have had sap to gather and cook every single day since the 18th of March. No reall big runs, but steady smaller runs.

I have broken the old quart per tap rule and am at about 1/3rd a quart thus far. No commerial syrup made yet. with the 50 degree nights, it aint gonna take long. Mark

[markcasper]

Just got in from boiling a bit ago. Syrup went from medium to dark amber. Am up to around 370 gallons with no B syrup yet. Anyone that doesn't have vacuum is looking for work around me.

Just to explain about vacuum, I gathered Wendesday night, late and into the wee hours Thursday morning. Had to make 3 trips which is time cosuming, plus i was sanitizing every tank, plus one line that brings sap across a field and to the tank. After gathering, I got cooking around 4 a.m., Thursday morning. It had rained some in the night and got soaked while gathering. Anyway, got done cooking around noon and went out and WOLLA, another 400 gallons of sap from about 800 taps on vacuum and in about a 12-14 hour time frame. Amazing! And even hard for me to believe. The average % for that load was 2.4%.

I gathered about 500 gallons last night, but when I went out, I found my vacuum pump engine had died probably sometime early Friday morning. It had rained pretty hard and either the motor got wet, and or water got in the gas. Was kind of bummed because I figure I lost a potential 300 gallons of sap. Got it going again and is running as I speak, am looking for more sap tommorrow.

Weather doesn't sound too good, only one freeze all of next week which they are saying will be Monday night. Thats gonna be hard on the non-vacuum production. Mark

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

post edited.

[markcasper]

Made about 25 gallons of dark amber (some may have gone commercial)
Tastes really too good to be B grade and kind of hard to get an accurate grade when its not filtered or allowed to settle.

Gathered 700+ gallons off 800 on vacuum that ran from late Friday night, til 9-10 pm Saturday night. 1 load @ 2.2%, the balance at 2.5%. Told the wife I wanted something to eat beofre cooking and never made it back out of the house til 5 am Sunday morning. Fell asleep in the chair and the tractor was still running after 6 hours of idling ops: The pecking time change didn't help matters either!

Since it was going to start raining, I did evaporator prep and then decided to resuck the 3 tanks again so I wouldn't have to go out tonight again. Wound up with another 275 gallons in an 8-10 hour time frame since prior collection. My pumps have been running non-stop( pretty much) since last Tuesday.

I finally got time yesterday to go vacuum tasting and fix some problems. I went from 12 hg. to 17 hg about half way out in the one woods. Was 12 when I got there and after 5 hours of walking and detecting leaks, I was at 17. This was in a 275 tap bunch. I wish I could have got around it sooner. Even with the vacuum not the best, it still has given me so much more sap than if it wasn't there. I have had quantities of sap to gather and cook every day in a row for the last 17 days. My neighbor that has bags and i buy his sap has only delivered 5 of these days. So whoever is thinking of adding more taps for production, rather than adding vacuum, should seriously look at the whole picture. It seams this season for me anyway has been one of the most consistent and even as any. I can attribute this to less taps and MORE vacuum this year. Vacuum sure evens things out. I have had some days where I had more sap from vacuum and no freeze the night prior, instead of the traditional freeze at night, thaw during the day.

Am up to 395 gallons so far and i would say 80% of this is from the vacuum taps. I should not fail to mention.....the high sugar content in the early to mid part of the season halped tremendously.

Am still going to keep at it as things rarely wind down before April 10th here. Maybe made a little B today, but need some as I have some customers who prefer this. There are no frogs singing here yet and don't expect them until we get some real balmy nights. Mark

[markcasper]

Its been pretty busy the last few days. Had one of my biggest amounts of sap collected yesterday so far this year. The syrup has now went to B and don't expect it to come back, but have made hardly any to date, so not a big deal.

Have reached the 500+ gallon mark on syrup as of this morning. Pretty heavy rains right now going on and the vacuum pumps are a humming. Hopefully will have a large amount in the morning to pickup. They are forecasting 20 degrees tomorrow night and 25 on Saturday night and then reall warm next week. So, looks like one last hoorah coming up.

My north taps, the ones tapped 2-2 1/2 weeks ago ran the best yesterday as anytime yet this year. Unfortunayely those do not have vacuum. The sap sugar continues to slip and the last load this morning was 2%.

If I reach 600 gallons of syrup, that will be exactly 1/2 gallon of syrup per tap and will tie my record of the best year per tap, where 700 gallons were made from 1400 taps.

Have a interesting comment and question reguarding vacuum, go there to read it. Mark

Gathered 1100 gallons by noon yesterday, which ran from the previous 33-36 hours collected by vacuum. Had heavy rains Thursday and that night and all the vacuum was on. Virtually nothing from my non-vacuum stuff. One load @1.9%, 2nd load at 2.1%, 3rd load @2.3%.

Syrup is all B now and isn't going to turn back--70 degrees by Monday. Its 20 degrees here now, so should get a good run today yet. Sap is really cloudy now, but nothing out of the ordinary. Am aiming for 600 gallons of syrup and am at about 530-540 now. Mark

[markcasper]

It is finished! I am going to sleep every chance I get for the next week!

Gathered the last 330 gallons late last night, shut the pumps all down and just got in from cooking that. I have to drain the flue pan yet and finish that in the front and will do that probably tomorrow or Friday. I have to work tonight and Thursday night.

Finished the season with 647 gallons + the 10 gallons in the evaporator=657. The last 160 gallons however, has all been commercial.

Had mountains of sap all weekend and my luck was that I had to work last Friday night and Sunday night. I'm fortunate that I asked for Saturday night off several weeks ago. Recieved 1900 gallons of sap on Saturday, (some of that was from Friday noon and on). Came home from work Monday morning and went right to gathering, by Monday night we had hauled in 2200+ gallons of sap. I started cooking at noon on Monday and boiled til 3 AM Tuesday morning. Another 36 hour period without sleep. I have got to do something different!

The sugar % went south though. I debated on whether to boil some of it or not. I had some that was down to 1.6%, while the last that I finished up with this morning was 1.8%.

We had 74 degrees here yesterday and the sweat was just rolling off while boiling. Pretty miserable.

All in all I am very pleased with the season and owe alot to the vacuum. Though I never got around every line with a fine tooth comb, it still brought in the extra gallons that I had hoped for.

Alot of the days this year were cloudy, which more than helped keep the sap in the tubing from warming up too much and yielding darker syrup. At least 30% of the syrup was high light amber, 20% between medium and light and the rest dark amber and commercial. I can't be more pleased with the quality or quantity for 2006.

As for others in my area, I have not heard much,,,,,yet. I have been so busy and tied up that I have not hardly talked to anyone other than my help and family. A few reports were that it was better than last year, but not an exceptional year. But you don't know with all of the gossip that gets started and especially in the syrup circle.

Makes me feel bad to say that I got over a 1/2 gallon per tap, while many found it hard to get a quart per tap. There is and was alot of extra work with running a sound vacuum system, so it'd better give the extra gallons, otherwise, why do it??

I think the vacuum taps yielded more like 3/4 gallon per tap, b/c my north bush didn't run good at all until well into April and they ran the best of all over the weekend, but now we are done and its too warm for them to run anymore too.

I think the Leader sanitary extensions are a stay at my place. Everything ran like the day you tapped them right up until Monday the 10th. We never had a big warm spell until now, so that too paid an important roll in keeping things going.

Now the fun part, cleaning lines and bottling up syrup, the second season is about to start. Mark

[markcasper]

Talked to a neighbor of mine who had 1450 bags tapped and did not tap them until March 22,23,24th and he wound up with around 355 gallons and finished up gathering on Monday, April 11th and cooking the next day.

So that would be right about 1 qt per tap and he figured he did all right considering he missed a little at the begining. From what he had heard, others in the area were also at a quart per tap to well above that. So from what I have heard, At least in my part of the state, everyone did very well to excellent with this years harvest.

I did hear a report from another producer in the vicinity that only got 310 gallons from 3000 taps and they thought that was pretty good. The problem with this picture is this individual does no flushing of lines, doesn't pull the taps from the holes at the end-ever! Now anyone correct me if I am wrong, but if that tubing doesn't at least get flushed once, you are gonna have fittings plugged with black crap, spouts with the same and low production every year after. Seems to me that if they wanted more production, then get off their !&^%# and get to it. Now I am rambling and a bit proud that I do invest the necessary time to be at least half way clean. All of the research and literature that comes out on MAPLE, suggests that flushing of the lines is of utmost importance and neccesary to achieve satisfactory yields. All of the syrup big-wigs practice and preach this, yet some must not know how to read.

I had a young syrup maker stop by a few weeks ago and lives in the next town over. He too is in the habit of not visiting the woods after the last collection until deer hunting time. He was dumb-founded when he seen all the barrels of syrup that were filled. He was asking all kinds of vacuum questions and had sugar plums dancing in his head for vacuum next year. How do you tell him in a nice way that he needs to first learn how to get a cleaning sloution or even water through his lines first?? Then worry about vacuum. Hope all had a good season and as someone once said--this is suppossed to be fun!! Mark

[markcasper]

I am about 2/3 done on flushing lines. I am dumfounded as to how clean the lines have been. Last year it was just terrible, they all looked like they had cottage cheese in them. Maybe it was b/c I had the vacuum pumps running pretty much to the bitter end and there was virtually nothing for flowage since. Who knows!

I did run into about 10 taps that were completely sealed off with bacteria, I couldn't even blow through them. After shoving a nail through these they finally opened up and was able to get the cleaning solution through. And to think of not washing tubing.........................................Mar k