Just absolutely exhausted here, but trees at both bushes still producing. Got 6.5l from homebush tonight, boiling it up to make nearup tonight along with the gathering from the last two days...so that's...36l finishing up now. And yep still have a couple litres going from the virgins.

Also heard from a client who did find some small but tappable maples on her property, which is largely birch. She reports 25g of sap from 7 taps!! Wisely they boiled outsisde mostly but did have an indoor sap-boilover recently. I've offered to help finish their syrup if they need it.

Oh and speakin of which, have learned a very important lesson from last two batches, #5 and #6. And it must be temp-related cause batch #4 was from the same great sap collection as batch #5 but definitely finished at a lower temp. Anyway. #5 and #6 didn't finish til 222 or 224. It was way up there and yes the temp of boiling water was normal at 212 both times. Both have nice colour on them, but **** did they ever show a CRAPLOAD of nitre in the bottom, which I haven't had from my trees all season!! I should have been tipped off that somethin' weren't right when both batches filtered in record time, just about shot straight through the cloth in a few minutes flat.

So been trying to refinish the syrup....letting batch #5 do it's thang at room temp through just one cloth filter, and alternately heating #6 to about 170 and refiltering but through 2 layers of cloth. Jury still out on both methods, though #5's smaller 500ml jar filtered clean. Haven't yet checked the 2l jar of #5 to see if it's done the same.

Sadly #6 looks just as nitrey as before and even worse lost some syrup to the filters....Argh....well, will just have one helluva salvage batch when I do boil those suckahs down, have a giant Ziploc Freezer bag jammed with filters awaiting a reboil!!!