Rinsed buckets out today. Sunny. 65. The buckets had a lot gunk: sticky sap, bugs, moths, twigs. We had time so rinsed out with the hose and a brush. Lined up all the buckets after rinsing so we could count them. 504.
Good yield per tap this season. Typically we get 1.3 to 1.4 pints/tap. We had 1.5 pints/tap this year.
| Yield | |||||
| gal | qt | pt | taps | pt/tap | qt/tap |
| 94.5 | 378 | 756 | 504 | 1.5 | 0.75 |
Because of COVID-19 we are not traveling back to Virginia until late May. No date fixed yet. That gives extra time to do work around the woods and farmhouse.
Up next is transplanting trees. We’ve wanted to get young trees upfront around the building for a decade but were never here at good times for transplanting. Spring and Fall are good times to transplant. This year we have time and are here for the Spring. Also get to see wild flowers in the woods. That is always pretty.
We have a lot of syrup in inventory. Over 30 gallons left from last year and 5 gallons from 2018. With this season’s crop that gives us a lot to sell. However with COVID-19 we haven’t had many people coming to get syrup. May need to come up with creative ways to market and sell the syrup.
Thankful for the season. Overcame R/O pump problem and problems with cloudy syrup while bottling. Every season there are challenges. That’s part of agriculture. We did have good weather: no warm periods that hinder the sap run.
The annual maple syrup producers meeting is in La Crosse, WI this year the end of October.
We’ll be back next season.