2017 Season

[Dennis H.]

I guess I am the 1st, Tapped the trees yesterday and collected and boiled the 1st syrup of the season.

Trees are running really nice down here. The sap tank was overflowing when I arrived this afternoon. Less than 24 hrs from when I tapped and turned the vac on.
Not too bad for the 1st day.

Weather is looking good for this coming week, may have a small freeze up come this weekend or beginning of next week.

Good luck to everyone. the season is upon us.

[spelunk68]

This post freaked me out as my name is Dennis Hudson and I did not remember posting to the PA board lol.

[spelunk68]

Tapped early here too, about 20 percent of my sugar maples. On my refractometer I am getting readings of 2.4 to 2.8 sugar content, not bad for an early run from what I understand (My first year). Getting around 15 gallons a day from 7 tree's.

Now with these tree's do I just leave them tapped and just discard slow flow sap if we start getting real weather here and resume at the end of winter? Or should I pull taps and then re-tap, or discard collection from these tree's now that I got impatient and tapped early?

I have a main line set up on the hill ready to tap around 30 tree's but I am saving that for the end of season tap so I do not contaminate the tubing. The ones I tapped are actually on a lake sure so ground water is never an issue for them. Or should I hit the main line now as this wacky weather is causing an early season?

Also I want to do one big initial boil (I have capacity for 20 gallons if all pans would be full to the top, not that i would do that but I should have decent boil space for a noobie and with my bad back I want to do as large batches as I can, I have cold storage for up to around 150 gallons), 7 to 8 days after first collection. The lake is semi frozen and I am moving the collected sap daily to 5 gallon water cooler jugs mostly submerged in the lake hung off the dock to act as a kind of refrigerator, water temp showed 35 degrees. Am I on the right track doing it this way? What is the longest you would recommend stock piling sap in this manner?

Am I doing this right? this is my first time ever tapping.

[Dennis H.]

Great news KVSappers.

[KV Sappers]

Great news KVSappers.

Yea I was pretty happy. When I tapped Saturday what little sap that was running was pretty nasty. Looked like end of season crap. Threw that out and when they started running yesterday and today the sap is clear. Maybe that little bit of snow and definitely the cold helped. How's the sap running for you?

[sbedilion]

Collected 40 gallons tonight...pretty happy. Hoping for a few more gallons this weekend before boiling.

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[Paddymountain]

I have about 220 taps in , 70 last night and 140 tonight, it was really running hard into the cage tank until I
was done tapping. Have everything about ready in the sugar shack, probably first boil will be Wednesday night.
Still have a piece of 3/16 to put up, 50 buckets to put out, and 90 on vacuum at the house to get up and running!!!!

[mapleack]

All tapped and mostly ready. Some sap ran today. Fixed vacuum leaks, washed the evaporator and got the RO ready. Hopefully we'll make some steam tomorrow.

[KV Sappers]

Trees are starting to come alive. Collected little over 13 gal. of sap today with sugar content of 1.6. Collected this afternoon and trees were doing there drip, drip, drip dance. Hope they keep doing their drip, drip ,drip dance or the next couple of weeks.

[helptheold]

I've got 8 taps out right now & got about 4 gal today. Makes me happy since I only had 4 taps last year for 17 gal total