I put up a couple of buckets on some birch trees to give an indicator on when it starts running, so only then would I put up the rest. Yesterday it started to really run. I put up 7 three gallon sap buckets to collect. The birch trees out in the sun are really running right now. The ones in the woods are trickling, but barely. The way the trees in the sun are running I’m thinking I can fill a 3 gallon bucket in a single day. Doesn’t matter if it’s a white or black birch, they’re both running just as fast. Of course this comes at a horrible…
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… at least for me it is! I’ve officially run out of bottles and I’m tired of spending all weekend and many nights boiling. Right now my largest bottle neck is the speed in which I can boil – and at 2 GPH isn’t very fast. In the end I made roughly 6 gallons of Maple Syrup, already giving many pints away, I find myself with 19 Pins and 38 Half Pints and a few jars of Maple Sugar! I posted a bit more detailed information on the yearly production log: https://www.missionexploration.com/maple-sugaring/yearly-maple-syrup-production-log/ Here is a photo from last night’s final boil and haul As you can see, there are…
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Boiling the last batch of dark syrup today. Should produce almost a gallon of finished syrup when done. The season looks like it could continue to go on for another week or two, but I’m out of bottles and have more syrup than I expected. I’m going to finish with 6 gallons of maple syrup. That is plenty for myself, fair submissions, making into sugar, gift baskets, etc. Heck, I should have more than enough for all that. Maybe I can even put a couple up for sale to then purchase more supplies for next year. Who knows.
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Gathered an unbelievable 40+ gallons of sap yesterday at 1.5% sugar content. More than a gallon per bucket. I literally ran out of room to process my sap. Both of my 15 gallon concentrate containers were full. It was late enough that I couldn’t start and finish a batch, knew I would probably get more sap the next day. Something needed to be done. I decided to “sweeten the pan” in maple lingo. So I somehow fit all 15 gallons of sap concentrate into my pan and sap warmer pan (it was full, I’d say that’s the most you can do and still technically boil), and just boiled that down…
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You’re always told by the old timers to just throw out the ice the forms in your sap buckets that you usually find during a cold morning’s collection. Yet it never fails, someone asks if that’s a good idea and you just parrot what you heard… But is it true? I decided to find out once and for all so I can say with a certainty which it is. So this morning as I went around to collect my sap, I had a second bucket that I was going to put the ice into, let melt and take a sugar reading. I let the ice melt and took a reading……
