Tapped in Montague - 02/20/2022

[johnpjackson]

Things are definitely slowing down here. Collected 15 gallons of sap today. Almost done boiling it all. Since yesterday the forecast low temp for tonight was down around 25. Now that the night has actually arrived, the forecast has been changed to a low of 31. It's fascinating how relatively meaningless weather forecasts still are, beyond gross details. And even then, even those sometimes end up being mostly or completely wrong, too.

I suspect I'll be taking my buckets down sometime within the next 7 days because there just won't be any more sap runs. But it's been a great season. It makes it fun to imagine it coming again next year, already!

[Buffalo Plaid]

Switch was turned off here as well. Barely a trickle in the buckets tonight but have enough for one more boil tomorrow. No freeze in the forecast after the middle of next week so this may be it for ‘23. I’m happy with the end product

[johnpjackson]

Collected ~18 gallons of sap today (Monday) from the 16 taps I still have out. 11 of those were tapped just 2 weeks ago. The other 5 were done on Valentine's Day. The weather for Tuesday and Wednesday (nights and days) looks favorable for a bit more sap running, and then after that it is forecasted to stay too warm for at least a number of days going forward. I'm figuring that's the end of my season here. I'll boil once or twice more and that will be it, sad!!! But it's been my best season so far which is so pleasing!

[johnpjackson]

Oh sad!! This morning I pulled out the rest of my taps. It was time. They all were either dry or just giving a small amount of yellowing sap.

I've still got a last batch of almost finished syrup in the evaporator. I'll finish boiling it this weekend, get it into my decanting canister, and then get it canned in a week or two.

[johnpjackson]

Finally got the last batch of syrup out of my evaporator last night. 2.5 gallons. That gives me a total of 15 gallons this year, I'm amazed! Luckily I've got a growing number of family members from the past couple of seasons who now regularly remind me they'd be happy to have more maple syrup from me

I gave my evaporator pan an initial cleaning. I put in 5 gallons of water, brought it to a boil, flushed it out, then scrubbed a lot of accumulated deposits out of it. Flushed it again. This will be my first time trying adding vinegar (or maybe citric acid) to it and letting it sit for a long spell, to try and get the pan entirely clean.

Scrubbing the pan doesn't bother me anymore. Not since last year when I burned a whole batch of syrup and warped the pan. It's days of being pretty are clearly over. But it still works so I'm happy enough