Best Flow Ever

[Urban Hillbilly]

I’ve been doing this for a dozen years and I have just over a hundred taps out this season. It’s all buckets and brawn. I have never seen the flow so strong. Yesterday I had some three gallon buckets overflowing less than a full day after emptying. I’ve average 2 gallons a tap/day a couple of times recently.

I never thought I’d say it but I’m looking forward to slow days so I can catch up on my boiling. I’m going to have to buy a larger storage tank and upgrade my evaporator to keep up. What is others’ experience this season?

[Mark79]

I'm in the same boat as you. 86 taps all into 5 gallon buckets and having a hard time keeping up. Full buckets everyday is crazy flow. Just went and purchased a 12v pump to cut out walking full buckets 200' through the woods. Exhausting. Love to see the sap but not equipped to handle this flow for much longer. High flow weather predicted for rest of the week so gonna try plugging the ends of half my tubing until I catch up boiling. Hoping the sap will stay in the tree.

[Ivyacres]

Same as you guys for Sat and Sunday. Dropped way off today. Sunday had 535 on 250 taps and gravity, over 5000 gals this year, the end is near. I have noticed a slight drop in sugar content, but still 1.9-2.0. Good luck the rest of the run!

[HannahL]

Seems this year when its flowing it is running! We have three lines of 3/16 on gravity totaling about 50 taps. Saturday we collected 60 gallons, Sunday was 75 gallons and Monday was 80 gallons, just nuts. Seems unless it gets below 27 degrees it flows all night long so last night it should have recharged (dropped to 18 degrees). We test our sap with a hydrometer after each collection and have gotten 2.3-2.7 percent each time. Normally we struggle to hit 2% sugar but this year it seems to be running higher. Can't complain about this year at all.

[Tweegs]

We are absolutely swimming in sap.

We boiled 10 hours Saturday and 12 hours Sunday…with an RO doing the heavy lifting.
Every tote we had was full of syrup.

My wife had to bottle yesterday to clear the totes, she’s out there boiling now while I’m stuck at work.
I picked up buckets last evening and stopped on my way in to work this morning to fire up the RO…A bit over 500 gallons of sap from just yesterday.

The weather guessers are predicting perfect temps the rest of the week. Next week also looks good (so far).
Buds are still wrapped up tighter than a skeeter’s butt in a nose dive.

Two weeks yet, maybe stretch it to three, I think.
We’re due to clean up. Trying to find a hole open long enough in the sap flow to get it done is proving to be a challenge.

[Urban Hillbilly]

Never in my life did I ever think I'd look into a bucket and be relieved that there wasn't much in there. Granted, I have more taps up this year but not even close to the doubling that I will experience in production this season.

I tapped February 17 and a few of the holes are slowing down, thank goodness (that sounds blasphemous). I too have my wife boiling all day while I'm at work and I've run out of buckets a barrels for storage. Unfortunately I'll have to leave town on business before the season wraps up. I have way more finished syrup than I can handle, so why does it still make me sick to pull a productive tap? I know, I know... it's a disease.

I've noticed the holes on the sunny side of the trees closing up faster. I assume that is due to the warmth of the sun promoting bacterial growth. Don't think I noticed that before. Is that right?

[Cedar Eater]

I learned last year that I had to stop tapping more and more trees each year. I have no plan to sell my syrup, so I still have surplus from last year. I had 6 lines of 3/16" and I was finding even more trees and planning more lines, but I had no plans to upgrade my evaporation, no RO intents, and no plans to move more sap from the bush to the evaporator. This year I have all kinds of contingency plans because I'm trying to sell my house and sugarbush while building a new house at my hunting land, where I also have maples that I have tapped. I still have saplines that I could tap if the first three slow down low enough, but so far the weather hasn't been warm enough for more than a few 30 gallon runs.

[Mark79]

Hoping the flow continues throughout the weekend being Sunday will be the end of my season. Leaving for spring break next week so going to try and keep the evaporator going as much as i can tonight through Sunday. Wish you all a productive and good weekend!