Maple Juice 2020 wrapping up

Well it’s been a weird season, it started as it always does on a nice late February day. But the Maples stopped flowing rather abruptly in the middle of March. It’s not unusual to get a break in the flow, but they never picked up again even on perfect days. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw, or if I care to draw any. But I’ve never seen it stop like that. Every single of the few seasons we’ve had so far, the trees wouldn’t just stop running until the sap turned yellow. Oh well, we still pulled 5 gallons and I still have about 2 more in the evaporator I’ll process very soon now that I know there won’t be any more sap. To add to the weirdness, all the syrup we made is super dark, no light early flow.

It’s a bit too bad, I was ready for a lot more. 7 Gallons is hard to complain about though.

One of the nicest things this year, I rigged a pump on the ATV to pump the sap straight into the tanks. I went from lifting hundreds of gallons of sap 3 times (bucket -> ATV -> tank -> evaporator), to only once (bucket -> ATV).

Ready to draw

drawing

And the yummy result (I have yet to commission labels for the adventures involved)

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