Central Ontario Tapping

[Hkb82]

Still slowing pushing through in red bay. We have had pretty good days nothing crazy but steady in my bush. Still clear and fresh. This is my last week of collecting.

[Run Forest Run!]

Here comes the ice. Good luck everyone and stay safe!

[wobbletop]

Done for the year I think. I'm out of seasoned wood and the ice storm is making a mess of things. There is still some full bags of sap hanging on some of the trees but I think I've made enough.

Switched to mostly bottles this year instead of mason jars (still used some mason jars just in case).
Using a coffee urn to fill the bottles was an awesome tip. Made filling bottles a one man operation.
Tried getting a preheater working that wrapped around the evaporator flue. Made a hell of a noise and gave up on that.

20 taps. Three trees I double tapped as they are coming down in the summer. One of them produced zero sap! I guess it will be coming down first.
1050L of sap, 40 hours of boiling (not counting finishing on the stove inside).
17.6L of syrup. Started light then ended darker.

Bought a welder. Plan is to make my own small evaporator instead of the barrel evaporator. Also plan to build a small shed to get out of the weather. I only had to boil in the rain once this year buy watching the weather forecast.

[Run Forest Run!]

Collecting today with snow boots and spikes. Doing a lot of looking up. ^^ Don't want to get knocked out by falling branches. Still can't get my car out of the driveway after the ice/sleet storm this past weekend. Good thing I've got lots of things to keep me busy around here. Looks like it's going to be a juicy weekend. FINALLY!!

[Run Forest Run!]

Can you believe it? It's April 21st and I'm in the middle of my first major sap tsunami for 2018. It's going to be a fantastic weekend!

[Run Forest Run!]

Well that stunk.

The sap ran really well for the first few hours yesterday and then shut down completely. Today there are only a couple of taps giving any sap and the others are dry as a bone. Looks like this year I'll end up with half the syrup with twice the work. I'm happy for what I did get I just wish it hadn't taken as much effort as it did to get it.

[Galena]

Wow that is a crazy sudden screeching halt to what sounded like an awesome tsunami. Dang it! Poor Karen :-/

[Run Forest Run!]

Wow that is a crazy sudden screeching halt to what sounded like an awesome tsunami. Dang it! Poor Karen :-/

Susan I bet you could hear the breaks squealing all the way to North Grenville. Boiling what is likely my last batch right now. I collected almost as much sap as you did, but your sugar content is far superior with those old sugar maples of yours. My sap total is something like 796ish L. Syrup total to come.

[BrutemanAl]

Gezzz I went through the forest today where I tap trees to go do some work for next year and most of them were all running, trees were soaking wet, made me want to go get my buckets and taps and jam them back in.


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[Galena]

Gezzz I went through the forest today where I tap trees to go do some work for next year and most of them were all running, trees were soaking wet, made me want to go get my buckets and taps and jam them back in.

Al, I bet you probably could too! Some of my trees are still trickling a bit, I wish they wouldn't. Others have been sensible and dried. Karen, well at least you do have a lot of sap to boil. Maybe use the poor man's RO to make life easier? Sure worked well for me, and will be doing it in the future.