Hi,
We tapped in January between the 2nd and 21st. We made a little mid January and quite a bit between the 26th and February 5th or so. Earliest we ever tapped. Earliest we ever made syrup. We boiled the last time on March 6th. Earliest we ever ended. We ended up with about 1/3 gallons per tap so pretty good. Low sugar as has been normal the past few years. Average about 1.2%. We put in a lot of effort with sanitation of taps. Calcium Hypochlorite rinse lines before season started and used check valve spouts. Bad squirrels this year. Had to do repairs almost daily. Sanitation helped but by the 4th of March we were making some real real dark stuff and I decided to end it when the run was really slowing down so there were diminishing returns each day. We might have been able to go longer but the quality was something I wasn’t excited about. We’re only at about 1200 feet so I think higher elevation spots would have had a later/longer season.