What are NH sugar makers up to

[white mt]

We could sure use a big thaw. We've only been sugaring about 5 seasons. Anyone remember a season when it was this cold for this long to get going? It was -4 in the bush this morning at our place. Kinda hard to get anything moving with those temps and 14" of snow on the ground.

I had one year not to long ago the first boil was March 30th . The season was 3 weeks long to the day . That won’t happen this year . Goodluck . All

[n8hutch]

It was a nice day today, got my new vacuum pump and releaser setup today. Seems to work good, it's much quieter than I expected. Tapped about 25 trees but I had enough bye 6:30 , called it a night, the snow is still powder in the woods, and near as I could tell every tree was frozen. You hit your head on limbs from above because the snow is still so deep. It's about 40" deep, I think that I'll be able to get about 400 tapped tomorrow. And maybe bye Friday I'll see some sap.

[Russell Lampron]

With all of that snow it seems like 400 taps would be pretty hard to do unless you have help. It was -1 here this morning and I imagine even colder up where you are. It got above freezing here this afternoon, high of 34*, but the trees were frozen and the vacuum didn't bring in enough to make it worth turning it on.

[Dill]

I’ve had more fittings push apart then any other year. It’s gettung annoying.

[n8hutch]

Russell was correct tapping went really slow yesterday got about 125 in , thought I was going to have some help but it never came spent 10hrs on the snow shoes, I do think I did the worst part of it though . Had some help this morning, ran 3000' of 5/16 went into a new piece of the 80 acres that I'm tapping, found at least 500 large sugar maples, only problem is they are 3-4000' from my tank, guess I need to run some mainline in the spring/summer/fall. I'll have 600 tapped by Thursday Friday, lots of light after work now.

[BAP]

Opened my last quart of syrup for breakfast this morning. Sap ran some yesterday after taking most the day to thaw out. Hopefully I will have enough to boil tomorrow for the first time this year.

[Dill]

That was just me. I filled my table syrup dispenser with the last of my syrup on monday. I need to make some syrup.

[Russell Lampron]

I was finally able to try out my RO to see what it will do with 2 membranes. I'm really happy with the results! It was worth spending the money for the upgrade. I was able to get the sap to 12% in one pass without pushing it too hard.

I sweetened my pans last night and drew off about a gallon of great tasting Amber. The season is finally here!

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

Yeah buddy, glad to hear that!!!

[BAP]

Woo Hoo, Finally First Boil of the season. Not a large amount because most of it is still frozen solid in the tanks but enough for a couple hours boiling to sweeten the pans up.