sugaring in iowa

[IowaSap]

Farm boy. I second bnb, you'll go broke on propane.
Bnb. I should stop in. I Need a reason to head over to hickory park anyway!
Pulled 130 gal. This a.m. gotta love a fresh snow followed by 40s! Looking like a good couple days. Might just save the season!

[iowafarmboy]

I plan on doing a cement block arc for next year. Don't have the time or resources for doing one now. Thank you for the suggestion of the buffet pans!

I'll have 40 gal of sap to boil down this weekend. A few of my trees produced at least 3 gal a day each for the last couple days. My outdoor propane fryer is going to have it's work cut out for it.

Where do you guys get your bottles? I went through 'fillmorecontainer' and got some salad dressing style bottles; the price wasn't bad but the shipping was high.

Thanks for the replys!

[IowaSap]

I go through maple hollow in Wisconsin for everything. Super nice people and fast delivery. I did start using mason jars for some stuff because of the delivery $ on bottles. They are nice though.

[IowaSap]

Pulled everything yesterday. 400 gal on the year. Could of been worse. Looks to be right at 10 gal finish. Hope everyone did well.

[bnbmaplesyrup]

We finished the season yesterday also - We ended up with 35 gallon made with 18 of that in the last week. Amazing what a couple of freezing nights did for us. We did not keep track of our sap gallons this year - We did test some sugar levels and for the most part it ran 2% most of the season. The last 2 batches were very heavy with sugar sand- We had 5# of sugar sand in the next to last batch -

We are in clean up mode now and will look forward to next season. Good Luck to all Bill

[tbear]

We finished the last 1 1/2 gallons yesterday on the kitchen stove. Ended up with just over 12 gallons this year! Half of that was since last Wednesday. Pulled buckets today, and a muscle in my back. It's gonna be a slow clean up this year! Good to hear from everyone. I'll keep checking in but if nothing else I'll type to you next year! Have fun, Ted

[tbear]

Anyone else starting to get the itch? I sure am! Ted

[prairiecreekmaple]

I actually had sap flow last sunday (a week ago). I only had one tree tapped just to know when things were going to start and I was certainly surprised. Hoping we don't have a repeat of last year when it hit 70 degrees for a couple days before the ground even started to thaw. Most of my trees didn't produce a drop until the buds were open and the sap was nasty. I only have access to silver maples so my love for sugaring is put to the test every year. I am addicted though. There's nothing like it.

[tbear]

Hello prairiecreekmaple! And welcome to mapletrader! I'm in southeast Iowa and thinking of tapping next weekend. It's a little early, for me, calender-wise but I'm fearing a short season. I run 70 buckets on a 2x4 flat pan with a cinderblock arch. What kind of setup do you use? Ted

[PKerns]

Hi Ted and prairiecreekmaple and other Iowa sugarers,
My wife and I are in NE Iowa and we're planning on tapping later this week, maybe Thursday. We'll only tap the top of our hill and work our way further down as it continues to warm up (the bottom of the hill stays cool longer). We're sugaring as a part of our first year as a new farm, Turkey River Farm. Two years ago, we tapped 7 trees on buckets and boiled in steel milk buckets over a campfire. This year, we're tapping 60 (hopefully) on gravity tubes and boiling in a used copper drop flue + continuous flow finishing pan we bought from an Amish community nearby. We're concerned the Amish's normal boiling rate of 40gph is way too fast for us, but we're burning some less than fully seasoned oak slab wood so it will probably work out to be a reasonable boiling rate in the end.

Happy Tapping! Pete