Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[JoeJ]

Saturday and Sunday my sugar house woods produced 1 1/2 gpt tap. My Jericho woods, 2,350 produced 360 gallons, .15 gpt. Both woods are at the same elevation 600' but 4.8 miles apart. Late Monday afternoon and evening, both woods produced 1.75 gpt. Lots of sap yesterday to RO. I am at 61% of 1/2 gpt of syrup. Syrup has been a nice light AR but last night half of the syrup was GD. I have a few customers that will be happy to hear that the GD is here.

Joe

[blissville maples]

Alot of light syrup coming in lately know a few producer who are hitting fancy now or close to, seems as though our March is more February this year. Yesterday night was 29 warmed up to 32 yesterday, running on gravity before kick pumps on🤔 and ran pretty good for 2-3 hrs on vac- as it snowed at 31-32 degrees....

I've noticed this year that the trees are running at very marginal temperatures it must be because of the amount of liquid they are up taking,

I guess when you got to go you got to go you can't hold it!!!

[spud]

Sap is running 160 GPH right now. I'm glad I turned the pump back on. If it's going to run today then it might run tomorrow also. Tomorrow's temp is supposed to be 2-4 degrees warmer.

Spud

[JoeJ]

Sap started to run at 12:00. Left the sugar house at 4:00, 31 degrees and snowing and the trees had run 1/2 gpt. I guess that is why you leave your vacuum pump on all the time.

Joe

[MJPJ Sugars]

Something pretty interesting today...

Normally, we hit 58 brix at 221 degrees at my house here in Georgia, VT. We start testing with the hydrometer at 219, and cut the heat when we hit 58.

Today, at 219, the syrup measured 63 brix -- very thick.

Barometer here is 29.18. Apparently, that's pretty low -- thank you Nor' Easter.

Boiled some water to see if we were going nuts, and sure enough, water is boiling here at 207-208, a good 4-5 degrees under normal.

Am I nuts? Ever happen to anybody?

Thanks!

JQ

[EBG18T]

I think I might need to recalibrate my thermometers. We were boiling water last night below 210. I calibrated them a few weeks back. I cant get my temps above 214 in my front pan. Elevation here is 1300 feet. Maybe it was all due to the storm?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[JoeJ]

The barometer at my sugar house in Essex was 29.22 this afternoon. The lowest I have seen it in 3 years with a auto draw off. Today's draw off temp was 218.2. Pretty low. For me, that draw off temperature produced syrup that was 66.9% when the test syrup was 211 degrees.

Joe

[DrTimPerkins]

No sap for us these past few days. Just a wee tad too high in elevation and thus too cold. No sap, but TONS of snow -- probably close to 3 ft and still predicted to come down in the mountains (where we are) for a few more days. No decent sap weather forecast for our site for at least another week. Going to be fast and furious once it finally gets going again.

[sapmaple]

The barometer at my sugar house in Essex was 29.22 this afternoon. The lowest I have seen it in 3 years with a auto draw off. Today's draw off temp was 218.2. Pretty low. For me, that draw off temperature produced syrup that was 66.9% when the test syrup was 211 degrees.

Joe

We started drawing at 218 I love how this business is constantly changing from day to day and year to year Keeps you on your toes and your brain engaged GO WITH THE FLOW!

[GeneralStark]

Very little sap yesterday so I turned the pump off.... May miss out on some today but I need to get out in the woods to deal with some issues related to the near 3 ft. of snow we have received here in the last 48 hours. Mainlines are buried and a bunch of limbs came down. And who knows how may drops are disconnected. My stack got tweaked too when the snow on the roof slid so I need to check that out before boiling again...

It was pretty slow going in the woods prior to this last storm so it's going to be interesting. Fortunately we have some friends staying the weekend and they have agreed to help pack out trails with snowshoes....