Tapped in Chester 2021

[berkshires]

Tapped today. Quite the snowstorm driving home. My niece came along, she has been getting more and more into it the last few years. She picked it right up, and was able to drill, install the taps and buckets on a few trees herself.
IMG_20210222_141130279.jpg

Excited for the start of the season. Might be a good week this week too.

Gabe

[Buffalo Plaid]

It looks like you've got quite a bit more snow on the ground than we do. It's great that your niece has an interest. Good luck this season.

[berkshires]

Yeah, for sure it's over a foot of snow on the ground. Hopefully that won't keep the trees from running this week.

Thanks!

GO

[eustis22]

Snow is good...it helps keep things cold. Looks like you have a decent slope there.....if you have the trees I see tubing in your future.

[berkshires]

Snow is good...it helps keep things cold. Looks like you have a decent slope there.....if you have the trees I see tubing in your future.

LOL. I do have plenty of slope, that's for sure. I've thought about tubing, but it really doesn't appeal right now. Most of my maples (all sugar maples) are mixed in amongst the forest, very crowded, and tall and spindly. I've tapped them, and they come in around 1% sugar (sometimes less!). But I also have some really big happy ones dispersed around the property. Those are the ones I tap. Most are very far from each other, so buckets seem the way to go. The ones in the picture are a few right next to the sugar shack, which get good sun, and do well. Basically the best trees on my property are the ones by some kind of clearing, like a structure or a road.

GO

[berkshires]

There is one area I've walked through a few times that might be a good prospect for tubing. It's too far from the sugar shack for me to have considered it, but it is near an old logging road that goes right by the sugar shack, so I guess I could run the tubing to that road, and then sled or wheelbarrow the collection barrels down the road to the sugar shack.

Then there's the issues of buying and setting up all that tubing, cleaning the lines every year, repairing them, throwing away hundreds of feet of plastic tubing every few years. I dunno. Seems like it would probably double my setup and breakdown time, double or triple my annual expenses (right now just bottles, taps, and filter paper), and create a ton of waste, for what's just a fun hobby to make a few gallons of delicious maple syrup every year.

GO

[berkshires]

Collected and gathered the first run. Brr, that was chilly. Quite pleased with the first run and the first boil. I probably had about 40 gallons on 17 taps, which is pretty darn good considering that many shady-side buckets were empty. I threw away a lot of ice, and wound up putting about 34 gallons on the evaporator. That was enough to sweeten the pan a fair bit. After a four hour boil, as I was shutting down, the temp in the syrup channel was three degrees over BP. So I think I should be able to get to syrup from the next run.

I was quite pleased with the boil rate, too. This is my first really good length boil on my new Mason. It took close to two hours to really get up to maximum boil, but averaging over four hours I boiled off more than 7.5 GPH. Very happy with that. I think for longer boils I will likely be over 8, maybe pushing 9 GPH. Not too shabby considering I don't use a blower.

Another thing that I was happy with was the flaps I cut in the roof. I was a bit worried that the steam would hit the insides, condense, and run back down, but there was no problem at all. And even with the wind occasionally blowing the steam all back into the shack, they performed perfectly.

Another thing I was happy with was a new tree I tapped. It's a long way from any of the other trees, but it is a huge and very healthy tree, with a big crown. I'd never tapped it before. It came in at 3.4% sugar. That's nearly 3 times the sugar of some of my other trees. Definitely worth the extra schlep to gather the sap. I put a third tap in it.

I still need to fine tune my shutting down procedure. I did not stop firing quite early enough, and had to shovel the coals out of the hot evaporator, leave the evaporator door open, and put the cover on the pan, to keep from burning the pan. I almost had to add some water, but I think everything else was just enough to keep the pan okay.

I put in my hand-made dividers after shutting down. I'm anxious to find out if they'll maintain the gradient in the pan. It's not a perfect seal, so we'll see.

Looks like we're heading back into a deep freeze for a week. Hoping next Tuesday really gets as warm as they say.

How was the week for the rest of you Western MA tappers?

GO

[berkshires]

Yesterday I pulled taps and did one final boil. I know there would be one more run this weekend, but other priorities need to take precedence, so it's time to call it.

Had a smallish run (1 GPT) and pretty low sugar (around 1.55%), but I also had a pan of almost sweet, plus a stored pan of sweet I added back on. The result of cooking all that off was my biggest batch of syrup by far. My previous record was one gallon of syrup (which took over 12 hours on my old evaporator). Yesterday I netted what will likely be over 2.5 gallons after I finish and bottle. That's how much I usually make in a full season!

Working with a batch of sweet in the pan and adding more sweet was pretty problematic, as my first draw was basically the entire last two channels of syrup. I couldn't possibly keep up, and had to deploy the oh s#it bucket. Still nothing scorched, and my gradient came back fast, and I was drawing off again in no time. But I'd like to avoid that if I can in the future.

Somewhat more of a disaster was losing somewhere between a half a quart and a quart of syrup on the floor. I reversed my pan, which meant the drawoff went to a kind of awkward place in the sugar shack to collect. I had a bucket balanced, but... once the bucket started to fill with syrup the balance shifted and the whole thing toppled over. Big bummer.

Overall I'm very pleased with the season. The new Mason is so much more fun to work with than my old home-made little arch. And when all is said and done I think I'll have about 4.5 gallons of syrup to show for the season, I'm pretty happy about that, given what a slow start there was to the season, and how tight my time was this year.

How is the season going for the rest of you?

GO

[bigschuss]

In almost the same boat over in Savoy. Had a few goods runs this past week. Going to collect Saturday afternoon one last time and boil on Sunday. Sap is starting to get slightly cloudy. Very slow start, but when all is said and done I think we'll be at 8 gallons or so on our Mason 2x4. Didn't dump syrup, but did overturn our collecting sled and lost about 30 gallons of sap.

[berkshires]

Didn't dump syrup, but did overturn our collecting sled and lost about 30 gallons of sap.

Ouch. I bet a few choice words were uttered. I try to just transport in a closed barrel whenever I can, but sometimes the way things work out it goes in one that would not survive an overturn, and I've had some very near shaves.

With me being 1000 feet lower elevation than you, I'm dealing with very cloudy sap now, and usually have to dump at least one bucket that has gone bad. Since I live two hours away, I just can't boil more often. That's part of what makes me call it time. That and the fact that some of my buckets seem like they have more moths than sap LOL!

GO