SmellsLikeSyrupNH Year in Review

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Overall I had a really good season, although I had many things happen that I never expected.

I started off my plan with tapping trees on my property and running tubes into 5 gallon buckets. I had hoped id double or triple the amount of sap I got this year over last year, with double the amount of taps. For some reason I never came close to that on my property. I did 179 gallons last year on 35 taps, this year I got MAYBE 60 gallons out of 77 taps. The trees just didnt flow, which I think is because I tapped TOO SOON!! I got excited when we had that 1st warm up in February then we had weeks before the next warm up, and I think I screwed myself.

Luckily I had a friend who let me tap on their property and the 35 taps I placed there more than made up for my lack of sap on my own property. I ended the season with over 630 gallons collected. I was VERY happy with that. They have already given me permission to run tubing next year in their patch of woods, and I will setup one of the ShurFlo Vaccum pumps and pump it into a storage tank. Will pull up with my truck and pump it into another tank on my truck. Im really looking forward to that!!
This is my graph I made to show what I collected by temperature and date.
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I wish I had more of those 97 gallon days!! I think next year with the tubing on this stretch of trees and the vaccum, that could become the norm for over there.

Stats:

• 631 gallons of sap collected
• 7 boils
• 8.9 gallons of syrup, all medium to dark amber
• Last boils sugar content was .95%, I believe a lot of rain water got mixed in.
• Best sugar content was 2.02% from my collection and boil on 3/29
• On days I collected I averaged almost 1/2GPT
• My Evaporator would boil about 12-15gph
• Best boil rate was 80 gallons of sap in 4hrs 15 mins, with all dry pallet wood.