Not much to report. It’s either been too cold or too warm…generally too cold, so it takes a few days for the trees to start running well again. Only been boiling 2-3 times a week, which makes it hard to get into a rhythm. Also, by having sap sit around so much, even with as cold as it is, it gets cloudy, so making dark syrup all the time.
Brought in about 1350 gal yesterday and made about 25 gal of syrup. SSC is 1.7%. JP brought in a load that’s 2.9%...I’m jealous. About 10,400 gal of sap through the sugarhouse, of which about 9000 gal is SHMF…that figures to 10gpt of sap, so a half crop.
It ran well overnight. About 0.75gpt. Will hold today’s sap over and have a big boil tomorrow night.
Still finding leaks where the lateral lines connect to drop line tees. Looks like next year I’ll need to swap out drops. It’s been 5 years, so that’s on schedule.
Tap count is varying. I think we ended up with 897 taps at tap-in, but have lost a few due to pulling a few taps that were sucking air (i.e. hollow tree) or the heads breaking off the CV2’s (frustrating), which got us down to 893 taps. Over the weekend, we did some maintenance work to clean up some laterals and added in a new lateral. Added another 6 taps (I think), so we’re up to 899. I have a couple trees flagged I can add in, but at this point, I think I’ll hold off until next season.