MapleAcres

Started the evaporator early, about 5:00 am. We wanted to get all the sap boiled through. We finished and bottled 22 quarts for the day. Our total is now 51 quarts or about 12 gallons. That is a nice first week.

Had a thunderstorm overnight. It seemed to be more lightening and thunder than rain. But the old saying is “thunder over an open woods means more snow yet.” An “open woods” means no leaves are out yet. With the warm temperatures the snow in the woods has been melting fast. On Monday when we tapped there was about 12″ of snow in the woods. Now there is hardly any left.

Saturday started out sunny. It froze overnight. We were hopeful for sap. It ran some. We did make plans to collect later in the day. But there really wasn’t much to do while waiting. We were caught up other work. About 3:00 pm help came and we set out to collect. We brought in 275 gallons of sap. Started the evaporator. About 6:30 pm we drew off a batch of syrup from the evaporator. Put in the gas fired finishing pan. It was 9 quarts and 1 pint. We did not stay late to boil all the sap. We plan to come on Sunday to complete this run.

Sunny today, but no sap.  It did not freeze last night.  It got up to about 45 today.  We did get some very light rain.  Rain had been forecast since Tuesday; it finally arrived.  By 10:00 pm last night all the sap was in the evaporator. We did bottle another batch about 6:30 last night.  This batch was three gallons so we now have five gallons total. This first syrup is some of the nicest we have seen in years. We got lucky tapping early and got this early run. Other producers are tapping today and missed it.  Without fresh sap we spent the day doing a little cleaning and other chores.  The back pan on the evaporator needed cleaning out. And the collecting tank needed blocking to hold it in place.  A good day to catch up.

Started the evaporator at 6:00 am. By 1:15 we had our first syrup bottled.  Two gallons.  It is nice light colored syrup and had a very nice flavor.  We will likely bottle more today yet as we are trying to boil through all the sap we collected yesterday.  The faster it is boiled through the better the syrup. The sap collected yesterday tested at 3 on the Brix scale. This means it is sweater than “normal” as 2.0-2.2 is normal. Also collected 50 more gallons of sap from the trees tapped yesterday.  Some were 3/4 full.  We hope to finish up by about 9:00 pm tonight.

Started the days work by finishing up tapping. We had 50 taps to put out yet. And these were some of best running trees. We put our largest buckets, 16 quarts, on these trees.  It did not freeze last night.  The taps we put out on Monday and Tuesday ran all night.  As we walked around the woods we could see we needed to collect. So we called for help and then got the collecting tank cleaned and setup.  About 2:00 pm we headed out to collect. Some buckets were full.  Most were at least half full.  By the time we finished we had 300 gallons of sap.  Not bad for the first collection of the season.  We had a little trouble with a valve on the storage tank.  It would not seal.  We ended up taking it apart to fix it.  A leaky valve would cause us to loose a great deal of sap.  We did not get any rain yet.  Now its forecast to come in tonight.  And its not supposed to freeze either.  Tomorrow we will get the evaporator cleaned and setup and start boiling the sap to make our first syrup of the season.

The day started out cold, but sunny. It was down to 10 degrees last night. There was a special type of frost called “hoar frost” on the trees in the morning. Hoar frost is caused when water goes directly from gas to solid without the liquid stage in-between. It can be very pretty as it covers everything in a white fluffy coating. But with a little sun it quickly melts.

About 10:00 we started tapping again. It warmed up and by 11:00 the trees were dripping. By the end of the day we had put out 225 more taps for a total now of 350. Tomorrow we plan to put out the remaining 50.

We also had a delivery of bottles that we use for the finished syrup. A semi truck delivered them about 11:15.

Rain is forecast for tonight and maybe Thursday. March is an unpredictable month for weather.

Woke up this morning to snow falling. We got about 2 inches overnight. It did not look promising to do any work in the woods, but the trees were very pretty covered in snow. About 10:30 the snow stopped and the sky cleared. The sun came out and it got warm. We went in to the woods to open up the sugar shack. Then decided we should start tapping. After lunch we loaded up the tractor bucket with pails, covers and spouts and set out into the woods. The weather was perfect for tapping. After drilling the tap whole the sap started running out right away. Sap dripping from the spout and hitting the bottom of the pails caused the nice ping, ping, ping that tells use the season is really here. Tomorrow we will try to finish the tapping.

Welcome to Wisconsin. It started snowing tonight. Not sure how much we will get. It seems to be a light snow. There is about 12 inches of snow in the woods from a storm about two weeks ago.

Heading back to Wisconsin to get ready for the season. Buckets are washed. But we have to get the building ready and prepare for tapping. It looks like the weather will break this week. By Tuesday or Wednesday we are expected to have highs around 40 and freezing nights. January was very warm. No snow. No freezing nights. No frost in the ground. No ice on the rivers or ponds. February turned cold and we got snow. Every season is an adventure. Let’s see what this season holds.

Our 87th maple season comes to a close. We started tapping on March 5 and did the last collecting on April 4. Starting pulling taps on April 6 and finished all bottling on April 9. This was a normal length season. The two week cold spell had us doubting just what kind of season it would be. But in the end we made 50 gallons of syrup. Our “normal” is 60 gallons, but anyone who makes a crop dependent on nature knows that “normal” is always changing. We only collected 1640 gallons of sap so our ratio of sap to syrup was 32.8 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup. This is good. If the sap had been less sweet we would have made less syrup. We are happy with what we have. We talked with one producer who put out 3000 taps but got only 100 gallons of syrup. That would be discouraging. The week before Easter was the best run of the season with sap every other day. Actually it was nice to have a day in between so we could get caught up.

The woods comes to life over the next month with spring flowers and leaves coming out. Its very pretty. In September we start to make firewood again. In October is the North American Maple Syrup Producers annual meeting. Its in Trios Rivers, Quebec this year. There are some very large producers in Quebec: 50,000 up to 100,000 taps. We want to see these operations.

We expect to be back here again next February or March for our 88th season. We hope you will join us here too.