Eastern Ontario 2025

[limestone]

Same here Ennis
Boiled this morning to catch up with yesterday’s surprisingly good run. Never imagined that today would amount to anything with a high of +3 and a mixture of light rain ,sleet and snow most of the day. Checked the tanks before dark and “wow”. Three of our five were full and one was overflowing.
I know what we’re doing tomorrow now.
I have seen this before the odd time in the past where later in the season the trees are going to run sunshine or not.

[Fort Wisers]

WOW, you guys aren't kidding, what an unexpected run. I had to go out of town for work from Monday - Wednesday, we figure it wouldn't be an issue as the weather did not look favorable for a run.
Boy were we wrong! Got home last night and my wife had collected another 168 litres lol.
Looks like more boiling over the next few......

[Maplelane1]

No kidding a surprising run. The last two days we've had a decent run which had me confused... daytime highs of +1 - 2 max and cloudy...

And today... Just turned the pump on (was frozen) and it's running as good as I've ever seen it... Have a lot of boiling to do tomorrow and through the weekend for sure... Like others... My real job is getting in the way!

[ennismaple]

Apparently my trees don't know that water freezes at zero Celcius? We got 1/3 GPT from 4:30-7:30pm yesterday when it was only +1!! It ran pretty hard considering it didn't get past +3. Yesterday was a really big day, today will be as well. Sugar is still down (1.8-2.0 Brix) but we're making really good syrup. We should get to 1.0L/tap by the time we shut down tonight.

[Maplelane1]

So we're in the heart of this ice storm (just north of Lakefield) and have quite a bit of accretion on trees, limbs and laterals. And of course power is out. But, more boiling to be done today... Still have about 700 litres to boil then all caught up. Will likely filter and bottle tomorrow. Take care all... apparently the worst of the ice to come tonight.

[Fort Wisers]

Friday, with the pending storm looming, we decided we had enough sap for our needs this year.
We did a final collection about 3:30pm Friday afternoon then pulled the buckets, lids and spiles then continued to boil into the wee hours.
Saturday we finished up and bottled then started clean up (after clearing the 20cm of snow that fell overnight).

Our season netted us 16.7 liters of gold, we're happy with this and enjoyed a nice bowl of ice cream with fresh syrup (as has become our tradition after wrapping up bottling).
Today (Sunday we did a little more clean up but will leave the final pan clean up for a nicer day.

Hope everyone faired out ok with the storm....

[jungmaria]

Yikes. That was something. Boiling today to the sound of branches and trees crashing down around me. Shack is in a clearing so knew I’d be ok, but saw several come down on the lines. Saw lots of widow makers get hung up too. Hopefully get into the woods tomorrow to assess damage. Good luck and be careful everyone.

[ennismaple]

Friday night I was in the shack until 4am to make room in the raw sap tank so I could get everything pumped up to the camp. I almost got it done - but had the last pump line freeze up at 3am when I needed to turn the pump off for 20 minutes to allow the RO to get ahead. I boiled everything through on Saturday and made some beautiful, high Amber Rich to get all the tanks empty before the worst of the storm hit. We're now over 1.0L/tap

We got maybe 5mm of freezing rain on Sunday, enough to knock down some small dead limbs but not enough to cause much real damage. I really feel for the producers west and south of us who've been hit hard with ice damage.

Sunday, The Beast got a thorough bath and I did some housekeeping in the camp to prepare for this week.

[Maplelane1]

I hope everyone is safe and warm. The storm hit us pretty hard. Been without power since Friday and no word from hydro one on an est time.

We boiled all day Friday. Planned to boil Saturday and Sunday but was too dangerous to go into the woods to pump up from collection to head tank (it sounded like a battle ground with branches and ice falling consistently). Checked today (finally safe to head into woods) and collection tank is full... But season is over given damage caused by the storm. Smaller trees hit hard and some big trees lost limbs. Lines down and stretched, and tees and taps broken from falling limbs and ice. Plan to boil this week hopefully tomorrow. Been too busy clearing road and driveway.

All that said... we are safe and warm. And we've got lotsa sap to boil ! So life is good.

[limestone]

Glad you both have come through it Ennis and Maplelane.
Saturday was a catch up day boiling here. The rain didn’t freeze till after dark. Yesterday was a day to hunker down. We lived through 1998 and this one was not as bad thankfully but we’ve got lots of unplanned firewood to process. We lost power early Sunday and “Gennie” has been running ever since. Things thawed out overnight last night and after two hours of line clearing we were back up collecting sap. The best run of our season today with plenty to keep boiling tomorrow. We too are maybe one more good run away from the 1.0L goal.