2017 Season

[weaver]

Tapped in around February 5th and I think I'm pulling them this weekend. We've got 30 taps, collected about 90 gallons to make about 1 1/3 gallons of finish. Not a great season here this year with the weather.

[rhallett]

Weekend tapper here... We spend our week downstate, then head upstate for the weekend... difficult to produce under these conditions! I only tapped two weeks ago. In the first week, (19 taps) we pulled about 100 gallons of sap. Boiled it down to 2 gallons of very sweet syrup!! This week I believe I have about 60 gallons to cook off. Expect to pull taps at the end of the weekend. There is enough there for christmas gifts to all the kids/grandkids... All in all with the strange weather, nice results!!

[Dennis H.]

I am quite happy with how my season went even though I pulled taps back on Feb 23rd.

Could I still be making syrup, heck yeah. Would it be good syrup? Not so sure about that.

I have no means to off load a lot of dark or off flavor syrup so what is the sense of me sticking with it just to get bigger numbers?
So I took advantage of the warmer temps back in Feb and cleaned everything up and put everything away. I am now onto other things, things that on a normal year would still have to wait for a few more weeks.

What is a normal year anyway?

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I'm not interested in making any off flavored stuff either. We made the first dark of the year our last boil over 5 weeks after we started. Lots of medium with cloudy sap and expect it to go back to medium tomorrow which will be the first boil since we last boiled on Monday the 13th. Been crazy cold here the last four days with temps in single digits and teens and sub zero wind chills. We got about 5" of snow this week and about 1" of rain coming tonight and tomorrow so lots of moisture will be in the ground.

Tomorrow is our WV Mountain State Maple Day so we hope to have sap to boil for it if trees can get thawed out today and tonight.

[unc23win]

I started getting little bit of sap on Saturday and more yesterday after a 9 day freeze. Sap looks pretty clear and was testing 2.1, which is up from the last I tested on March 9 which was 1.6. This week the weather looks to be good. Time will tell.

[Sugarmaker]

Folks,
I think we may be done! Tomorrow will tell the tale. Temps are good for sap flow, but its sure has not started yet!

Past news:
Maple Taste and Tour Weekend was busy with several hundred visitors stopping by. Weather was perfect!
We boiled water in the evaporator, had the wood stove going, a propane heater in the product display area, and a electric heater for the family members at the checkout table. I had a great time!
Regards,
Chris

[Hoppy]

So back in post #70 I said how my season was over and showed pictures of my syrup. That was Feb 20. My sugar maple has been dry since then through all of the freeze thaw cycles. I noticed one of the smaller maples, not sure species, had some sap, but I just left it. I actually left all of my taps in, mostly out of being too busy and laziness. So, yesterday I came home from work to 5 jugs on my sugar maple each having about 1/3 of a gallon in them. Today, they are at about 1/2 gallon. It does look a bit cloudy, doesn't smell funky.
I never expected it. Is it normal? Should I collect or just dump it? I'm thinking dump it as there is sediment in the jugs, etc..