Having a big log pile reminds me of being 16 back when I had my dad’s car and had just filled up the gas tank. So many options; so much potential. I have that feeling now as I look across the street from my house at this big, honking pile of hardwood. We took about [...]

Oldtimers down here refer to a “maple moon,” the full moon closest to the harvest season. They hold that the sap really breaks only once the maple moon comes. I even heard one talk about a gravitational effect on the trees. I have a lot of respect for a lot of what these oldtimers say, [...]

We made about 25 gallons today, on a day that really should have produced more sap. My own data collected over some years shows what everyone else already knows: that temps in the low 20s at night and high 40s during the day produce the great runs. Despite getting temperatures at least that good and [...]

We boiled on the new “monster” arch today for the first time, and it was fantastic.
First, though, we tricked a bunch of friends that it would be fun to “take a walk” in the woods. We have very gullible friends, and they found themselves looking for and fixing vacuum leaks. Here is one hapless victim [...]

It was getting to be a bit late in the night on one of those looooong boils last year. Several of us started sniffing the air. Was that something burning? Sometimes a car goes by burning a break pad, skidding around our nasty curve on Tucker Hill Road. It was easy to dismiss the first [...]

Back in 1982, the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station put together a large series of studies into one document to help sugar makers employ some of the more interesting recent findings. That document is available here.
Some highlights:
- A good deal of what we know (which is still pretty incomplete) about how and why sap flows
- Optimal [...]