Sugarbush Log - Start to the 2022 Season
March 23, 2022
We kicked off the maple syrup season this past weekend. It was an absolutely beautiful weekend to be in the woods, with highs in the 40s and 50s and full sunshine. Despite the weather, it’s been a slow and challenging start to the season.
Friday we gave our thanks to the trees, ancestors, and indigenous sugarers that made it possible to do what we do, and did our opening tapping in our family sugarbush, The Maples (we’re super creative with naming, I know). The wonderful thing about tapping on Friday was that I tapped with my Aunt Linda, my Dad’s sister, who also grew up tapping those trees and loves the place as much as we do. We tapped about 75 trees with very little sap run that day. In addition to tapping, we worked on getting equipment ready including tractors, trailers, tanks, buckets, etc.
Saturday our daughters, Abi’s mom, Greg Wright and Aunt Linda all joined in the tapping. We put in about 400 taps throughout the day. Many of the trees were dripping sap as we tapped them. Snow depth varied from zero to 18”. The wells around the trees, where the heat absorbed by the trees from the sun melted the snow, were the most distinct I’ve ever seen. There was bare ground around every tree and a foot from the trees there was 10” or more of snow. It’s amazing how much heat the trees absorb. There was substantial snow melt during the day and the roads started to get pretty muddy. I managed to hook a stump with the axel and bumper of the trailer in which we were hauling buckets. That required some repair, mostly done by brute force of a come-along to straighten(ish) the axle and skid steer to push the bumper back into place. This is pretty typical for me with equipment, unfortunately. I generally hate equipment and it returns and reinforces the feeling by breaking when I use it.
Sunday we welcomed the Radford family to the farm to join Abi, our daughters, and me for tapping. We put in about 150 taps, which were nearly all sampled by the kids. It’s always fun to involve new folks in the tapping process, especially when they are excited to be in the woods. The Radford’s youngest, who is 4, was a natural, he’s a tapping pro. He drilled several holes, carried and hung a lot of buckets, and sampled most of the sap by himself, providing a ranking on flavor for each one he tasted, 1 thumb up, 2 thumbs up, or double shotguns for the very best! We did avert a bit of a tragedy with our dog Cody that day. Abi noticed him “on point” out in the woods, looking like he might have discovered a dead critter or something to roll in. We called him to us to discover a single porcupine quill in his nose which Clara promptly removed. Maybe he learned from an earlier porcupine experience, which led to vet visit, to mostly avoid the prickly critters. Glad this encounter ended as it did. We set out to find said porcupine, but were unsuccessful. “Porkies” aren’t quick, so not sure how it disappeared from us. After lunch, my Aunt Linda and I finished up the tapping, with about 300 done for the day. The final trees we tapped were absolutely beautiful, mostly 20”+ trees in a very open setting, perfect for sap production.
Speaking of breaking, we discovered a major issue Sunday evening as we were getting the evaporator ready. We filled it with water, and immediately water came streaming out of the pre-heating tubes in the hood. Turns out we didn’t drain those tubes before winter, and the water froze in there, breaking a seam in the tubing header. It took some work by 3 of us (my dad, Mike - our primary helper - and I) to get the hood off and the preheater disassembled. Fortunately with a lot more work and finesse, Travis (my sister’s partner) was able to weld the seam.
While the weekend was absolutely beautiful, we were greeted by a cold rain Monday morning. We got the day started by reassembling the preheater and getting the hood reinstalled, which we did successfully after a couple hours. We again filled it with water, and no leaks this time! At that point, Bryce Gauger, a reporter from the Wisconsin State Journal, arrived to learn about and do a story on maple syrup making. I spent about 4 hours with him going through the whole process from tree selection to bottling. I’m looking forward to the story he puts together. I managed to bottle a small batch of pure syrup while he was there and after he left. After bottling was finished, we collected the first sap of the year. Mike, 2 neighbor kids, and I headed out to collect late in the afternoon in absolutely miserable conditions - driving rain and about 40 degrees. The field road heading into the woods was very wet and muddy, but the woods roads and trails were pretty solid. This is the first time we’ve tapped this section of our neighbor's land, and I’ll say the roads have me pretty nervous. I hope we can get through the year without massive rutting and/or burying the tractor in the mud. Anyway, collecting went pretty smoothly, regardless of weather and took about 2 hours. Out of about 400 taps, we collected about 250 gallons, not a great run. The sugar content was low, about 1.6% (typically around 2.5%). That 250 gallons will be cooked down to about 5 gallons of syrup. Fortunately, we also have sap from Houdek farms, about 2,000 gallons also about 1.6% sugar - so in total about 50 gallons of syrup worth of sap.
We still have the new reverse osmosis machine to get going and some final preparation before we’re ready to cook syrup. Hopefully the first batch of syrup will happen by the end of the week.
So, we’re off to a slow start. I’m at home, resting up and doing Extension work for a couple days before heading back. Regardless, with all the things going on in the world, it’s a great escape to be among family, friends, and the wildness of the trees and critters. And, hopefully things pick up from here, although I have a bad feeling we’re in for a short season (Abi reminds me I feel this way at the start of every year). Here’s to the hopefulness of spring and a productive syrup season!
