A good season.  Weather cooperated.  We could have actually waited to start tapping until after the March 9th snowstorm.  But the cold weather kept the taps fresh so we were not penalized for the early start.  The clutch problem on the tractor was expensive.  The week of cold weather gave us another two part season, although the cold was better then last year’s warm weather.    March 29 to April 2 was our big run.  We had more long work days this season than in recent past seasons.  About three 15 hour days.  Quite a few 10-12 hour days.  But that’s all part of the season and getting the crop when nature says its ready.  Nothing we were not prepared to do. 

73 gallons and 1 pint is a good season for us. Yet we feel a tinge of let down because we collected 3340 gallons of sap and were expecting 77 to 78 gallons of syrup.  Since we only got 73 1/8 gallons our sap this year was less sweet.  It took 45.7 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup (45.7:1) which is getting high.  Normal is 42:1.

Doing the math using the Rule of 86 , we can determine our sap was 1.88% sugar this year.  Last year we were at 2.01% sugar

3340 gallons of sap from 401 taps yields 8.3 gallons of sap per tap.

73.125 gallons of syrup
293.5 quarts of syrup
587 pints of syrup

587 pints of syrup from 401 taps yields 1.46 pints per tap.

Next up is filling the wood shed for next season.  We do want to be more disciplined about cutting wood to about 3 foot lengths.  Cutting down the wood this season seemed to reduce the amount used and still give us good boils.  Shorter wood keeps the heat in the firebox and not up the smoke stake. 

We go to MI this year in October for annual North American Maple Syrup Council meeting.

We plan to be back here the end of February or early March 2012 for season 94.

Tapping
Date    Taps
2-6      2
3-3      50
3-4      25
3-4      50
3-4      49
3-6      50
3-8      50
3-11    12
3-12    13
3-13    75
—————-
401

Collecting
Date    Gals.
3-8      100
3-11    300
3-12    200
3-15    500
3-16    325
3-19    235
3-29    230
3-31    430
4-2      580
4-6      330
4-8      110
——————
3340

3-16    60 from neighbor

Bottling
Date    Qts    Pts    500    250
3-13    24      3      0       1
3-15    17      1      0       0
3-16    11      6      14     12
3-17    21      10    1       0
3-19    16      0      16     12
3-22    6        8      0      17
3-31    12      11    16     6
4-2     25       11    0      0
4-3     10       20    0      0
4-5     8         11    9      12
4-8     17       20    8      0
4-11    8        40    1      2
—————————————————–
175    141    65    62