Since my last post, we were quite busy between troubleshooting our vacuum system and boiling sap. There were several days in the fifties and sixties which always makes us nervous that the season will come to a close.

Our last day was April first . The sap took on a slight offflavor which only magnified after being concentrated in our RO. We decided that it would not make a quality syrup so we discarded it and finished boiling what was in our system from the previous day.

We had a very good year, making 495 gallons of excellent flavored syrup! That amounted to slightly over 0.5 gallons of finished syrup per tap which we consider excellent !

I’ve started the cleanup by pulling taps and initiating the initial cleaning of the evaporator. There are many tasks to put all the equipment back to offseason /storage mode but fortunately it’s not time sensitive. 
We are looking forward to the Minnesota maple syrup producers meeting May 16 . This is a great time to catch up and share stories with other sugar makers! Till then!

The sub freezing weather that blanketed our region from March 12 to March 18 gave the maples a chance to “ recharge ”. On the 19th, bright sun and rapid warming initiated sap flows that reached 125-150 gallons per hour! In the 72 hr period, we collected over 7000 gallons of sap and produced 170 gallons of rich maple syrup! I reviewed our records back to 1994 and there was no run that approached this volume!

The sap flow diminished after 72 hours as the temperatures lingered in the 50’s and 60’s. We’ve had smaller runs since, and the measured sugar content of the sap has dropped from 2.2% to 1.2%. This often is a sign that the end of the season is rapidly approaching. We had freezing temperatures the last 2 nights and will have temperatures approaching 50 today.We plan on boiling tomorrow and will critically evaluate the taste of the sap and syrup to see if it’s our last run.

We processed sap on March 8th and 10th and made 141 gal of finished syrup in 3 boils. This puts us ahead of the last several years. The weather has been favorable and our vacuum is running 25-26 inches Hg which is the highest we’ve attained in many years! This has helped with the sap production. Those syrup makers who are on gravity systems such as bags and buckets have found the flows quite slow. Today has seen a rapid warmup from 26 last night to 40 deg. now. This has triggered a flow of over 100 gal per hour from our be nearly 1000 taps! I thought we might not be boiling for a few days but I was like the meteorologist….wrong😂