Tapping the 2012 season

[ClarkFarmMapleSyrup]

I got nothing today, too cold, it seems like above freezing temps, but it is raining, so i dont know. I hope it runs this weekend sometime, id like to see how my batch of 20 taps turned out.

[Rossell's Sugar Camp]

I have boiled down 426 gallons of water. I got 2 gallons of medium amber possibly light amber after i filter it inside. It takes a lot of sap to sweeten the pans in my evaporator! Switching sides for the next boil.

[Dennis H.]

Man is the sap running!
Collected about 150 gals this morning and managed to get it all boiled today.
I have about 3 gals of syrup that I will finish and filter tomorrow. I will be cleaning the syrup pan also. The sugar sand this year is crazy!
While I have the filterpress out I will run the stuff that is in the syrup pan thru it to get rid of all that sugarsand.

It is not to get below freezing tonight so the vac will be left on. We hit 60 degrees today, very strange to see that in Jan.
But come Thurs we will be back to the 40's and 20's.

[Gary R]

We're over 6 gal. of syrup. Boiled another 150 gal. last night. not much today, a little to cold. The sun will help the next few days. Still having vacuum pump issues. Limping along, but making syrup 1% sap is rough.

[KV Sappers]

Collected 13 1/2 gal. today. Have about 30 gal. of sap now and I'm starting to boil. Will finish tomorrow. My sap is reading at 1.6 right now.

[Dennis H.]

You have 2 gals already also.

I have been getting a crap load of sugarsand already, so took off all syrup from the syrup pan and finished it along with what I drew off from boiling and now have 2 1/2gals!!
But man was the pan dirty. It was like a calcium build up on the pan bottom. It was a little different than last year. Cleaned it up good and I am now ready for more sap today.

KVSappers, my trees ran a little slower yesterday too.

[FunnyFarm]

210 tapped right now hoping to add another 40-60 on Saturday. Looks like perfect weather for the foreseeable future.Good luck all...

[cyblood]

@TurtleCreek Re: Sugarsand - Yes, I'm seeing much more than I did last year - really clogging the filters up...

[Paddymountain]

We didn't get the big flow yesterday; we got about 110 gallons and will gather and boil tonite. I'm kinda wondering if we will get the BIG run this year
sap seem to just be coming steady. up to about 27 gallons of syrup so far

Gary R: do you have a (gal per tap) figured so far on your vacuum reds?
right now I'm at 8.5 gal. I only have 31 trees hooked up to 22" of vac. they are reds in the woods ,sort of like I think yours are.
I have about 100 trees to get on vac ,but time and $$$ didn't allow it this year,but I am gaining some experience this year so I can live with that.

[Dennis H.]

Operation Bucket Relocation is now complete.
All 119 buckets are on sugar maples at my dads cabin.
It took us a little over 1 1/2 hrs to hang them all and then checked 1st bucket and found 1/2" of sap already!

I'm hoping for a good week this week.