Eastern Ontario 2017

[JeffB]

Doesn't that just figure..3 days of good runs collected 1400 liters and now I can't boil it..grrrr
Work called just after I collected today and I got thrown into a caustic soda holding tank spill ....there goes my chance of getting home before Saturday .
That pretty much ends my season !

[Motoman89]

Anyone else disappointed with this season? I tapped in March just after the nice weather in Feb and got next to nothing. With the weather looking brutal and warm for the next week I am pretty sure my season is over and my biggest daily haul was 60 gals from 118 pails. Most of the trees that over flowed buckets last year seemed to struggle to make even a quarter of a pail. Thought today we'd have some sap and left the bush with 9 gals. Guess I am buying syrup this year.

[Run Forest Run!]

Motoman89, I'm with you. No big sap runs and crazy weather. On. Off. On. Off. I'm just over 1/3 of last year's syrup total. The biggest downside is that it takes just as long to clean up your maple syrup supplies when you make 10L as when you make 100L.

[Gerrrr]

I did not tap until March 17th an have made about 30L of Syrup off of 110 taps. Aboutb1/3 of last year as another poster mentioned.

Really wild weather and I don't know what I missed from mid Feb to mid March.

I added lines and Shurflo pump to half the trees and built a mini RO system so a little frustrated that they did not get a good workout. Now it is just more stuff to clean.

Will boil the sap that ran yesterday in the monsoon tonight.

[Galena]

About to go out and see if monsoon resulted in more sap flow or just lots of tree pee. Frustrating season. Off and on, like Karen said. And despite having carefully filtered yet again, still have suspended nitre in the batch I bottled last night and yes I took it off at 186. *sigh*...

ETA nope. Same amount of sap in all buckets except for #9 which is traditionally a late starter anyway. Starting to think that there may be no sap tsunami this year :-(

[Big_Eddy]

I think I'm done. We collected about 45 gallons of sap on Sunday evening and there was nothing yesterday. (not surprising) Forecast is not encouraging.
Last night I boiled down everything that we had in the tank and now I just need to drain the flue pan and finish what's left using the syrup pan only. Probably get that done tonight.

It was an on and off season for us, but overall better than 2016
………………………………………..2016………..2017
Buckets…………………………..185……………180
Tapped…………………………..27-Feb………19-Feb
Done……………………………..03-Apr……….03-Apr
Days…………………………………36…………….43
Sap Days………………………….19…………….20
Sap Total Gal Cdn………….1347……………1235
Syrup Total litres……………142……………..150
Ratio……………………………..43 : 1……………37 : 1
Syrup l / tap…………………..0.77…………….0.833

(Note that the ratio is calculated based on bottled syrup versus collected sap. It does not take into account spillage, tasting, amounts absorbed in the filter or over filling. It always surprises me how 20l of syrup in a finishing pan ends up as 15l in bottles)

[Clinkis]

Just checked weather and forecast appears to have changed for later this week (at least in Peterborough area). Looks like a good freeze Friday night and sunny Saturday. I thought I was done collecting yesterday. Managed another 150 gallons off of vacuum which I was surprised and pleased with. Barely a litre from 10 buckets around the house. I was planning on starting to pull taps tomorrow but may hold off til weekend to see if weatherman is right. Buds still look tight.

Keep your fingers crossed folks maybe we're not done yet!

[ennismaple]

We've got about 1 GPT that ran Sunday evening through this morning. Not bad but not the sap tsunami we hoped for.

If the long range forecast holds we might be done by early next week. We might get one freezing night between now and then. The +18 C forecast for Monday & Tuesday will likely be the end of it.

I estimate we missed about 0.25L/tap by not being ready for what ran the week after Family Day weekend. That amount would get us from it being a meh... season to an OK season.

[Run Forest Run!]

Just checked weather and forecast appears to have changed for later this week (at least in Peterborough area). Looks like a good freeze Friday night and sunny Saturday.

I checked our forecast based on what you posted. Same here! OK, so the buckets are staying up until I see what happens. Maybe there is a little more I will be getting before I start cleaning everything for the season.

[northwood]

Here in the northern part of syrup country, (North Bay) We've had 2 boils and produced a wopping 14 litres from 100 taps. looks like 2 or 3 night of -2 to -5 later this week and then double digit highs into mid april. I tapped March 18 and since then we've experienced the deep cold and then the extreem warm. The snow cover went from 12-16 inches to exposed ground on the south slope in 3 days. So far looks like a poor 2017. I'll definitely hold out for a couple weeks and hope for good sap run. Good thing we have a reserve from last year.