Its tappin time. About 320 taps out now. Its a lot of work using the hand auger to drill the holes in the trees. After about 50 your arm starts to get tired. Each tap gets a hole drilled about 1 inch deep, a spout lightly hammered in, a pail and a cover for the pail. We use a tractor to takes the buckets and covers into the woods. The rain about a week ago melted much of the snow in the woods making it much easier to get around. Aap was following in the trees today. After drilling a hole, the sap started running out. There was a steady drip, drip, drip into the pail. It was sunny and about 40 degrees, but the wind was cold. The weather forecast is for cold and snow tonight and tomorrow. We will finish the tapping but do not expect to collect any sap yet.
Category: 2004: Season 87
A few taps are out. Testing the weather. They are dripping. That is to be expected as it is the second week of March. Its actually getting late for tapping. There are usually several runs of sap. An early run at the beginning of the season. And heavy run about 3 weeks in with shorter runs in-between. Of course it is not predictable. Sap is the food the maple tree needs to make leaves so it has to go up some time. Freezing nights and sunny days help it move. So that’s the weather we wait for.
Getting organized for tapping this week. There is always great anticipation leading up to tapping. We know the whole season will be a lot of work, but we do it any way. Its a labor of love. As a small operation, we do everything manually. Tapping by hand drill. Buckets and spouts, no tubing. Collecting with 5 gallons pails. Boiling the sap over a wood fired evaporator. The wood shed holds about 12 cords of wood. All cut with chain saws and split by axe and sledge hammer. One cord of wood is 4 feet wide, 4 feet high and 8 feet long. Its a lot of work just cutting the wood. It takes about 10 hours to boil off 200 gallons of sap that results in 5 gallons of finished maple syrup. Yup…that a ratio of 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. And finally all the bottling by hand. At an hourly rate, we would not earn much.
We purchased some new equipment this year. 200 stainless steel spouts to replace about half of our inventory of spouts. Our existing souts are old. Over 50 years old and maybe older. The new stainless steel spouts will be easy to keep clean. There is new technology in spouts called Micro Spouts used with tubing. They are very small and only use a small hole in the tree that heals within one year. But since we do not use tubing the Micro Spouts are not useful for us.
We also replaced the pan we use for bottling. This new pan is also stainless steel and replaces an old and well used bottling pan. And last year we got a stainless steel milk can to use for moving the syrup from evaporator to finishing pan to bottling pan. Stainless steel is so much easier to keep clean.
Like many agricultural products, Maple Syrup is dependent on the weather. Freezing nights and sunny days make the sap flow. The weather forecast for the next few days is stormy. 2″- 5″ of snow tonight and into tomorrow. Maybe by mid -week. In 2003 we tapped March 14-15 which was late.
Cloudy and rainy today. Northern Wisconsin got 6″ to 8″ of snow. But we only got rain. About 1″. It did help settle the snow in the woods. No tapping yet. Watching the weather carefully. Hoping the weather will break for tapping next week.
Welcome to MapleAcres. The 2004 Maple Syrup Season is just about here. We will attempt to chronicle the events of the season here. Please check back every day to see what’s happening in the sugarbush.