Southeastern WI 2021 Tapping

[littleTapper]

Basically the end here; one more collection (if it's even good) from my remote sugar bush. Forecast is too warm. No freezes (or just a couple degrees below the freezing point for an hour or two) on the way per the 10-day forecast. Not a good season.

Pulled my 20 bucket taps yesterday. Most of these are large silver maples. Didn't even get 90 gallons of sap from them. Some that habitually overflowed 5 gallon buckets barely gave a drop this season. Pulling my vac taps - mostly silvers, very soon. Just haven't gotten to it yet. Not even 10 gallons of sap/tap off those. My 30 sugars a few miles to the north (and higher elevation) on 3/16 saved me a bit. Nearly 17 gallons of sap/tap on those.

Still, a not very good season. Days it should have ran hard, it didn't. Too many warm nights in a row during the season and perhaps a bit of a late start with the cold preceding it. Oh well, we still made some good syrup. Upside, it wasn't a very difficult season. I don't feel like I worked too hard during it, and that's ok too

[Irish Ridge]

March 23rd...Just finished my last boil today so I can start responding to threads. I always enjoy the Southeastern Wisconsin thread as it is often similar weather and result wise to us over in Crawford County and Vernon too for that matter. Was an interesting season if nothing else. The last week gave us close to half of our syrup for the season and let us finish with our third best year. And now to the clean up.

[littleTapper]

March 23rd...Just finished my last boil today so I can start responding to threads. I always enjoy the Southeastern Wisconsin thread as it is often similar weather and result wise to us over in Crawford County and Vernon too for that matter. Was an interesting season if nothing else. The last week gave us close to half of our syrup for the season and let us finish with our third best year. And now to the clean up.

Good to hear you got a nice push at the end! Not a great season here; just wouldn't get cold enough at night. I ended up with only 18.6 gallons of syrup off 93 taps. About 10 gallons less than last year. Still, it's good stuff and that's plenty of syrup. Can't have best seasons every year! Tiny differences in weather between my groups of trees was interesting to observe. My 30 sugars on 3/16 clobbered the production of my 43 silvers on vac and 20 large silvers on buckets since they got just a bit more opportunities to freeze and will run longer when there isn't. When the weather is good, my silvers usually do really well.

Time to clean up and formulate ideas for next year. Thinking I may add another membrane to the RO and get a steam bottler. I'm tired of cone filters.

[littleTapper]

Nearly ready for the 2022 season here. Tubing is up, storage is clean. Just need to flush a few things out and get the RO ready whenever we get closer to tapping weather.

[montnut]

Looks like this Sunday will be my start of tapping

[littleTapper]

Some decent sap flow recently. Things woke up really nice yesterday. Some we just gushing - today will be a cold recharge and hopefully rebuild some ice in the tanks. Going to have to concentrate and boil Saturday since the forecasted high is now showing 67 degrees here. Ugh. Will get to boil in a t-shirt on March 5th. Jeez.

[littleTapper]

Pretty crappy season so far. Generally cold with few long runs and now the 10-day forecast shows it'll get above freezing Sunday and stay above (except for one tiny bit below) until at least the following Sunday. Last year wasn't great, this is shaping up to be awful. Going to be really tough to keep everything clean with temps getting into the 50s and 60s for a week or more and hope for a late March recovery. Ugh.

[montnut]

Pretty crappy season so far. Generally cold with few long runs and now the 10-day forecast shows it'll get above freezing Sunday and stay above (except for one tiny bit below) until at least the following Sunday. Last year wasn't great, this is shaping up to be awful. Going to be really tough to keep everything clean with temps getting into the 50s and 60s for a week or more and hope for a late March recovery. Ugh.

I,m in Hales Corners and I have the same thing going on here. Mother Nature doesn't like me!

[littleTapper]

I,m in Hales Corners and I have the same thing going on here. Mother Nature doesn't like me!

Yup. Got a bit over the last day (kept running overnight). May keep going today - thankfully vacuum and 3/16 lines help. It might just get cold enough Friday night to get another bit of sap, but the 10-day is still no freezes except for Friday night and only 29 here for a short time (my trees north of Big Bend will see 26 or so and usually it's a bit colder there).

Will see if the trees keep running today. If so, I'll probably let them go and boil tomorrow. If they slow down a lot I'll fire up the RO and cook tonight to get everything caught up. Still ice in my tanks, so I'm hoping I can ride out today.

Bottled a whopping 7.5 gallons Sunday (LOL). Weakest ever for 94 taps. Nitre is awful this year too and the sap even turned cloudy right after filtering since it was still >190F. Oh well. It'll settle out.

[littleTapper]

Ok, the run that started Sunday was a dandy. Got a good 2 gallons/tap. The trees here at home may run again today; it froze overnight despite the forecast that it wouldn't. My trees to the north did not, so they'll be slowed down. Will go pump that tank out this afternoon and see what I get here for one more boil to keep on top of the warm weather.

What I boiled last night was great. Light color and very little nitre compared to the first boil. Totally different, in a good way.