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Old 02-27-2011, 10:00 AM
 
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The forecast shows 3 days this week approaching 40 degrees with overnight lows well below freezing. Is it time to tap? Is there any danger in tapping too early?

This is my 2nd year experimenting with tapping my maple trees. Last year I was discouraged for a couple weeks until one day the trees suddenly, on a warm day, started flowing like faucets. Sadly this only lasted one day and I didn't end up with enough sap to bother boiling (about a gallon). I only have 4 or 5 taps.
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Old 02-27-2011, 09:04 PM
 
Location: Vermont / NEK
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I'd say go ahead and get started. The early runs tend to produce better quality sap for boiling. If your trees are big (say, 2 feet in diameter at waist-high) they'll support 2, maybe even 3 taps apiece. Good luck and all!
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Old 02-28-2011, 03:20 PM
 
Location: Central, NH
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Yup, it's that time. Or very nearly so. Let us know how you make out.

Last year was a terrible sap year. Spring came too early and it was way warm.
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Old 02-28-2011, 03:51 PM
 
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Set up 4 taps yesterday.
I do this just for kicks. I hoped to show my two young kids where (real) maple syrup comes from. Some articles said I could get a couple gallons of sap from each tap. That would yield about a quart of syrup which would have been a great success for this experiment. Instead the kids drank a few sips of sap straight out of the tree.
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Old 03-05-2011, 12:41 PM
 
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now is the time.. You described the perfect conditions - day temps in the 30's/40's and nights below freezing.
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Old 03-05-2011, 01:59 PM
 
Location: Tippecanoe County, Indiana
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The season is later this year due to temps in Jan and Feb being below average. This hasn't happened in years!!! A more old fashioned NH winter. Tapping should progress in the next few weeks in the south and central areas with the north later than that this year. All the precip over the next week or two looks a bit concerning, though.
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Old 03-06-2011, 03:53 PM
 
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I am in Tamworth and put out my buckets March 1st. That day was sunny, and had calm winds, so some sun exposed trees ran a little bit that day. Since then it's been frozen, till today, and it's raining. Tuesday the 8th and Wed the 9th it may run.

If you tapped sugar maple and not red maple you get more % of sugar, but both trees run sugar, as a great deal of other trees do.

More or less the ratio is given by the state, but I don't know the links. I am a little hobby guy too with 37 taps so far. The last several years were from 40:1 to 44:1.

More or less taps dry up in around a loose 6 weeks, so tapping now should get you what ever 4 taps gets.

The grades run from Fancy , Grades A, Grades B, and C as time passes. The best grade for making candies is Fancy and Grades A.

A lot of that is hype IMO, but there is a lighter shade of Grade A and then a Amber, and so on.

I think Grades B taste more like maple, and maybe grades C which is siad to be animal fodder, but I made some of that last year. The stuff is super sweet, and black. People asked me for that for cooking, but it turns out it's good stuff on pancakes.

I read on line some where that around 60 sugar shacks will be having open house, so maybe the kids can see a real pro set up as well.

So far as I can tell this link is non profit and state run
New Hampshire Maple Producers Association - Welcoming Page

Just ran a quick search.

On that link is a history I don't buy that tail a bit.

I can't say I know the history either, but I will be money it didn't happen that way and more than likely happened long before whiteman presented metal tools.

My best guess is that thousands of years before metal tools, a native hunting in Fall, came on a deer or moose rub. Both of these local animals rub trees as part of their mating rituals.

I have personally encounted rubs with amber beads of maple syrup, yes real maple syrup, where the beads collected enough sugar in a few drops on smaller sapling braches.

I would assume the natives like me were curious about the amber color beads and found them sticky to the touch. Now i know what a sugar maple is any time of year, and I can't recall exactly what I did, but I did stick my grubby finger in my mouth to get that sticky sap off, and it was sure maple syrup.

You could sugar with stone tools and a few sticks, collecting sap in trays made of elm bark, now gone missing, and birch bark.

With a village making trays you could refine sugar that way with little to no heat, and even early natives could boil off sugar in raw hide bags with heated stones, or a small fire right under some forms of raw hide like containers.

I could get deeper, but modern man would find some of this nauseous.

Last edited by Mac_Muz; 03-06-2011 at 04:03 PM..
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Old 03-07-2011, 07:47 AM
 
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I was surprised to harvest about 6 liters of sap on Saturday and I see a couple more liters hanging in the bags this morning. Way more than I got last year already.

Do different maples run at different times? My largest tree is barely producing. I installed two taps. One is bone dry while the other is just barely running. The sap is yellowish.

A smaller tree out back is running really well. The sap is almost clear. Should I consider removing the dry tap from the big tree and adding it to the smaller one out back? Or am I getting too greedy?

What does the color of the raw sap indicate?
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Old 01-31-2012, 07:35 AM
 
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What happens to "sugarin' season" when we get a warm winter like this? Should I even bother tapping this year?
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Old 01-31-2012, 08:53 AM
 
Location: Tippecanoe County, Indiana
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Quote:
Originally Posted by avlis13013 View Post
What happens to "sugarin' season" when we get a warm winter like this? Should I even bother tapping this year?
The season will likely end up being much worse than last year at the rate we're going right now. However, the longer range models suggest that temperatures for February will be colder than January and March will likely be colder than average as well. The overall pattern is shifting to more of a positive PNA pattern meaning a western ridge and an eastern trough.
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