Eastern Ontario 2025

[jungmaria]

Sapocalypse is upon us! Unfortunately brix is dropping like a rock. Averaging 2.2 on the weekend now 1.8 And nitre is rising just as fast. But sure no shortage of sap!

[ennismaple]

Sugar content will always drop when the sap runs hard - the sap doesn't spend enough time in the stem to absorb the sugar. Nitre has been increasing in the front pans but at least the syrup is getting better to filter.

Today will make 5 of the last 6 days we've boiled. These are the weeks we wait for all year!

[jungmaria]

Sugar content will always drop when the sap runs hard - the sap doesn't spend enough time in the stem to absorb the sugar.

Well that makes sense! Knew it dropped over the course of the season, so thought it was gone. So hopefully we’ll get a bump in brix this weekend since things should slow down.

[Maplelane1]

sapocalypse - yup, that sums up Tuesday and Wednesday this week. collected a full tote, over 1000 litres on 110+ taps. Will boil tomorrow aft and hopefully (weather looks promising) we'll get more flow over the next few days.

Happy for you, Ennis... Make hay when you can !!

[Fort Wisers]

Started our boil yesterday, just sweetening the pan at this point.......we will boil a bit more tonight then we'll be in need of more sap.
After taking two years off, I was a bit reluctant to start again, feels like there's never enough time.
My wife provided a gentle nudge this year to get us going again, and I have to say, after a day of boiling, she was right.
Good to get back at it........we're a very small operation (just make for ourselves and family) but it's enough to keep us addicticed!

Hope everyone is having a great season so far.

[Maplelane1]

Welcome back to the 'insanity' Fort Wisers !

Boiled yesterday and got our first draw offs of the year. So satisfying...

Boil today and tomorrow... Collected only 200 litres or so yesterday... down day today (possible snow today).

Forecast suggest we got more runs coming !

[paulslund]

Hey everyone! Forecast is looking great for the next week and half give or take! Seems like it was a late start over on my end.

Still not syruping this year (hopefully back in the swing next year) so living vicariously via this thread!

The owner of the bush behind my house wanted to try his hand at syrup, so last year I helped him tap about 10 trees... he boiled on the stove and liked it. Over the course of the past year has: Built 15x15 (approx) sugar shack, bought a 2x4 drop flue Thor evaporator and filter/bottling setup, invested in the some storage containers, tracks for his UTV (because the woods are a bit of a mess for him) and put out 150 taps!

And I thought I was a "go big or go home" kind of guy!

He got through his first boil but only pulled off about 10L of syrup from 900L of sap.. I thought maybe he left a lot of sweet in the pans but this is after a full clean up.. don't know if the big warm spell early on has anything to do with that but I'll be keeping tabs on him. He tapped on Monday and collected on Wed/Thursday.. no huge rain to speak of. I may drop by with the sap hydrometer on Monday or Tuesday when he's boiling next to check his sap..that's the only thing he didn't get...

Good luck everyone with the rest of the season!
Paul

[ennismaple]

Friday afternoon into Saturday was a bit nuts. We did manage to get through it all the sap without running any tanks over and got it all through the RO before the hard freeze Saturday evening. Boiling in an uninsulated camp when it's -7 C is not a lot of fun! Thankfully it looks like we'll get some rest this week and may only need to boil a couple of days after what was the wildest 8 days I can remember early in the season.

[limestone]

Great runs here too in spite of all the rain the weekend before last and a 16 degree day midweek. Lost all of our snow cover last week too ,but the frost hasn’t started thawing yet.
We’re at just over 50% of our expected average production so far and the weather looks favorable on into midweek next week.
Gotta love it !

[ennismaple]

You'd think that over a half century of maple-ing you'd figure things out, right? WRONG! We maybe had less than a half gallon of sap per tap in the tanks last night and with it forecast to hit freezing we figured things would taper off... and boy was I wrong! I need to be at my day job today so it'll be a long night in the sugar camp to get things RO'd. I'm not holding my breath that the sugar is much over 2.0 Brix.