I constructed my sugar shack – Hobby Sugar Shack version 3.0 with the help of a pop-up Coleman tent from Target and tarps for side paneling. It is amazing how much heat it helps retain and cutting down on the wind. I never did get around to fully upgrading my two burner propane stove with an insulated table to drop it into. I have an idea and plans to make this much more efficient, but this prior year I found myself concentrating on other issues and this fell to the back burner. I was able to boil down 12 gallons of concentrate to get close to 1 gallon of finished…
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I tapped the first three this year Feb 2, 2020. About two week earlier than last year. It’s running too! The next day I went out and collect 32 gallons of sap from my 50 buckets. I honestly forgot how much work it always is. Had to get out all my gear and despite cleaning it before putting it away, some looked as if they needed to be cleaned again. So I did. Had to order all the new filters that I needed for both the filtration and also my reverse osmosis setup. Then I had to run water through the reverse osmosis to make sure the filters were cleaned…
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The Maple sap has been down to 1% sugar content for the past week. This means that a whopping 86 gallons of sap is needed before you can get 1 gallon of maple syrup. Without a reverse osmosis setup, this type of ratio would be a waste of fuel and money. Last year, due to the low sugar content all year by the end of the season, people were giving away sap because they had run out of wood or got tired of paying for propane. Thankfully I only saw the 1% for a short week. Picked up 60 gallons out of my 50 taps on Thursday and boiled it…
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Cheers to another poor, but a well produced season. While it may not be over yet, the 20 gallons of sap I pulled yesterday evening was only at 1% sugar. Two more days of sap run left and then nothing but warm weather both day and night forecast so the season will officially be over! I’m back to boiling outside. I will make a post on my ghetto sugar shack 2.0 and it’s short lived life. Time to build a physical shack and build a container for my sap pan.
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Still not the best season. When looking at the log we can see that last year I pulled the taps, while this year we are only half way though at best. Grabbed another 20 gallons of sap today. Not great. Not horrible, but not great considering there is 50 taps total. The weather has been very cold for a long time. Now that it is starting to warm up and the sun is going higher, we are being hit with a lot of incoming storms, so low pressure (no sap run) followed by high winds (no sap run) so we take what little we get. The good news is that…
