2017 At Willow Lane Farm in Wakefield, NH
Don't post much. Mostly lurking. Been an interesting year. We've only made about 2 Gallons so far, ended up probably wasting an opportunity to make another 2 gallons with a work trip and some waste/spoilage around that last heat wave's start. Then we got cold.
Taps along road area started flowing yesterday, and are going strong today. Collected about 35 gallons since yesterday afternoon and a quick run around to all the taps an hour or so ago. Expect to boil tomorrow and expect to have at least 45 gals of sap to boil (our cut off of when we'll start up the burn barrel arch and evaporator ;-) ) based on where the buckets are looking and the way things are flowing.
Some ornamental looking red or silver maple has some loose buds and showing red, everything else has tight buds. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that with the flow today and tomorrow, we'll maybe end up with 1.5 gals to 2 gals of syrup. And looking at the weather, we may be in store for another flow this weekend. Weds and Thursday look to stay below freezing, just not sure if we get cold enough to make the negative pressure magic happen. Weds overnight is 6 here on accuweather, day only gets to 22. Thursday low is 15 and high of 29.
In fact.. If the buds hold tight another week or two, next week looks like some great temperature changes overnight to morning, but who knows. Weird season for our second season here. We've been tapped for about 4 weeks maybe. Maybe more, need to look at FB and see when. Lots of snow still on the ground here from the storm the other day keeping the trees cold. Getting the workout in walking around all over the field across the street and into the back field along our farm with a five gallon bucket full of sap in each arm through lower calf deep snow with the occasional nearly knee deep drifts.
Think we have about 22-23 buckets on 90 taps. A few nice old reliable sugars, some newer growth sugars, few reds and silvers - expect those guys shut down for me this weekend. Heck - almost tempted to take some taps out of those and hit some of the smaller trees deeper in the woods along the property this weekend if the buds look good. We caught the bug last year with our 20 or so taps and 1.5 gallons of syrup made.
Last edited by WillowLaneFarm; 03-20-2017 at 11:50 AM.
Reason: updating signature maybe?
2017 - Got hooked last year
100 taps (mostly 5/8, a few 7/16 plastic) on 5-gallon buckets with. Maybe 22 buckets.
The Same evaporator as last year.
2016 - Decided to start up on a whim.
25 taps (5/8 plastic) on gallon jugs put up around 2/28. Have a homemade wood 55gal drum "stove" with a stainless steel/baffled evaporator from Vermont Evaporator.
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