Sap Slowing Down

Cold temps have come again leaving the buckets very slowing filling. We get to take a break from our work.

The First Run

 

As the afternoon suns streams into the kitchen, we finished bottling our first run of syrup which is called the Fancy grade. So light and lovely, this is the pure gold of syrup. We have collected 71 gallons of sap so far. We left partially boiled sap in the evaporator until we have collected enough to boil again. Today is cooler after a below-freezing night which will start the flow again. We look forward to a good week of sugaring.This is the best batch of fancy we have ever had. We are finishing the syrup on the kitchen stove rather than in the sugar shack so that we can get a more precise moment of finish using temperature, not specific gravity. We should be able to do a much better job this year with this technique.

Bucket Run

A trip out to the trees produced another 15 gallons and the sap is flowing even though the day is cold, cloudy and windy. When is flows, it flows. Well, no, sometimes it will stop, but for now we will plan to boil on friday at this rate. More pics to come of the boiling operation.

 

Drip, Drip, Drip

Off I go to check the run on this most lovely spring day. This old den tree sugar maple gave rise to the ones that are giving us the sap now. This is the first tapping of these on a nice south facing slope. The snowmobile trail is nicely packed over 2 feet of snow. It's March 14.

Getting Ready for Sugaring

First things first, making the road to the sugar house. The snow was extremely heavy after the rain. Of course this will soon turn to mud, but that is our fifth season here, MUD. Every year we seem to put out more buckets. I even heard the word, "pipeline" in a conversion recently. The whole point of all this is to use metal and glass and not plastic for our little production. It just seems harder this year because of the snow I think. Some years we just walk right up to the trees. NO SNOW. That is the just the way life is, different every  year up here. Guess that is why we like it here, too.  The grand total will be 50 buckets this  year. That seems like a nice doable number. We select different trees each year, too, so as to not wear them out, and to use the trees that produce the most sap. Boundary trees are great ones, easy to get to. There are some way down in our woods that will be more of a challenge. But they could be good producers. We will find out, and post the news right here!

Will Spring ever come?