Well, what a crazy year. I have run out of wood. . . . Had to bring a load of pallets to burn. . . I've pulled 1/3 of my taps since I have too much. . . . Even made Maple candies this year. Too much fun.
Well, what a crazy year. I have run out of wood. . . . Had to bring a load of pallets to burn. . . I've pulled 1/3 of my taps since I have too much. . . . Even made Maple candies this year. Too much fun.
2016 - 17 Taps, some elm's no clue. . .. .
2017 - 34 Taps, All Maples
2018 - 45 Taps, 7.4 gallons
2019 is done at Kaiser Farms LLC. Ended up with 63.1 gallons of bottled syrup off 101 trees. 32:1 ratio
3/30, 4/2, 4/5, 4/9, 4/14, 4/15, 4/16, 4,18, 4,19
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2 X 6 Smoky Lake with auto draw and reverse flow
16 X 16 Smoky Lake Filter/Finisher
2017 82 on gravity and 31 on drops to buckets
Started pulling taps this afternoon and seen that a good number of the sugar maples are still running. I'm pleased with this season but learned that I need to do some modifying to the tubing in 2 of my 3 woods, poor sap per tap averages but on another note the 3rd wood I averaged just over 14 gallons of sap per tap, if I had 14 gallons per tap average over 2,000 taps, I wouldn't have slept for a week! List is made already for next season on things i need to improve on.
last season my syrup also had a slight metabolism off flavor. I also read the information from the Proctor Center. I just brought my 2 gallons of syrup to sugar and plan to add back water to get it back to proper syrup when i need more syrup. i'm hoping this method takes care of the slight off flavor.
My syrup from this season did not have the slight metabolism off flavor, hurrah for that. although I only made 5 pints of syrup this year. I didn't have time more make more and didn't really need it, since i have 2 gallons worth in the sugar state waiting to be made back into syrup.
I just pulled all my birch and remaining maple taps. It's tough sugaring in northern MN. I yielded 20 gallons of maple and about 13 gallons of birch. All in all the best of the four years since I started.
My wife and I attended our first market Saturday and did surprisingly well. We at the last minute decided to sell our 12oz bottles for $12ea and 8oz birch for $20. Now we know we need to double our finished gallons next year. For the quality of syrup we make, we are not going to give it away anymore. We also decided not to sell bottles larger than 12oz.
Spruce tip syrup is next.
2016- 32 taps, 3 1/2 gallons
2017- 150 taps, 13 gallons after building an evaporator
2018- goal is 240+ taps. 20+ gallons.
2018 Reality- 235 taps, 5 gallons of syrup. Average 50 birch taps and 3 gallons of syrup.
2019- 180 maple taps, 20 gallons of finished syrup.
~ 160 birch taps, 13 finished gallons of syrup.
Latitude 47.278150
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