It is Saturday, \u00a0March 7th and I was in the woods at first light tapping trees. \u00a02 days ago on Thursday morning it was 3 degrees. \u00a0It got up to 40 today and it is supposed to be 50 on Wednesday. \u00a0For the sap to run it needs to be above 40 during the day and freeze at night. \u00a0If it doesn’t get above 40 or freeze at night the sap stops running. \u00a0My concern this year is they are predicting 4-5 days where it gets to 50 and does not freeze. \u00a0If that happens and the frost comes out of the ground, the trees will bud and syrup season is over. \u00a0I took Friday afternoon off to start tapping but the snow in the woods was over a foot deep in spots and my tractor \u00a0(one in \u00a0winter chore post) I haul the buckets, pans and other supplies back in could not get through. \u00a0We also have a John Deere compact diesel tractor that has 4 wheel drive, a front bucket and a back blade. \u00a0I spent the afternoon clearing a 1\/4 mile lane through the woods. \u00a0I had wanted to hire a kid for the morning but could not get one to help so I had to drill the tap hole – I use a hand brace and bit – pound in the spile and hang the bucket. \u00a0We make syrup the old fashioned way as you can see from other posts. \u00a0I put out right around 100 taps spread across probably 10 acres of woods this morning. \u00a0It is tough carrying buckets, a bucket of spiles, a hammer and a bit and brace. \u00a0I’ll be sore tomorrow. \u00a0I bought some buckets at an auction this summer and they had covers. \u00a0I have not had covers which means when it rains I just dump the buckets. \u00a0I used a cover for a pattern and a friend gave me a bunch of scraps of metal roofing from a barn roof. \u00a0I was able to make 80 covers. \u00a0I did not get them put on today – that would have been just that much more to carry. \u00a0I went back after dinner and checked. \u00a0The sap has just started to flow. \u00a0Hopefully I will collect sap tomorrow.<\/p>\n
The sap ran OK Saturday and Sunday then not so good Monday – Wednesday. \u00a0It is best not to let sap set so I boiled Thursday. \u00a0I had under 120 gallons so I got just under 3 gallons of syrup. \u00a0The sap flowed OK again Friday – Sunday and then started flowing like it should Tuesday. \u00a0I had around 200 gallons of sap so I boiled today – Thursday 3-19. \u00a0Beautiful day, 40s very little wind and I cut down 3 dead Elms and into 6 foot lengths. \u00a0That way I could get the wood all the way in my system. \u00a0Elm burns really hot so the boiling went quick. \u00a0I got around 5 gallons of syrup in just 1 hour more time than last Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is Saturday, \u00a0March 7th and I was in the woods at first light tapping trees. \u00a02 days ago on Thursday morning it was 3 degrees. \u00a0It got up to 40 today and it is supposed to be 50 on Wednesday. \u00a0For the sap to run it needs to be above 40 during the day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeonthefarm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}