Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[spud]

I was surprised to get 1000 gallons this afternoon. Mainly just the south east side of the woods ran. Tomorrow sap should roll again. Lots of real good weather to come.

Spud

[Mead Maple]

I was surprised to get 1000 gallons this afternoon. Mainly just the south east side of the woods ran. Tomorrow sap should roll again. Lots of real good weather to come.

Spud

Wow that is great Spud. It got a few degrees above freezing today but the wind blew pretty hard all day. Was not all that productive here at least not for buckets. Tonights freeze and tomorrows textbook weather should make for excellent running!


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[GiddingsHill]

Also had a freak run here, primarily just from lower elevations, totally unexpected. Heeding Dr. Tim's advice I'd "put my feet up" and gone to Burlington to track down some parts for work and, of course, the obligatory Al's burger. Very early this morning I had disconnected the float switch to our booster pump which lifts sap from a pump station about 2000' to the main tankshed. I had been concerned that with the ice in the line i might blow up the pump, or a connection in the line if the float tripped the pump. A few miles from home I remembered this and talked myself into turning around and reconnecting it despite the cold and wind "just in case". Glad I did, when we got back from town we had gotten over 3000 gallons and it was coming in hot. With all the screw-ups i manage to create in a season, it feels good to get something right!

[GeneralStark]

A great run here today until freeze up about an hour ago. Over 1 gpt in about 8 hours. This on top of the 1 gpt that came in between 6:30 am Wednesday til it froze up overnight. I boiled yesterday am for 4 hours and made another 45 gal AR. More on the dark side. Will see how it runs tomorrow with the forecast. No more freezes for about a week after tonight if the forecast is correct.

I was in Middlebury today and saw several silver maples that were starting to bud. Still have time here on the mountain but not sure how much....

[220 maple]

Thank you for posting your info, I check the Vermont page daily, the gallons per tap makes me think of the big operators I met in Franklin County Spring 2010, if someone like Branon Family Maple Orchard is getting 2 gallon per for their 72000 taps(that is how many taps they had in 2010) in a twenty four hour period. 144000 gallons of sap! And with all the others that size or bigger doing the same, the US Govt. live eyes in the sky probably only seeing a white spot where Franklin County is located! Even at 2.20 a pound bulk still a big pay day!

Mark 220 Maple

[spud]

Also had a freak run here, primarily just from lower elevations, totally unexpected. Heeding Dr. Tim's advice I'd "put my feet up" and gone to Burlington to track down some parts for work and, of course, the obligatory Al's burger. Very early this morning I had disconnected the float switch to our booster pump which lifts sap from a pump station about 2000' to the main tankshed. I had been concerned that with the ice in the line i might blow up the pump, or a connection in the line if the float tripped the pump. A few miles from home I remembered this and talked myself into turning around and reconnecting it despite the cold and wind "just in case". Glad I did, when we got back from town we had gotten over 3000 gallons and it was coming in hot. With all the screw-ups i manage to create in a season, it feels good to get something right!

It's a good thing you turned back. Every drop counts.

Mead Maple- looks like your catching the bug. Good luck to you.

Spud

[Ultimatetreehugger]

808 gallons of 2.6 brix from my freak run yesterday. Eye opener for sure.

[DrTimPerkins]

Interesting little burst run yesterday. Just a few hrs, but over 1 gal per tap. Sugar at 2.1 Brix. Sap started running well this afternoon around 3pm since it was so cold overnight.

Boiled 9 hrs today. 3rd boil of season. 785 gal. Season Total is 2,055 gal, 0.4 gal/tap or 80% of a min crop.

[regor0]

If we're going to clean pans (most of the time), we'll draw it off into a drawoff tank while hot, then keep it covered. With our pans (4' x 8' front-pan), most everything in the front-pan is very close to syrup, so doesn't spoil very fast.

If we're NOT cleaning pans, we'll fire up every 2-3 days and boil for 5 min to kill everything that might get a toe-hold.

Just curious what the temp of the “very close syrup” is for the 2-3 days is, or the sugar house temp is? I have 3 days coming up with the high of 50 and low of 38. Will it keep that long?


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[WestfordSugarworks]

We've made 900 gallons at our small bush where we boil. We have about 2900 taps here, so roughly 2/3rds of the way to 0.5 gal per tap. That's not our average, I think we average somewhere more like 0.45 gpt here despite our best work to get higher. Both bushes at pretty much max vac today and the sap hammering in. We also got about 1 gpt of sap yesterday. Vacuum has climbed back up 0.2 inches or more in both woods despite not having walked lines recently. Sap finally dropped from the 2% it had been at for a lot of the season down to 1.3% in our big woods.

Forecast looks like we won't get a freeze here for several nights, but nothing too cold during the days so i'm not worried about the season ending. Tho I would like it to cool off so we can get a few more good hard runs in. Excited for the spring ephermerals to come up. Seen a little bit of greeing up here and there and some sprouts coming up in the woods. Spring beauties, I think, not sure though. Just a 2" tall light green/whiteish shoot coming up under the leaves.