Rusty how many trees do you tap?
Rusty how many trees do you tap?
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
Well it seems as if my season has come and gone. With a high of 55 today and a low of only 40 tonight then back up to 59 tomorrow with a low of 39 i really believe tomorrow night to be my last collection and my last boil on Thursday. I counted up the gallons thus far and i have made 51 gallons. I expect to gather 275 gallons which will translate into roughly 5.5 more gallons of syrup plus finish off the remainder in the evaporator which should give me another 4-5 gallons. I will have made right around 60 gallons of syrup. I walked the taps and actually counted today the exact number of taps today. 194 taps which equals out to .3 of a gallon per tap ish.
I could probably ream but it would maybe only prolong the inevitable for a few more days, i see tinges of budding showing, reds are all budded. Plus i only have enough dry wood left for a boil or two anyway and i have more syrup than i can probably sell anyway.
How are the rest of you in the surrounding area doing.
Taps went in first week in feb so i am closing in on 8 weeks on the taps.
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
This is our first year... we tapped on Feb 18th and pulled the taps this past weekend. We could have gone 1 more week, as you said, but spring is fast approaching and we have to get on with other stuff. We had only 13 taps and we will finish with about 7 gallons. That's just over 2 quarts of finished syrup per tap. It's higher than we expected, but we are only tapping sugar maples and they are all in the open with large crowns. Thank you to everyone at mapletrader for your advice and support... Already, we are looking forward to next year!
With the temps in the teens on sunday and monday night, I am hoping the season will be prolinged. I have 2500gal fo sap waiting for me to get out of work today. The forcast for this weekend looks promising, upper thirties days and upper twenties at night. To date we have made 170gal of syrup, all medium from first draw to the most recent. I feel we are still waiting for a big sap day when the buckets overflowing. Maybe today or this weekend.
Mikeb, I need to get me some of those trees. I think why my ratio is lower is that alot of the trees have multiple taps. I didn't decide on doing this rather than just take over making syrup from someone elses land and taps. He insists on putting large amounts of taps on some big trees in the upwards of 6-8. I tried showing him a study about the drop off of Tap production past 3. There are easily 30 extra unproductive taps out in the woods. However, who am i to tell a man what to do with his trees and his woods.
There are two of the same sized trees right next to each other, one i tapped as a test tree with two taps and the one he tapped later with 9 taps. They are 5ft plus diameter trees My test tree produces a full bucket daily and so does the other, so it goes to show you extra taps just stress the tree, and the trees end up shutting down earlier.
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
Final collection netted me 325 gallons of non colored cloudy/clear sap which should give me around 7 gallons of syrup it tested 2% on the nose. I'm finished with this season all the taps at the farm are pulled, and will pull the remainder tomorrow if its not too rainy.
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
If you still have the urge to sugar come on up and see me. I should be going into April again this year.
I think i might have a little bit of the bug left, i'll see how the schedule goes and see if i can't make another trek out there. Maybe some of the others over here might want to take a trip out too. I read the article today about Maple weekend in the Poughkeepsie Journal and saw your address. How much business do you usually do on Maple weekend.
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
Depends on the weather, snow storm tomorrow up here which will keep the #'s down saturday. When the weathers good I get up to 400 people in a weekend. I've called and emailed quite a few people back, so the interest is there.
Nice, i see the winterstorm warning is up for your area could get a foot of snow. Which i'm sure you're not pleased with. I ended up keeping the 40 taps i put in late feb and to my surprise every bucket was nearly full today so it looks like i'll get another couple of gallons out of this season. Pulled 7 off the evaporator last night I'm gonna let these taps ride out until monday or tuesday... i'll pull them after. Now on to the daunting task of washing 150 ish buckets.
80-100 taps
2x6 patrick phaneuf Evaporator
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