Last week we spent a lot of time waiting for warmer weather to arrive. There wasn't much work that we needed to do or even could do with prolonged cold weather. Usually during the syrup making season, daily tasks include maintaining the sap collection lines and looking for leaks. But this can only be done when the lines are thawed and sap is flowing, because we have to be able to see where air is getting into the lines. We had only boiled a couple of times, so we didn't need to cut, split or stack any wood yet. The sugar house was clean. The tanks were clean. There really wasn't much maple work to do. We were optimistic that things were going to be good as soon as the temperatures got above freezing. Yesterday we witnessed the fastest flows that we have ever seen in the sugarbush. I don't think that we collected a record amount of total sap, but the rate that it was flowing into our lower tank in the middle of the afternoon was amazing. Our vacuum releaser was emptying 4 gallons of sap every 1:30 to 1:45. That means that we were collecting about 2.5 gallons of sap per minute! Between 1:30 yesterday afternoon and 4:00 this morning, 1300 gallons of sap was collected.
The 10 day forecast looks a little bit too warm for great sap flows. Our hope is that the meteorologists are just too optimistic and trying to boost ratings and readership with warm forecasts. We need the freeze/thaw cycle to get really good sap flows. Our forest is next to Whaletail Lake, so it does stay a little cooler than other areas until the ice melts off of the lake. We are hoping that we can get a few more hard freezes in the next 10 days to keep the sap flowing.