Our first week of the 2018 Maple Season is in the books. We experienced all types of New England weather this week! Everything from snow and cold to temperatures in the 70’s and now a wintry mix of snow, and freezing rain today!
Thankfully everyone in the family pitches in to help during maple season. The kids are pros at pumping the tanks of all the maple sap that we collect.
We finally had enough sap to process through the homemade reverse osmosis machine we set up last year and ended up with enough concentrated sap to fire up the evaporator for two different boils outside. Wen did the first boil this past Wednesday and I did the second boil Saturday afternoon which went into the evening hours.
I find night boils the most enjoyable, and they are even better when we have night time temperatures in the upper 30’s!
| Collected | Date / Time Range | ||
| 50.00 | gallons | 2/16/2018 | 2/19/2018 |
| 60.00 | gallons | 2/19/2018 | 2/20/2018 |
| 48.00 | gallons | 2/20/2018 | 2/22/2018 |
| 50.00 | gallons | 2/22/2018 | 2/24/2018 |
| 30.00 | gallons | 2/24/2018 | 2/24/2018 |
| 32.00 | gallons | 2/24/2018 | 2/25/2018 |
| 270.00 | total gallons collected | ||
So for this week we collected 270 gallons of sap as of this evening. Approximately 240 gallons of that has been processed into about 4 gallons of almost syrup.
The remaining 30 gallons of sap we collected tonight and are running through the RO.
Hopefully the weather will hold out and we will get some cold nights (below freezing) in the coming week to keep sap flowing.
Bill
