tapping in the catskills.

[mountainvan]

Sap is coming in and looks to run till the next deep freeze tomorrow night. Not sure what I'll get, but it will be better than nothing!

[mountainvan]

Boiled a couple hours today, filled a barrel with some nice medium. A day to regroup, and do taxes, then back to it Tuesday.

[stimyg]

"Tappers"? Is that the correct term?

Anyway - I'm in Hancock, NY, small hobbyist. Have had a dozen or so taps last couple years. Went up to 30 taps this year. In years past I always had great luck with the sap flowing strong from the first day I tapped. This year it's been a lot slower. I've been particularly surprised about the flows this past Friday/Saturday, which seemed like great weather days - below freezing at night/45 and sunny on-and-off during the day - but the only trees that I got anything from were the ones in direct sun. Anything that had shade was completely dry. And even the sunny ones I only got a smallish amount from.

Any guesses as to what gives? My one thought is that maybe it's left over from our freezing winter - in that, the river in front of my house is still frozen almost bank to bank even despite the warm weather the last couple days, which rarely happens. So maybe the ground is frozen down a bit? Might that explain why the flows were slow? Certainly there's still snow covering everything, left over from snows that happened weeks or months ago.

Separate question, not Catskill specific but since I'm here: Often I notice that my trees are wet below my tap holes, long stains all the way to the ground, from leaking sap. It feels like I'm losing a good bit down the tree. Am I actually losing a lot? If so, am I doing something wrong? Is there anything I can do to get a tighter-sealing tap?

Thanks ahead of time for your thoughts...

Tim

[MaplePancakeMan]

stimyg,

The leaky tap holes are likely due to a wobbling drillbit. Could be from a dull bit. Its common for it to leak for a day or so afterward but if its season long the tap is not sitting right in the tap hole.

As far as the season, I think its just one of those years where we will probably make slightly below average production, the weather though seemingly perfect has been mostly cloudy or windy on the warm days. Direct sunlight really is key to good sap flow and we haven't been having consistently sunny days. The sap flow has been right around 3/4 gallon per tap on a good run this year and quart on slow days.
i have about 90 taps in and the most i collected so far is 105 gallons on a perfect day. compared to last year where i only had 15 more taps i was collecting 200-250 gallons on good days! Perhaps its the extreme cold we experienced this year with many days dipping into the -10's

Not really definite answers but i think we are all in the same boat.

[mountainvan]

Good couple of days for me. Sap broke loose Saturday, 2500 gals, and boiled yesterday finishing 60+ gals of med? everything is working well and now that some bare ground is showing the deer are leaving my tubing alone. A day of cold to recharge and make deliveries, then back up to the sugarcamp for round three.

[stimyg]

Glad to hear the sap started flowing again. I was out of town this weekend, but last week I got near to nothing. Hopefully I'll return to some full (and likely frozen) buckets.

Question about the sun: I know it's preferable to tap trees in sunny locations. But for large producers, aren't the majority of trees not in sunny areas, and don't those trees produce decent amounts of sap too? About half the trees I've tapped this year are definitely in shady spots, and so far they've given me very little compared to the sunny counterparts. I just can't tell yet if that will change before the season is out, or if it will ever change, or if shaded trees are just not worth tapping in the first place. Thoughts...?

[MaplePancakeMan]

about a 1/3 of my trees are in deep woods and they produce fairly well. They just have a tendency to take a bit longer to thaw and on marginal days may run a bit slower due to the shady location. Later in the season these trees usually run better than those in the sun because it doesn't get as warm where they are. On average they will equal each other out and produce around the same amount of sap.

[stimyg]

That's good to know. Makes me feel better about my eventual production this season.

So generally is there a bit of a lag as far as the trees "thawing out." In that, I would have thought temps were good a few days this week for sap flow, but indeed it seemed like the trees themselves were maybe not thawed out yet, even if the air temps looked ok. So a day that's a 42 high / 25 low early in the season might not have a run because the tree itself is still frozen, whereas later in the season that same day might run just fine?

Sorry I know these are basic questions, but apparently I never came across this in the previous few years I've been doing it. (I also did a terrible job tapping this year, splitting a bunch of holes which are now leaking - guess I forgot how hard to set the tap in the intervening year. Lesson learned.)

[ChromczakC]

Back to tapping this weekend, and some last week. Still 800 to finish before this weekends sap tsunami. Trying to be positive. http://ulstermagazine.com/liquid-gold.html here's my farm in a local magazine.

Good Story Van, thanks for sharing.

I wasn't planning on tapping this year, we were expected to close on our house by now, but I got tired of waiting and decided to put my (40) taps in this past weekend. I'm hopeful to get at least a gallon.

[MaplePancakeMan]

Stimyg, Correct, this year has been a very cold year so it seems to me that the trees stayed frozen for awhile add into that the much deeper than normal frost layer int he ground and there you have a slow start. My trees just started normal production this pas week. That said i think i only have 1-1.5 weeks left as the temps at night look like they will stay above freezing. We shall see.