Friday evening about 8:30 pm a thunder storm rolled through. Why not. The weather has been really strange so this just adds to it. Ned and Dean were boiling down the days haul of 500 gallons of sap when the storm hit. There is an old saying that thunder over an open woods means more snow is coming. An “open woods” means a woods where the leaves on the tress have not yet come out. So we can expect another snow storm yet!
Category: 2004: Season 87 Page 2 of 3
A good sap flow. It was sunny and in the 40s today. Finally a good weather day. And the trees responded. By noon they were getting full. Called for help — family, friends and neighbors — to start collecting at 1:00 pm. Picked up 500 gallons of sap. The collecting tank pulled by the tractor holds 200 gallons so that meant three trips. Working now to boil it through. If there is more sap tomorrow we will need the storage tanks empty. Not sure how late they will boil tonight, but it will likely be late, or depending on how you look at it, early. Bottled either 9 or 12 quarts today already. And there will be more.
Today was 40 degrees, but snowed all day. Go figure. The sap did start flowing this afternoon. We hope to collect and boil tomorrow. And here is a photo taken last week when we were finishing the tapping in the snow. That’s Karl driving in a spout.
Today was cloudy weather, high only to 30, and snow flurries most of the day. Ned cleaned the evaporator and pans in anticipation of the next run. We usually host tours during maple syrup time for school groups. They get hands-on education of maple syrup production. Each one gets a taste of the whole process from clear, sweet sap to warm, delicious syrup. Check the website for daily updates to see when we are collecting and boiling sap.
It was sunny today, but a cold east wind off of Lake Michigan kept the sap from flowing. Its common during the season to have a few days of no sap, then a run for a day, maybe more, then no sap again. We have to be patient. In January logs were made in the woods. There are still a lot of tree tops around the woods. And stumps. We took down a large, old tree by the building. It was a nice tree and has been in many photographs over the years. It was sad to cut down the tree, but we have not tapped it for several years now. As the tree was large and quite old, we are all curious about how old it is. When we have a chance we will count the growth rings.
Windy, cloudy, and high temperature only of 30 degrees today. No sap flowing today. Icicles of sap drips were hanging off the spouts. Maple trees need sunny above freezing days and below freezing nights. Verna says, “No sap flows when the North wind blows.” Ned just boiled down the remaining sap in the evaporator this morning, though was not enough for finishing off to bottle. Currently 32 quarts of maple syrup this season are bottled, labeled, and ready.
It was an odd day for weather. Last night we had snow flurries, then rain. By morning it was about 35 degrees. And the sap started to flow. We collected about 150 gallons of sap. Family, friends and neighbors came to help. It was not a lot of sap, but its best to collect it while its fresh. And we had help because of the weekend. While collecting, snow flurries returned. For awhile we feared a repeat of yesterdays snow. But these flurries stayed light. We had to empty the ice from the storage tanks from earlier in the week. The ice is just water without any of the sugar that’s in sap so there is no loss discarding the ice. Fired up the evaporator to boil. A batch of almost finished syrup was drawn off earlier this evening. Don’t now how much yet.
The day started sunny, but cold. Overnight low was 12 degrees. By 9:00 am it warmed to 33 degrees. The plan for the day was to complete the tapping. We still had about 85 taps to put out. By 12:30 it started to get cloudy. We met up at 1:00 pm to tap. Loaded the tractor with buckets, covers, spouts and the auger and headed to the west side of the woods. By 2:15 the weather changed. First a few light flakes. Then a heavy snow started falling. We were determined to finish the tapping so we kept on going in the snow. In a short time everything was covered with snow. It was snowing hard and getting hard to see, but we wanted to finish so we stayed at it. By 3:30 we were done. There are about 415 taps out.
The race was on to beat the ice. Boiled all night. Took shifts. Dad went in at 7:30 in the evening. Dean and Karl stayed until mid-night when Dad came back to complete the boiling. He finished be 7:30 am. There is still sap in the evaporator waiting to boil down to syrup. But the sap is out of the tanks so we won’t get ice blocks. Once in the evaporator we can always start a fire to melt the ice. It took about 20 hours to boil through the sap. And we bottled 21 quarts of syrup already. At 10:26 pm CST we officially completed the first gallon of syrup for the 2004 season. Dad reports the morning shift from mid-night to 7:30 am was very cold! As the tanks emptied, the firing slows down and generates less heat. And then all the steam and dripping water starts to freeze. We have an impressive collection of ice hanging from the windows.
The trees worked overtime. They must have dripped all night. Trees tapped at 4:00 in the afternoon were full by 10:00 the next morning. A cold front was moving through and the weather changing. It was getting much colder, into the 20s. So the race was on to collect the sap before it all froze in the buckets. We started collecting about 10:00 am and were pretty much done by noon. We collected 400 gallons of sap. Ice was already forming in the buckets so waiting was not an option. As the weather was still getting colder we were still faced with ice in the storage tanks. So we started the evaporator to boil down the sap. We will boil all night. Tomorrow is also forecast to be cold, in the 20s. If we don’t boil down the sap our storage tanks will be a block of ice. It will be a long night.