Mercer County Tapping 2025

[Polish Wizard]

According to an on-line weather site for my zipcode it looks like Tuesday Feb 4, 2025 will be the beginning of consistent sap flow conditions.
How websites or Farmer's Almanac can predict the future with any accuracy is beyond my understanding -- but it's what we have....

Hopefully everyone will have a productive season, ---- and avoid my last year mistake of "walking away".
Luckily I was able to clean my evaporator and continue my season for a few more sap collections.
But I certainly wasted a lot of near-syrup as I had added just a few more small sticks to let the boil gently continue without me closely watching.
Yep - real dumb -- rookie mistake -- and I knew better.
The only good part of this misadventure -- I learned just how well a 50/50 mix of vinegar works.

Good luck with your projects -- big or small.

[Pdiamond]

I am betting along with the vinegar there may have been some elbow grease?

[HowardR]

Polish Wizard,

Thank you for starting this thread and thank you for the Farmer's Almanac prediction. We've had a much colder January than we did the last several years. The ten day forecast for Kittanning/Rural Valley shows that the highs will continuing to be below freezing into the foreseeable future.

I'm actually planning to tap around Valentines Day when my son can come up from Virginia to help me. I'll probably miss out on the wonderful beginning-of-season syrup. In the meantime, I've got a lot of work to do just to get everything ready because we had our whole farm logged during the fall and many of my lines got disrupted by falling trees and some were even cut by loggers building logging roads.

Howard

[Polish Wizard]

When I foolishly let my divided pan turn to blocks of lava rock we pulled out what moved easily, then filled it with the vinegar mix and built a moderate fire.
It was amazing how well it cleared the residue without a need to scrub a lot and potentially damage the bright stainless shine.
I did need to repeat this process a bit, but worth the minimal cost and effort --- and I was able to cook just a bit more before pulling the taps.

Sorry to hear about logging messing with your lines.
With recent bad weather I found a few trees damaged with parts on or near the ground, and lots of downfall branches.
I did my best to clear my usual foot paths for collecting from my tree bags, ---- and then it started to snow....
We'll see how many times this old guy trips and falls thanks to stuff I missed.
No where near as agile as I used to be.
I need to be nicer to my wife so maybe she won't take photos of "the turtle on his back".