Yeah not looking good for south east VA. It be nice if someone could send us a polar vortex.
Yeah not looking good for south east VA. It be nice if someone could send us a polar vortex.
I'm banking on some cold shots coming late this month and first of March. Made syrup right up til the end of March last year, and I'm strongly suspicious that we'll see some cold here in the next few weeks (though it'll likely be transient cold shots rather than entrenched cold). I usually tap first of February, but so far the first half of the month looks like a bust.
If my theory doesn't hold up, then I guess I already missed the season. And you guys further south and east have it even worse.
The Evolution
2015 - 2x4 flat pan on block arch, 2016 added dividers for continuous flow
2017 - 2x6 Sunrise Pan (4' Flue, 2' Syrup) on homemade arch with AUF, 2018 added AOF
2019 - Sunrise water jacketed bottler
Dunno how much cold is making it down your way, but next couple weeks looks like the best I've seen this year (though still not quite ideal. Planning to tap tomorrow, which is a couple weeks later than normal.
The Evolution
2015 - 2x4 flat pan on block arch, 2016 added dividers for continuous flow
2017 - 2x6 Sunrise Pan (4' Flue, 2' Syrup) on homemade arch with AUF, 2018 added AOF
2019 - Sunrise water jacketed bottler
Got about 200 gallons of sap from 136 taps today. Went back and looked at my records from last year and saw that I'm really only 3 days behind last year for collecting my first sap of the season. Wonder if we'll have another cold March like last year?
The Evolution
2015 - 2x4 flat pan on block arch, 2016 added dividers for continuous flow
2017 - 2x6 Sunrise Pan (4' Flue, 2' Syrup) on homemade arch with AUF, 2018 added AOF
2019 - Sunrise water jacketed bottler
You can come get as much of our snow and cold temps as you can carry! It's about knee deep in the woods and it bottomed out at -20 C on Friday night!
4,600 Taps on vacuum
9,400 gallons storage
3 tower CDL RO
3.5'x14' Lapierre Force 5
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www.ennismaple.com