Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[drewlamb]

Pretty good run for us yesterday too. About 2800 gal of sap or about 1.4 gal/tap. Made our first DR last Sat the 14th and expect the rest will go that way, and glad for it. We seem to be right in line with your flows this season Dr. Tim at Proctor, good and bad. Must be in the same elev/climate zone. And our sap also steady at 1.7-1.8, same as last couple boils. Thinking buds will swell up good next week and close the door. Probably do our last gather Tues. Should end up around 0.4 gal syrup/tap - certainly our best ratio ever. We have great slope but no mechanical vacuum, so I'm pretty pleased. Good luck with the rest everyone.

[spud]

I was able to get .25GPT today. It never got warm enough to really run. I think it will run a little tomorrow again and then pick up this weekend when the sun comes out. I suspect Monday or Tuesday will be it for me. Sap is testing at 1.3% today. I think it's cool to see some of you getting 1+GPT per day. I'm just taking what I can get right now.

Spud

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Between last night and today brought in over 1700 gallons including whats still in the tanks. Best run yet!

[Parker]

Treehugef,,,,,what genral part of vt are you in?

[chep]

All done here in Bradford. Pulled buckets wed. Due to family obligations. But the sap was running hard still in the 50 buckets I still had out. Over 1 gal per tap tues and again on wed.
Finished out the rig yesterday for the season total: we tapped Feb 26 and 27th. Hung 205 buckets. Buckets ran for 51 days giving good clear sap the whole time with a couple cold breaks. Our trees are mostly roadside. We live at 1200 ft and the buckets are on south, east and west slopes.
Made 82.5 gallons of syrup for .4 gpt. Best we have done to date. Just goes to show don't ever underestimate the power of the bucket! Hope everyone's season pans out well!

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Wheelock, just north of St. Johnsbury.

[drewlamb]

"Power of the bucket"! Love it. I miss bucket days... The tree to tree connection, knowing how each individual tree runs, lots of folks running around and helping out. Seems like most of the time now I'm on my own, both in the woods and at the sugarhouse. 0.4 for buckets is pretty remarkable. Nice work. Those big roadside trees can really crank. Do you know if your sugar content was also high?

[blissville maples]

Ultimatetreehugger- when did you tap your trees this year? Those are some good end of season runs!

[DrTimPerkins]

A bit on the cold side yesterday, so only 1,503 gal at 1.7 Brix collected. Vacuum still very good. Sap never ran hard, just a slow trickle all afternoon, then stopped around 7:30pm due to cold. About 2" new snow.

In any case, we have 615 gal of 36 Brix concentrate waiting to be boiled in the bulk tank, which should make about 240 gal of syrup. Did a test boil of the concentrate and no sign of buddiness. Will be firing up within the hour. Should take about 3.5 hrs to process (syrup production ~75 gal/hr, total processing rate ~180 gal/hr). Today was our 24th concentration and this will be our 11th boil. Averaging about 275 gal/boil.

Our first boil was Feb 21st. Tomorrow will be 2 full months making syrup, with a lot of fits and starts in there.

Looks like decent weather for sap flow over the weekend. We only need another 8,500 gal of sap (at 1.6 Brix) to get to the 3,000 gal syrup mark, so hoping we can get there before all its over.

Afternoon Update
Finished boiling. 228 gal of AR (65% LT), which puts us at 2.778 gal (0.564 gal/tap). Very nice, but mild flavor still. Not a drop of dark or very dark syrup yet this year. No sap running today...still snowing a good bit up here. Hoping for a couple of good runs over the weekend and early next week.

[GiddingsHill]

Things picked up here for us Tuesday. Shipped 4423gal tuesday afternoon, 5210gal yesterday morning and had another 4000 gal in the tanks last night when it froze.
Upper woods ran well. only testing 1.3, but nice cold sap. couple inches of snow this morning, I think (and hope) the next few days will be exciting