Willow Creek Sugarhouse 2021

[red maples]

just a sore arm so far. 2nd shot scheduled for April 3rd.

bottled up 11 gallons of syrup still from last year. still have more of last year's syrup to get through too.

Everything still frozen!!! got to 32.9* for about 5 minutes yesterday. they are saying 34* today so we'll see after being so cold... pretty warm next week. hopefully we don't get into the 60's and 3-4 nights with no freeze forecasted. as long as pressure stays low sap will continue but what sugar will fall even lower. I was up to 1.5% before the freeze up.

Have to bottle some glass and get candy packaged up today and label cream for and get an order together.

[Russell Lampron]

This warm up shouldn't be a problem as long as it cools down afterward.

Don't you love those leaks that make the sap move back and forth in the lateral? Looking for ice in the line is the key there.

[red maples]

Been busy, So lets see where I left off.

Didn't get much sap over the freeze up the week before 150 gallons but it sat for 7 days so ROed it took half a gallon of concentrate and cooked it down to make sure it OK and it was fine. boiled that out quick and got the evap freshened up and melted the Ice out of the flue pan.

sugar came up to an average of 1.75 after the freeze up that was nice to see. I hope we don't see too many of those 60* days for a while. sugar and sap flow both dropped off but rebounded the last 2 days and was about 1.75 again bucket and across the street sap was over a tick over 2 so that was nice to see. although for a 2 days total only ended up with about 350 gallons of sap. but still made about 7-8gallons which was nice. I am at 35 gallons on the season so far after this little freeze up temps look really good for a while.

a few moths in the buckets when I collected them and I heard 1 peeper but it was really warm soooo. but no threat of season ending buds are still really tight for now. snow is about all gone though. still ice in the swamp and some areas in full sun have VERY dry soil. that worries me a little bit about a drought continuing again this year. but we'll wait to see what the spring brings for rain.

[Russell Lampron]

I'm surprised that the sap hasn't been running better for you. I thought that I wouldn't get much sap over the weekend with the cold wind and mid 30's daytime highs. I was delightfully surprised to get 300 gallons Saturday and 350 yesterday. I went down to my tank at 6PM to see how much sap had come in and was planning to turn off the vacuum after that. The sap was still coming in as good as it had been earlier in the afternoon. The thermometer at the house was showing 25* at the time!

[red maples]

Well I think the night freezes weren't good enough to keep things going good after it got so warm. and the wind again WOW... we almost hit 70 down here and only a few hours of freezing temps. things will be better after we thaw from this little freeze up trees will get regenerated and temps look pretty good for a while.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Brad, I think you also need to taken into account that there is a big difference between producers and packers in this state. In my conversations with some of the bigger producer/packers, operations that buy in syrup for resale under their label, their production cost with labor is 2X their purchase cost. They look at their production as a loss leader. So for you to be able to generate a positive cashflow before labor is actually an excellent result considering the market you are forced to operate in. Bruce

[red maples]

yes Bruce thats is very true. but they also work on volume as well. If ben is buying the cheapest syrup he can and might only be making .25 to .50 a quart after costs, over head and labor delivery etc. but if he is selling 50,000 quarts to market basket then he is still making 12,500 to 25,000 for each 50,000 quart delivery. just using round numbers of course. The last time I talked to him was probably 5 or 6 years ago maybe more and straight out asked him what his production vs his purchased syrup was and he said less than 10% probably closer to 5% and that was when he had around 20-25K taps. I have no idea what he's at now. I guess you really gotta love it at that point I mean I love it is still so much fun to do but I guess its just a different scale!!!

[red maples]

so If the forecast is correct, which I REALLY hope it isn't this season is gonna be about 3.5 weeks and I will be done by next week sometime!!!

[Russell Lampron]

Like you I'm worried about the forecast, it surely doesn't look good. If the buds are still tight on your trees you can probably survive a warm spell if it gets cold again. The buds here haven't even begun to swell yet.

[Amber Gold]

I'm not worried. Trees aren't even close to popping...it's been too cold. We can weather the heat wave and come out the other side. Bigger question is how contaminated are the tap holes going to be and how well will the trees run afterwards. I think a few years ago, we had a similar situation and the trees were never quite right after.

Only at a 1/2 crop...still a lot of syrup to be made...I hope.