Finished off the season today with boil #8. Boil 7 and 8 both had sugars around 2.3%. Of course I did limit sap in the storage pile to 2% or more, so I'm being selective on purpose to maximize my return. Up till yesterday I was seeing some nice runs with fairly clear sap, but overnight it dried up and what was in the buckets was getting cloudy. I still managed to grab a 5 gallon bucket of 2.4% to add to today's boil of 80 gallons.
In the end I produced 12.5 gallons which was 2 more than my goal for the season. I'm glad I decided to add 20 taps awhile ago when the season looked wonky so I'll consider working with 50 or so taps next year. My neighbor has a 24" tree I tapped that was real productive, and another larger one I'll add next year. Summer projects include re-bricking the inside of one arch.
Good luck to all who are still in the game and I'll see you all next season!
Two 2x4 concrete block arches with three steam trays each
Tapping in Mount Vernon since 2016, 30 to 70 taps, 5/16" tube to 1.5 to 3.5 gallon buckets, some trees on collective gravity tubing to 5 gallon buckets.
Mostly sugar maples, a few reds on 200 year old homestead