That’s the report from the woods today. Its about time! The weather looks to be breaking from the cold spell. The next week is forecast to be good sap weather: freezing nights, warm sunny days. So if this maple season is going to happen, this is the week. They are collecting now so we don’t have total gallons collected yet. Saturday there was another 6″ – 8″ of snow so its hard getting around the woods again.
Category: 2005: Season 88 Page 3 of 4
Nothing much has happened the past days. Its been cold. Tonight another snow storm is possible. Its a bit unusual to go this long with no activity and get this late in March. But the weather is forecast to turn favorable next week. Highs around 40, lows around 25. That’s what we need.
Here is a picture from tapping March 5, 2005. It was warm that day and we did not need gloves or heavy coats.
We had 2 – 3 inches of snow over night. No sap.
The cold weather gave us time to get the proper fittings for the new collecting tank. Its all together now and waiting for the sap to flow. Some other farmers in the area also make maple syrup. They have not yet tapped. Maybe we were early? But last year we tapped on March 10 and missed the first sap run. We will know in a few weeks.
Nothing much happening. Its sunny, but cold. It could be a few days before the weather breaks. The sun is getting more powerful. You can feel the warmth of the sun’s rays when inside a closed in area. Its possible the sap would even be flowing some inside the tree. But once it hits the open air where the temperature is below 32, it freezes and no sap flows.
Tuesday remained cold and windy, but that was forecast. Since there was nothing pressing in the woods we went looking for a new collecting tank. Our metal 200 gallon collecting tank is at least 50 years old. Its hard to maintain. So we went to Fleet Farm to look for new tanks. We wanted a polyethylene (plastic) tank because its translucent (see through) so we can see how much sap is in the tank. With the metal tank we always had to guess. We looked at several styles but settled on 200 gallon tank. It has marks on the side indicating gallons so we can tell how much sap is collected. It also has bottom drain so we can completely empty it. We have to rig up the pipes yet for draining it. We had a false start on the piping because we didn’t measure the fitting sizes correctly.
Monday was a busy day. The weather started warm, but turned very cold. About 1:30 am it was 50 degrees. About 8:00 am a cold front moved through. The wind shifted to due north and the temperature dropped. By 10:30 am it was near 25. Then the race was on to beat the ice forming in the buckets. The 125 taps from Sunday had enough to collect and we wanted to get it in before it all turned to ice. We did. Only about 50 gallons, but better to have it then let it freeze. It was cold collecting. The north wind bites. Meanwhile a fire was started under the evaporator to boil. Spent the rest of the day boiling. The clouds lifted and the sun came out, but it remained cold. By 4:00 pm we drew off a batch of almost finished syrup and by 5:00 pm we had the first 2 gallons and 1 pint bottled for the 2005 season.
Sunday was again a nice day: sunny and warm, highs near 50. It gets quite warm working in the woods. But the warm days help settle the snow. There is about 18 inches of snow in the woods. We always need water to wash out equipment. Without a well on-site that means hauling water with the tractor. Well, Dean got smart. He noticed that the snow melting from the wood shed roof was just running onto the ground. So he put a milk can under the gutter to catch the snow melt. We filled two milk cans, 20 gallons of water. We finished tapping the last 125. Actually a few more. The total tapped is about 418. We always seem to loose exact count. By 3:00 the tapping was complete. And then it was time to collect.
The trees tapped on Saturday had dripped enough to collect. So we cleaned out the collecting tank and storage tanks and set out. We collected about 175 gallons of sap. Pumped it into the storage tanks and called it a day. We will start boiling on Monday. The weather for the coming week is to turn cold again. Nothing we can do about that. March weather is always changing.
Saturday was a nice day: sunny, highs about 40. Ideal to start off maple syrup season. About 1:00 pm we headed out to the woods to begin tapping. By 5:00 pm we had 275 tapped. The sap was flowing. The tap hole was wet after drilling and sap flowed after the spout was tapped in with a hammer. After hanging the bucket, you can hear the ping, ping, ping of the sap hitting the bottom. We had two tapping teams. One person drills and puts in the spout. The other person follows behind to hang the pail and place the cover on the pail. We do all our tapping with a hand auger. This is a good workout. Larger syrup producers use gas or electric powered drills.