It was bitterly cold for most of this past week:
Sap ran early in the week and then the temperature got too cold.
Tuesday delivered 3/4 gallon of sap again, for a grand total of 1.5 gallons of sap.
I boiled it down on Saturday, to save some room in the fridge, to about 4.5 cups of fluid (about 1/10 strength).
Here is the weather today:
The most frustrating part of this hobby, watching the winter freezes and thaws, is that it seems to take a full day of temperature in the 40s for the sap to run.
I checked all day today, on the way up from 39 to 48 and then back again on the way down to the lower 40s and there was no sap :(.
Hoping for a real sap day tomorrow.
I recall that from an earlier cold snap that it takes a bit for the ice crystals within the tree to thaw out and create the necessary pressure differential to cause the sap to run.
But most of the days in the 8-day forecast look pretty good at the moment.
Because of this, I tapped my large tree a second time on Saturday. The tree has a very large diameter and is the larger producing of the two trees. Hoping this kicks up my collection volumes a notch to allow me to make a couple of legit batches of syrup, as well as extends the season by 2 weeks if I started the season too early.
As a season-extending hedge…I was probably a bit too impatient there, as well, but looking at the forecast this week, I didn’t want to miss the run.
