2013 Season WEST VIRGINIA MAPLER

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

1600 more gallon of sap in 48 hours from Sat even until Monday even. Taps been in nearly 4 to 5 weeks on south side and still running like gangbusters. Cold for next 3 nights getting to about 15 tomorrow night and looks like big run again this weekend. Not much end in sight at this point and should be pushing 130 gallon of syrup by end of day. Boiled off 842 gallon yesterday and aprox 750+ to boil off today. Way above previous record of 97.625 gallon already and not much end in sight. Only 5 days above 45 in 5 weeks and nothing above 50 forecasted in the next 10 days. Cleaned steamaway after running 2000+ gallon thru it and cleaned up in just a few minutes. It is awesome and keeps the flue pan so much cleaner and is so easy to clean. Let it bubble for about 30 minutes with distilled water it put off early and just few minutes with scotchbrite and rinsed and looks like new. All the syrup has been light or light medium so far.

[tuckermtn]

Sounds like an excellent season so far for you. Your forecast sounds a lot like ours, even though you must be 750 miles to the Southwest of me...

Best of luck Brandon...

[bmiller]

saps starting to slow up for me

[maplekid]

wvmapler,how did you fair through the storm around thanksgiving? my company asplundh was there cleaning up. we had alot of work around elkins and buckhannon.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Thanksgiving storm didn't affect us much but the storm on June 29th hit hard with winds as high as 88 mph. Lost about 40 taps and some huge trees sheared off 10 to 20 feet in the air. Never seen anything like it and hopefully won't again. Worst storm I have ever seen and was like a tornado that lasted for 30 minutes.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

We keep on rolling. As of Tues 03/12, we had boiled 6200 gallon and made aprox 132 gallon of syrup all light and med. Collected another 580 gallon tonight and expect to collect another 600 to 800 tomorrow and going to try to boil off 1200 to 1500 gallons tomorrow. Taps been in over 5 weeks and they are running as hard as I have ever seen them run period this evening. It is amazing. I haven't ever seen sap runs like this one. We might top the 1600 gallon we got in 48 hours last weekend. God has blessed us tremendously this season and next week shows 20's and low 40's all week, so I am not sure when this will ever end. I had enough wood for 50% more syrup than I had ever made and I don't think that will be enough at this point but I have access to plenty more 2 year seasoned wood I can borrow.

We have an open house tomorrow and we will be serving pancakes and syrup and expect 200 people or more while we are boiling full blast, so it's gonna be crazy.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Go Brandon!

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Boiled off another 1410 gallon of sap yesterday. Long day of boiling to say the least and finished about after 1 this morning. Pulled the lines out of the tanks as the sap is getting cloudy and starting to foam a lot in the steamaway and flue pans. Still making good syrup and started out as dark in the morning and after couple draws went back to probably medium the rest of the day. Nothing showing any signs of slowing down and probably could push 10,000 gallon of sap if I stayed with it. Sugar content a little low but filled 5.5 five gallon buckets yesterday. Looks too cold for sap until next weekend so know would get a least one more run if I stayed with it plus probably another 400 to 500 that would have run this run before it quit today. We will end up somewhere between 150 and 160 gallons once I get it all filtered and canned. WV jugs are no where to be found as the state had a record crop this year. Did have good open house yesterday and sold 20 to 25 gallon of syrup. Time to start getting ready for next year and getting all the lines flushed out and finding new customers to sell another 60 gallon of syrup above what I normally make.

[Dennis H.]

You calling quits?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I called it quits for the week and then went and put the lines back in the tanks this PM. Been too cold most of the week for any sap and hit 12 and 15 the last 2 nights and 19 tonight. Supposed to hit 45 tomorrow with sun after sun all day today started the thawing, so we may get some sap tomorrow and then cold and lots of snow until next Friday which shows slight warm up. Never seen this kind of weather in Feb and March. Last sat was the only day it has hit 60 or above since Feb 1st. Never seen March stay cold and snowy the entire month and Feb about the same. I am sure it is global warming. Oops, I forgot, it doesn't exist on non election years. LOL