Saratoga County

[Wanabe1972]

Finally getting some sap off the the vacuum lines but the gravity lines arent doing anything . I think because they still have 2 feet of snow around them. Boiled 2 nights in a row and todays haul should make some syrup auto draw popped off a few drops as I ran out of sap. Syrup is looking real light in the pan but already has a ton of niter. The weather looks good here for a week or so with no nights above freezing so maybe we will make a little. Good luck to all that have not given up.

[Mapleridge]

Thesday after a low of 27, temps warmed up to upper 40s and by 10:30 our sugar maples were dripping pretty good, and then about 1:00pm with temps near 50 the taps all but stopped. Half our trees never did run. Tried putting in a couple new taps, thinking maybe the holes had dried in the cold weather we had for about 19 days, but these did nothing. Never had the taps just stop before in mid day. Collected about 30 gallons of sap. Low last night was 35, and this am some of our sugar maples down in the valley are starting to drip very slow. Still more than 2/3 of our trees are bone dry. We are pulling taps tomorrow if we don't see signs of sap today. We have made about 10 gallons of medium by really tending to the sap, keeping it cold but not freezing up our ranks, and keeping the evaporator from freezing. Lots of exta work this year, from very litle sap. What happened to the trees that when we got the "perfect" syruping weather the trees don't want to drip?

[Wanabe1972]

Mapleridge. It sounds like it stayed too warm for you last night. I had ice on the puddles before I finished boiling last night. Do you still have snow around your trees? I did until today and my gravity lines ran. 0. Today the vacuum lines are running like mad and gravity lines are at about 1/4 gallon per tap not a great run but better than 0. I would give it couple more days before pulling.

[Mapleridge]

Our weather doesn't show any night temps below 30 for more than a week, and today just a few of the sugar maples ran veryyyyyy slow. Ran what sap we hade today, and started the clean up. Don't understand why the trees didn't run when the weather was perfect..... We finished with about 10-11 gallons of syrup, and we really worked had to get that. Hope your season finishes well. Good luck all.

[ren46]

Ray - I'm just up the road from you (Donnan Rd) and same thing happened with my taps. Thought it would run half way decent over the pass few days but very little to collect. Lots of taps dried up? The ones still doing anything were in the low shaded areas. I boiled 25 gallons yesterday and frustratedly pulled the buckets this morning. I tapped back on the 8th of March which makes it about 4 weeks that they were in. Is that to long for traditional spouts (5/16") with buckets? Hopefully next season is better.

Ren
2x4 pan on a block arch
74 taps on buckets

[Trevor5]

I tapped half of my taps on Feb 22 then slowly added taps up until this week. All of my taps are still flowing, though my trees that usually do the best of course I tapped in Feb are really starting to slow down a lot. I have some trees that didn't do anything last year are now starting to wake up and be a little more consistent. I have 18 taps total now, but only get 5 gallons total a day. Back when I tapped the first 8 I was got 7-8 gallons each of the first two days of tapping before the deep freeze set in again.

I am a little bit North of you guys but not that much further.

[Mapleridge]

We use tree saver taps and buckets and this year tapped Feb 22. We usually have our buckets up 6-8 weeks and I remember in the last 8 seasons we only had 1 or 2 taps go dry before we decided to pull the taps, so 4-5 weeks is not too long. Starting Monday only our sugar maples were running, and only for about 3 hours in a day. Our red maples have been bone dry since Monday.We pulled the taps this am. The ground is just now thawing out and the ice and snow just melted today. We don't understand what happened with the sap. This week's weather should have been perfect? Now it us too warm at night. Better luck next year for all.

[adk1]

I tapped about the same time, end of feb. My bucket trees are defiantly not producing like they should be, my line trees using cv spouts are doing ok

[stoweski]

What are you up to now, ADK? Weather hasn't been on our side. Down here the reds are popping - taps will be removed from them this weekend. I've hit the 1000 gallon mark finally... Only 1800 below where I wanted to be for the season.
Just awful!

[Trevor5]

Had my best single day sap flow of the season yesterday, 9 gallons from 18 taps. I am hoping to get a good day today and maybe one more day mid to end of the week and then I am assuming that will be about it. Hopefully make another half gallon, the sugar content from my boil this weekend must have been very good as I made about 1 gallon of syrup from just 27 gallons of sap.