Eastern Ontario 2021

[ir3333]

Well done!
Like you i hung in there when the heat wave hit and took the opportunity to clean my pails and pans.
The trees took off again for 12 days with the freezing nights and warm days. My last boil was Monday.
My trees continued to run Monday and Tuesday.

[paulslund]

I had about 40L in the barrel that tested ok (kind of a sweet fruity flavour actually) but I somehow hurt my ankle during the day (don't even know what I did!) so decided against spending additional hours boiling.. checked the barrel this morning and it's now 1/2 full of very cloudy sap with yellow gross stuff floating on top.. so I probably wasted about 1 L of syrup.. but my ankle is thanking me this morning. So that sap is going into the pans for soaking. Now to start scouting for turkeys!

I hope everyone had a decent year even though it certainly was less than last year... last week sure helped redeem the season somewhat...

[Galena]

I got less than 400l of sap this year. Have to finish off my 4th and last bath which should be about 3l syrup. A little disappointed but ah well.

[Big_Eddy]

We collected 220 gals on Monday evening. There were lots of buds showing so was not sure whether to boil or not.
No smell of buds and the syrup tastes great (dark and strong) so gamble paid off. Boiling steadily since Tuesday morning. Once I finish boiling what's left in the tank - that's it for us. Won't know the final tally until I get the rest bottled up.
Will get the buckets down and washed by weekend.

First season ever I have not had to go gather more syrup wood. The huge pile of slabs is down to a few though.

[paulslund]

So I just completed my rough estimate of total sap collected and boiled (not counting what I collected and let spoil due to my ankle). In order to estimate my sap I took pictures of my barrel right before each boil (it's white to slightly transparent and can see the sap level through it) and used a fancy excel formula to calculate the volume of liquid in a barrel that is on its side. So it's not a perfect count. My estimate is approximately 1240L collected this year, compare to just over 900 collected last year. If I'm at the standard 42:1 that should provide me with around 29L of syrup. Last year I made 27L but my average was around 33:1. I recall testing my first tank full at around 1.9%.. so I think I will end up at least as good or better than last year's production. For a year that started off looking poor, I'm please with the results. Planning for next year is already underway to make sure I can handle all of this without needing to cut wood mid-way through the season!

But boy was it ever a fast and furious season!
Enjoy the spring weather everyone..!

Paul.

[ennismaple]

We finished our last boil on Tuesday. We got a freezeup on Monday night but barely got 1000 gallons (1/4 GPT) on Tuesday so it was obvious we were done. The syrup we were making was still good and even got as light as 60LT before we started chasing the sweet with water to boil it through. There was definitely a slight end of season smell and taste to the syrup - not offensive or buddy by any means but that distinctive 'you are done' aroma we've come to know. I know one producer who tried to boil Wednesday and the sap had turned and the syrup was "off" so they shut down and dumped it.

The pumps ran all day Wednesday to get enough sap to flood the pans. They will soak until about the end of May. We'll get the taps pulled this weekend and break out the golf clubs next week!

Overall an acceptable season. We were down about 20% from 2020 (a record year) and given the non-typical weather and knowing how poor a season some regions had we'll take what we were given.

[paulslund]

Overall an acceptable season. We were down about 20% from 2020 (a record year) and given the non-typical weather and knowing how poor a season some regions had we'll take what we were given.

Martin, if you're down 20% from a record year, does that end up putting you on par with a normal year, like 2019, I hope?

[PaulRenaud]

Heads up if you are using 5/16 taps designed to connect to lines. I had a number of them break off when I tried to twist them out. The CDL Max Flow taps twisted out fine, but the CDL Signature-3 ones broke when twisted and I had to dig the remainder of them out of the tap hole with picks. They came out fine using a tap puller.

[ennismaple]

Martin, if you're down 20% from a record year, does that end up putting you on par with a normal year, like 2019, I hope?

We would still be down about 10% from a normal year.. Always tough to compare apples to apples because we're making improvements every year that increase what a normal yield should be. At one point we would have considered this year's crop as a record year. Now it's neither here nor there.

[blissville maples]

Heads up if you are using 5/16 taps designed to connect to lines. I had a number of them break off when I tried to twist them out. The CDL Max Flow taps twisted out fine, but the CDL Signature-3 ones broke when twisted and I had to dig the remainder of them out of the tap hole with picks. They came out fine using a tap puller.

I have found this also, seems if they get twisted this can happen , thin wall!. Pulling without twisting seems to alleviate the problem.