It's on in Southern Ohio

[buckeye gold]

asknupp, I made a couple batches of light, but most of mine is medium. I have not made any dark. I had another 75 gallons of sap (that's 130 gallon in 24hrs off 70 taps) this morning and when I started up the evaporator I caught a slight hint of off smelling steam. So i shut off the head tank valve and played chicken with the sap in the pan so I could finish off the holdover sweet just in case the flavor was off. I manged to pull it off and draw while flooding the pan with fresh sap. I finished off the hold over sweet and it was ok but not quite as good a flavor as my regular syrup. It was so warm last night that I bet that sweet would have been ruined in another 4 hours. It's cooling off today so that will help keep sap flowing and fresh. I am betting my season is over before March 1st. Since I have a trip the end of this week, it may be my last 4 days coming up. I am glad I never got the rest of my 100 taps out. I put out 75 and have 5 non-producers. i have had more big runs this year than I can ever remember.

[asknupp]

I have had a lot of big runs and thank God for the RO. It saved a lot of sap that I was able to do after work. Still had a couple nights where I crawled into bed around 1am but without RO they would have been all nighters. If it would have sat all night and the next day it would have been snot. Syrup is starting to get dark. Need to pull flue pan off and clean but I think it really is looking like the last week. I tapped most trees during that warm spell we had back in early Jan. Have made a lot of mistakes this year and have had some uncontrollable issues but so far it's been productive.