Price Check for Maple Syrup

Buying Maple Syrup, Price Predicting

If time allows, both will be updated prior to the next season. That will provide interesting longitudinal price data.

Moving Maple Syrup Barrels

This’ll be a two-day process of refiltering the maple syrup, heating it up in the finishing pan and transferring it in batches into our packing unit. We’ll be dealing with three different maple syrup grades from three different barrels, putting it into containers ranging from five gallons to 50 ml maple leafs. That should set us up to be ready for demand in the next few months, as we expect to have less time available with the coming baby.

Like Matchsticks

As it is, I spent some time up in our main bush today, cleaning lines and making sure things look pretty for the seasonal neighbor who comes in August. This is how I discovered that a couple weeks ago there must have been an enormous wind event. I found about 20 or 30 big maples twisted up and toppled in a fairly small area. The trees were pushed over, pivoting on uprooted root balls in a northeasterly direction, which is odd. These trees are sheltered from northeasterlies from Cooks Hill behind them. These are precisely the trees I would have expected would be protected from winds from that direction.

Root Balls Came Right Over

It’s pretty much a mess that’ll take something close to a man-week to clear out – not what your expecting wife wants to hear at T-minus 30. I’ll be taking a trip up there with the big Jonsered saw tomorrow, perhaps make a dent in it.

(Friend's) Vacuum Extractor

After this, we started observing the vacuum levels relative to the precipitation and found that after three or four days without moisture, our vacuum level started a similar decline. Perhaps 5 percent per day. In every instance, a rain event of more than a few minutes brought us back up to normal.

We concluded that our tap holes were shrinking away from the spiles during the dry periods. This sounds like a pretty simple explanation, but I hadn’t heard others making mention of it. If true, I’ve wasted a lot of line fixing time running around trying to tighten a system whose trees were merely parched. It may also be that this is peculiar to the type of spile used (Lapierre). Would be curious if other maple syrup makers have noticed anything similar.

Amber and Steve came the day before to do a pre-walk examination, making sure the walkers get the most bang for their time. They salted some salamander traps in various places.

We’re pretty lucky to have the Vermont Center for Ecostudies right here in the Upper Valley. They’re a group of scientists in Norwich, VT doing hard ecosystem research, but they also make time to help locals learn about the habitats and critters.

Steve found us a good number of interesting things to see, including a couple different types of salamander, a bevy of egg masses for various amphibians and innumerable insects with odd behaviors and feeding strategies. I’ll include some pictures below, but you really had to listen to Steve to see the narrative unfold of how these things work and relate to one another. Visit the VCE blog for interesting stuff and future events.

Two Lined Salamanders

Robin in broken wing display

Caddis Flies Feast on Egg Mass

Beaver Art

Beaver Logging Accident Scene

Passing the Bucket

On 2356 taps, we’ve made 391 gallons of maple syrup so far. If the season stalls and stops (weather predictions are discouraging) this is pretty bad. We have this much largely due to our vacuum system. Locals without vacuum are seeing much worse performance. Take away the sap we get when the neighbors trees aren’t running, and we’d have only half this much maple syrup.

Also our home bush above our house has produced only 20 gallons of maple syrup (500 trees). And it DOES have vacuum. Is south and east facing, low and a very early bush. Tapped it on March 3 and it produced milky sap before we could even hammer in the spiles.

Our new 806 taps on a north-facing hill have performed well with our old 1050 taps on the east face of same hill doing only about as well as yourn.

Grade is very high, making the maple syrup flavor more subtle. We’re just now producing the good stuff, with dark amber and grade b maple syrups.

Moved the boiling operation to our strafford bush. Much more space, added another used r.o. Using oil to fire which is handy but just not the same.

Crew having fun. Life’s (and science’s) problems just about solved during maple syrup boiling discussions. Sure utopia would be reached it the season got cold and allowed us to continue for another two or three weeks.

If you southerners finish up early, come on up and commiserate. But don’t pull those taps yet. Our best hope, again, remains that our weathermen are mostly wrong.

Good luck, -Tig
Thetford Center

We’ve been pretty busy in the past few weeks, running lines, tapping and moving equipment to the Strafford sugar shack. That’s where we’ll be making most of the maple syrup this year, rather than in our Thetford Center shack. We’ve grown to the extent that we need the extra capacity.

Today we had our annual Town Meeting here in Thetford. Road Foreman? Off sugaring. Fire Chief? Ditto. I should have been too. The weather wasn’t the greatest for it (not cold enough these last few nights), but it sure would have helped to make up for some lost time. Now that the budget’s passed, we can get serious.

My brother is up to help with tapping, along with the regular crew and a suitably odd combination of neighbors and passers-by. We’re doing the bigger Strafford bush first, in the hopes that the season will hold off a few more days, giving us enough time to get to the Thetford bush. (It didn’t.)

We’re employing the fancy-schmancy tap adapters that Leader Evaporator and Proctor Maple Research Center made in hopes of getting more sap out of the trees. We’re putting these on the “back bush,” the new 800 or so trees we’re tapping back on the west side of the Strafford property.

Crew is working well, more importantly, enjoying each other. Really nice to see people of such different walks of life working together.

Border Collie Fetching Sue's Xmas Tree Just Prior to Easement

The easement also included a good deal of flexibility for making maple syrup or other serious agricultural pursuits on the property, which means that over generations, a wider population can own and steward this property, allowing it to pay for itself in a sustainable fashion. We feel very, very priviledged to be the next couple to help protect the property. Working a piece of land like this for maple syrup quickly allows it to work into your blood. We are all lucky that in Vermont there are many Sue Bakers out there keeping the state green.