Town Meeting Day is Ended, Let’s Boil
by Tig Tillinghast
It’s on. We collected about 300 gallons of sap today on our partially-tapped bush up in Strafford. Tomorrow we’ll tap the Thetford Center location. I’d boil and make some maple syrup, but tomorrow I’ll have to run up to Fletcher, Vermont to pick up a used reverse osmosis unit. Without it we’d have to boil for 30 hours a day with the amount of sap we expect from the new taps – that’s even with our other used RO going full-out. We’ll have added about 1,250 new trees to the bush by the end, getting to a total of about 2,700 or thereabouts.
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.
Comments
Just wondering where in strafford vermont your second sugarbush is located. Found the one in thetford using googlemaps/streetview. I know you are getting in to the busiest time of the year, but wondering if you could post some pictures of the other sugarbush and sugarshack. Also, wondering if you tapped early this year, or if you normally tap this time of year? Up here in Pembroke Ontario we normally tap around the 18th of march. This year we may start tapping late this week into this weekend (4-6 of march) as the forecast is predicting highs near 7 above and lows near 8 below (celsius) pefect for a good run. Thanks for the great site/blog and keep up the great work!!
Gavin, the Strafford bush is just over the Thetford line, up Sawnee Bean way. Was running OK today, perhaps a quart to half gallon per tree up there. We’d better get the RO plumbed in by late a.m. tomorrow, or it’s going to start hitting the ground. First boil might be tomorrow night, latest Wednesday. Good luck with the season!