the past few days have given very little in sap. by the time it gets moving, the sun is on the way down so ive had only a few runs and on the short side. got about 40 gallons today though. the sun poked out for a few but never really stayed.
Getting about 1/3 gallon per tree right now. Boiled 3 gallons down to about 12 oz of nearly-there syrup - virtually no maple flavor, just a sort of cotton-candy caramel sweet flavor. Not bad, just not 'maple'.
I guess as long as its sweet, enjoy it.
my trees are on the north slope in the woods so I needs mid 30's to get them running. today was sunny and windy but hovering around 32. the lines thawed but it didn't see a drip even at 330pm.
collected yesterdays sap, maybe about 70 gallons. went and checked today around noon and had 50 in there already. flow was cruising in the tubes. one of my 5/16 lines had almost no air bubbles in it so I think I may need an upgrade next year. thinking of running an actual mainline instead of all 5/16. vac gauges should be here Friday so I can get a real idea of whats happening.
I'm getting ~2gal/day out of 3 taps in 1 tree that's split into 3 separate trunks, and then 9 others on 3 separate 5/16 lines produce a total of 1 gal/day. Strange behavior.
cooked what I had Friday and had nothing to do Saturday. my neighbor offered me 130 gallons of his sap as he wouldn't be able to boil it before going bad. ended up with about 3.5 gallons a finished product. today, my son went for a hike in the woods and told me we had 100 plus gallons of sap in the tank. I didn't expect that because the nights here haven't be cold. looks like I cooking tomorrow.
finished f 3gallons from my neighbor today while boiling down the 100. tubes were running at 830 Monday morning. will go see what yesterday gave me.
All my buckets were full of sap, then got washed out with rain. Bust year here. Got 2 pints of maple-less sugar syrup. I'll probably have some equipment for sale shortly.
Last edited by RIFoster; 04-03-2015 at 07:41 PM.
I have some sap now from Thursday and Friday. its got a little cloud to it as it usually does this time of year but tastes great. if you want some or all, let me know. maybe 100 gallons. I will have more coming and a neighbor is giving me his sap for what is left of the season. I don't have enough wood to boil it all and it will get dumped.
looks like just the 2 of us on here this year.