I put in my 53 taps today. It was running good. I have 3 lines that meet in the middle. I tapped the trees on the high side first and by the time I got the last tree tapped on the low side the sap was running out of it on the ground. Turned on the pump in the middle and......... away we go.
Checked my test taps again yesterday one bucket maybe a pint the others bone dry. Snow depth is down a little now easier tapping once things start. Years past things would be running by now.....................Like Twosaps says "come on Mr. Sun" !!!!! Jay
Zucker Lager
Everything is still pretty frozen where we are near the UP. Collected a grand total of 2 gallons of sap from 64 taps during the day on Saturday (about 38 degrees for a high). Many of these are big mama trees out in the sun. Still well over a foot of snow. No wonder the trees grow so slowly up here. Over the past 3 weeks, we collected 29 gallons of sap total, which was frozen solid in the buckets. Amazingly, this was such high sugar content, it yielded 1.5 gallons of medium amber syrup. Good luck with the warm-up this week. Finally.
Same thing to report in our woods near Sugar Camp. We see a little drip here and there in the middle of the day, but its just so cold at night. Maybe the warm weather this week will finally loosen things up. We still have not boiled yet.
I'm almost embarrassed to share this, but what the heck. A week ago I did an experiment by actually shoveling around one of our trees in the woods, to see if having the sun able to warm the ground during the day might make any difference. It's nice and clear there, with no snow. Of course it did not help sap flow, but the deer probably love the nice dry bed. My brother suggested that I shovel around every tree. Hence the name, "TwoSaps."Originally Posted by SugarCampAmateur
We collected in our opinion, 70 gallons liquid equivalent, frozen solid sap, from 60 trees on Saturday. We tapped on March 3rd and this was our first collection. Most trees the rest of the weekend dripped a dixie cup or two. However one or two tree's in the open had about a gallon or so in the pail. We melted the sap in turkey fryers and boiled anyway. We will be watching the weather also this week.
It is the deep frost in the ground this year guys! Some on here have said frost in the ground does not matter, to them i ask what are they smoking!? Just as some on here have stated that RO's and vacuum tubing have no attribution to the increased supply of finished syrup on the market. To them I ask, what are they smoking?
Mark
Where we made syrup long before the trendies made it popular, now its just another commodity.
John Deere 4000, 830, and 420 crawler
1400 taps, 600 gph CDL RO, 4x12 wood-fired Leader, forced air and preheater. 400 gallon Sap-O-Matic vacuum gathering tank, PTO powered. 2500 gallon X truck tank, 17 bulk tanks.
No cage tanks allowed on this farm!
Was I late? Or is this just a very strange year?
I'm in the Minocqua area and very new to tapping maple trees. Last year I had no issues. Had pretty good flow from all trees I tapped. This year I have had very little sap from every tree so far. Okay flow the first day or two but now I'm lucky to get anything at all. Am I early? Late? Or is this just a very bad year? Anyone in the area having similar problems so far this year?
I have seen marginal flows so far. Typically the trees to the south do best. I recently added a tree on the edge of the field (furthest south) and it really hasn't done squat. I have to think that the frost probably went deeper there as the snow cover always is deepest back in the woods.
Another week or two would be my guess for that far north. We have property in Hazelhurst, but do not tap it. Mostly oak and pine although we do have an awesome deep drop if we had enough maples to tap a run.
FWIW the WI river was iced over as far as could be seen from Bridge st in Wausau and WW in Brokaw this past weekend.
Last edited by Diesel Pro; 03-28-2018 at 12:10 PM.
2017- 80 taps on 3/16 natural experimenting with Sap Sucking options
The original Homemade XLE 4040 RO http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...RO-suggestions on a dolly
7" short stack filter press w/air diaphragm pump
I have 17 taps outs this year at our cabin near Merrill hoping to make more syrup than I did last year with my 7 taps for a couple weeks. But so far for the 4 weeks they have been out I have made just barely made over a gallon of syrup. Very slow going. I had stopped in at maple hollow yesterday to get some filters and they said it has been very slow before this past week but it started coming in nice this week. I would of thought with the warm up this week that it would of started flowing more but not really, since Saturday I only had about 15 gallons of sap collected this week. I was hoping for almost full buckets. Now with the snow and cold week ahead looks like it will be a bit without any flow.
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