Maple Syrup: Season 3

Yep.. WA is just before WY...next to last....

 

Gotcha...well guess I that means I need to ship to Colorado and pick up from there

 

You will have to move according to the rules I just made up.. .

 

Yep...after states that start with CO...

 

CAlifornia comes be COlorado...... just saying

 

If I'm not mistaken Pudges last sap gathering produced some of the best syrup....Pudge will expound on this. All the syrup is excellent of course.

 

Any good hospitals in the area hiring?

 

I agree with going alphabetical

@Pudge are you still planning to auction off the last bottle of the season for charity?

 

Largest medical complex in the states can be seen from my backyard...

 

Closest states get to order first. If your state touches CT you can order first

 

Keep up the great work @Pudge

 

Hahaha that sounds better for me (Arkansas)

 

So...CA will be before CO

 

Out collecting bright and early. So far every bucket has been full or overflowing from yesterday, and its dripping great already even at 38°.
Gonna be a long day of hauling sap. Those buckets on the tree are 4 gallons.

 

That's on my bucket list.

 

With the number of gallons you were collecting, I thought you were using the blue tubes and piping it from the trees. Didn't realize you were doing with bucks! I will need to drive down when you have some ready to sell.

 

Oh man I wish I could do that tubing. Friends and neighbors let us tap their trees but everyone wants it to look old fashioned. So we are stuck with buckets until we can find a plot of land we can use tubing. Sometimes I have to park my truck 100 yards away from a tree with 2 taps, walk to the tree, 4 gallons per tap fills my home depot 5 gallon pails, and walk back to the truck to dump it. Lots of labor. Some day I really hope we can have tubing.

 

Collected sap tree by tree today for 6 hours straight. Ended up with well over 500 gallons and have absolutely no storage space left to collect any more until we get some boiled down. I work tomorrow 9am-9pm so I can't boil or collect tomorrow, I hope my brother can at least get a few hundred gallons cooked tonight or tomorrow.

 

Robbed 3 truck loads of wood from my house to being to the sugar house. Each load will give me 6ish. hours of boiling enough to get through the weekend. I had 3 cords of scrap/slab wood delivered that I need to get cut up and split. That should cover us for the rest of the year I hope.
We are up to 45 gallons made, not filtered of bottled yet.
We had a stockpile of 800 gallons of sap as of thurs night and have been boiling like crazy to catch up. Have about 300 gallons to go.
I collected an additional 200 gallons today and expect 400ish tomorrow as the weather looks great. Lots of work ahead.

 

Hanging in the sauna now

 

Boiled 12 hours yesterday and 10 hours today and got through all the sap at the sugar house. Back to square one finally. We were a out 800 gallons behind but as of right now we are even. The only sap that needs to be cooked is still dripping from the trees into buckets. I will go out and collect sap tomorrow and brother will cook it in the evening. Made about 12 gallons of syrup today, not too bad at all.

 

Just finished reading through the thread. I'm definitely interested in getting some! I can distribute a group purchase for Northern California if there are others interested as well.

 

Well my brother flaked out on me and didn't show up today and didn't answer my calls. I spent 2 hours cutting wood waiting for him. Then 4 hours collecting 400 gallons of sap and the taps were running like crazy. He was supposed to cook today but that didn't happen. My daughter hung in there all day yesterday and 4 more hours today, but I just couldn't put her through anymore this weekend. She was beat, I was beat. Shes 7 and I feel bad I clog her weekends with this syrup stuff. So needless to say I didn't cook at all today. I hope I hear from him tomorrow because he needs to collect sap tomorrow (i will be at work for 14 hours) and/or cook what I got today. If he doesn't then buckets will overflow and we will be way behind. If I fall behind in the next couple days that could end the season because uncooked sap will spoil and overflowing buckets is money dripping on the ground. I hate to say it but i don't have a good feeling about how this week/end of the season will go. I can not do it alone as I just don't have the time and I can not put syrup ahead of my daughter. Let's hope I can add to the total and get at least one more week out of the season. So far I have about 50 gallons made and another 10 gallons worth of raw sap. Realistically I could get 30 more gallons of syrup made this year of my brother wakes up. Wish me luck.

 

Dear Pudge’s Brother,

Please wake up.

Sincerely,

Pudge’s Tundra Brotherhood.

 

Spending time with daughter is priority #1. Of this time making syrup becomes a burden for her she will end up hating it later in life. So remember you do this for fun not to make mortgage payments. If it’s becoming a burden time to cut it back and take a break bud.

 

We will see how this week goes. I'll definitely update here to let you all know.

 

Went out today and collected almost 400 gallons. I have about 750 gallons at the sugar house that I will start boiling tomorrow morning. I expect tomorrow and Thursday to be good for sap because the weather is perfect. Unfortunately I can't collect any more sap til I get a bunch boiled down to free up some space in my storage containers.

Thursday or Friday will be the last day I collect sap this year. There are many factors that lead me to that decision. One, I am worn out and have been a one man show for much of this season. Two, the temps for the weekend are too high for maple sap flow, high of 70 and lows in the 50s, the sap can spoil just like milk so those temps alone could kill the season. When it gets that warm for a few days in a row the treed start to heal themselves a.k.a. they will essentially stop flowing sap from the hole I drilled in it. And three, the buds for the leaves are starting to show up on the sugar maples, a few warm days and all the buds will be out. Once the buds form the trees don't really need much more sugar so the sap starts to get a little bitter and very low sugar % so it does not make good syrup.

So the season is winding down, whatever sap I can get before Saturday will be boiled down over the weekend and the taps will be removed from the trees. The next ohase is the most exciting for all of you guys....the filtering and bottling process. That'll start next week once everything us boiled down. Then I can start selling it. Then I get to do the worst part of the season which is clean up. I hate cleaning every piece of equipment and every bucket. It sucks so bad but had to be done.

Thanks for your support everyone. I will keep updating this thread to let you all know when you can buy some delicious maple goodness.

 

Next season I'm going to have to take a weekend to come help...