Started in Somers

[DaveB]

Made 10 gallons of decidedly B today. I'll finish up what sap I have tomorrow. I'm hoping to end the week with 50 gallons(?) and then that might be it.

Sap ran a little, about 1-1.5 gals per tap today on the ones that were running. Others pretty quiet. I'm seeing some budding action and I'm hoping that it holds off at least a week!

I think I've learned a lot this year from my new rig. Startup and shut down can be tricky, but in between we've been getting around 38 GPH, sometimes more sometimes less. I didn't know what to expect because some people were saying 25GPH and others were saying 30 and that you can't run 450 taps on a 2x6 without extremely long days. I've had over 1,000 gallons of sap some weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) and I've been able to boil that down without an issue.

I'm happy with my season so far....

Dave

[DaveB]

Made another 10 gals of B today. Finished up the sap that I had. Hoping for another 10-15 gallons next weekend. We'll see. Sap ran a little today but not much. I'm hoping the cold weather is going to help when it does warm up!

I discovered an issue with one of my lines: Not enough slope and support. I though it would be OK, but I can see what the issue is and I'll fix that this summer. I was wondering why it wasn't performing well and now I know!

Dave

[DaveB]

OK. Last weekend was it for me. I burned my syrup pan on Saturday and had a hard time getting anything on Sunday. Besides having no real amounts of sap to boil and producing motor oil, I'm just beat. We've been working on this season since last October when we started building the new sugarhouse and putting up new lines.

A note of caution to others. Starting with my very first weekend, I had a spare bucket of cold sap in case something happened. Being the last weekend, I some how unconsciously decided that I didn't need it. Wanting to finish quickly, I switched to some really well seasoned wood and got a evaporation rate higher than I normally had. Feed tank went dry and at the last second before getting enough sap in there, my center channel starting burning. White smoke is pouring out. No emergency sap bucket. Happened in seconds and could have been prevented if I checked the feed tank just 30 seconds prior. Oh well. Everyone burns their pans at some point, right?

Time to clean up....

We got about 0.17 gallons per tap this year. Not great, but better than zero gallons per tap. There is always next year!

Dave

[RyanFarms]

I "witched" my syrup pan too! Same thing - finishing too fast without the emergency sap nearby. I ended up with 17.5 gallons on 125 taps, .14 gallons per tap.

Dan Ryan