Tapped in Chester

[berkshires]

My yard tree in Boston is done, but all the taps except one in my main sugar bush are still running like crazy. Collected and boiled over 100 gallons again this week. Well, I guess I can't say I boiled it all. When I ran out of wood I flooded the pan, made sure it all came to a boil, and called it good. Now to track down some more wood for my last boil next week.

Brought home about 1.75 gallons to filter and bottle.

Tomorrow I am doing a presentation in my daughter's school on "Where syrup comes from". I will bring samples.

GO

[berkshires]

My yard tree in Boston is done, but all the taps except one in my main sugar bush are still running like crazy. Collected and boiled over 100 gallons again this week. Well, I guess I can't say I boiled it all. When I ran out of wood I flooded the pan, made sure it all came to a boil, and called it good. Now to track down some more wood for my last boil next week.

Brought home about 1.75 gallons to filter and bottle.

Tomorrow I am doing a presentation in my daughter's school on "Where syrup comes from". I will bring samples.

GO

The presentation for my daughter's kindergarten class went really well. I did a video presentation. You can see it here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qLH3pHo78ZZ5QFVC6. Of course I narrated it in the classroom. Then I let them taste fresh sap (I boiled it briefly before bringing it in just to be safe), light syrup, and dark syrup. And they could look at and touch a bucket/tap/lid setup (the blue buckets). Then I gave them one of those little maple-leaf bottles full of syrup and a syrup coloring book to bring home. I also gave their teachers bigger bottles.

I pulled my taps and did my last boil on Saturday. I had family visiting the sugar shack for the first time this season. Nice to share, though it meant I had to shut down for lunch and dinner to be social, so the boil went until late into the night.

This season has been outstanding, with many personal records broken. I'll put that in a second separate post.

GO

[berkshires]

So my season was outstanding. I was very fortunate. Here are some of my personal records I smashed:

Total sap collected: Last year was a record for me at 236 gallons. This year I collected 631 gallons!

Sap per tap: My average is 11 gallons per tap. My previous record was 15 gallons. This year I got 27.4!

Syrup: Last year was a record for me at 6 gallons. This year after bottling the last of it, it looks like it will be around 14 gallons!

14 gallons from 23 taps on buckets. I had no idea I could have a season like that! I think what happened is:

1 - The season started very early because it was quite warm. My tapping date was a full 15 days before the average best tapping date for my region.

2 - The early season was warmer than average

Combining 1 and 2 above, my February (early season) sap per tap, which is usually very little, was instead enormous. I normally average 2.8 gallons per tap in February. This season I collected 11.3 gallons per tap in Feb. That is four times my average volume of sap per tap in Feb.

3 - There were no exceptionally warm days in the early season. So the tapholes didn't start drying out early

4 - The late season was cooler than usual, so I didn't have as many days that were too warm to produce, and this also helped slow down the tapholes drying out. This resulted in my March sap being much more than usual. Average for me in March is 9.2 gallons per tap. Instead I got 16.1. That is nearly double the amount of sap. in March.

And honestly, nearly all of my trees were still producing great quality sap. Hell, the moths aren't even out yet! But... I have plenty of syrup, I am out of wood, I am out of bottles, and my wife is out of patience! That and I have other projects that I need to get to.

I'll do a third post about learnings from the season:

Gabe

[berkshires]

So here is what I learned:

1 - How much sap I can potentially get when everything lines up right (I typically collect weekly and most of my buckets were overflowing most weeks). This was overwhelming for me this year - I was not prepared. This leads to point 2:

2 - I need to collect and split more wood. I had maybe 1/4 to 1/3 the volume of wood for the volume of sap I wound up with. This leads to point 3:

3 - I need more space to store wood. Build a second wood crib. And finally point 4:

4 - Next year, fewer taps.

I'm grateful for this amazing season, but I hope next year is more like an average one!

Gabe