April is upon us and this morning it was a chilly 17 degrees! We had a snow squall yesterday and it’s rather strange weather lately. We’ve run a gamut lately that’s for sure. As for the sugaring season? It would not be immune to the wild weather swings. Despite the deep snow that hindered us in early March, the season would change rapidly and with consequences far beyond our control. But that is the nature of the beast as it is called. Nature being the key word. And we have persevered doing the best that we could as we now reach the conclusion of sugaring season 2025. It has been challenging and memorable in so many ways. I suppose a continuation of my previous post from March 7th might best describe the highs and lows of it. Ironic it seems. For it would be the highs and lows of temperature that would shape our progress. One must follow them after all, as a sapsucker here on the rocky ridges of the farm Homestead. And in the end it has to be enough. But to truly understand perhaps the season just past must unwind here.

The weather stayed fairly stable following our first gather and we continued to set taps out. We also continued to bring in a little sap and by March 11th I was able to flood the evaporator. There was a minor leak near one of the draw off valves that I was able to seal fortunately as I fired the evaporator for the first time. The boiling sap gums up small leaks at times and allows you to keep going. Luck was on our side! I didn’t have enough sap to batch out that morning as it takes time to set up the evaporator on a first boil day. Eventually the sap in the various sections of pans has less water in it and batches will come on a regular timeline. Fresh sap is always trickling into the back pan as a float allows it depending on the depth I set up and the boil rate. I went out that afternoon after cooling the evaporator and brought in more sap so I could boil the next morning. On the second boil I made syrup finally. We were off and running!

Zane and I continued to set buckets and our tap grew to 551 by March 13th. The weather cooperated and we brought in more sap and boiled again on the 14th. That day the temperatures jumped significantly and we had a prodigious sap run! We gathered sap until 8:30 pm as the moon rose in the east. We were exhausted! Saturday would find us in the sugar house for a long day of boiling. More sap was brought in and we had a pancake breakfast in the sugar house on Sunday morning after I made a batch of fresh syrup. There were 7 of us total enjoying eggs and pancakes while rain fell outside. Such moments are a big part of a sugar season. The temperatures had risen into the 60’s for two days and that’s never a good thing. The snow was melting fast and mud became the new thing for us. Things were changing fast.But we had secured close to 30 gallons of nice quality syrup. Things were going well!

We got a tornado warning later that Sunday after I had finished boiling and had settled into the cabin for a rest. We didn’t get a tornado but got hit with a wild storm with high winds and soaking downpours.It was almost scary at one point with thunder and lightning! Not typical March weather. We chugged a long getting what sap came and by March 19th the temperatures hit 71 degrees. Zane and I decided to do a night boil to get as much sap boiled away as quickly as possible given the temperatures that would spoil it quickly. But the syrup turned dark and fell into commercial grade. We began filling one of our stainless steel syrup barrels. They hold 30 gallons when full. The syrup was sweet but had a slightly distinct after bite. We call this “buddy” as in tree buds. The warm weather we had been having was causing the tree buds to grow. There was nothing we could do about it except continue or quit. Barrel syrup has a market but we knew that it had come much earlier than we had expected. Several days of above normal temperatures was all it had taken. Unfortunate but very real. The weather shifted back to more normal temperatures and I decided to set more taps on the 22nd in a section of the sugarbush we call “ The Lane”. We do a mix of buckets and mini tune runs here. It’s a surviving stand of maples that was part of our former sugarbush. These big maples always produce well. The signs were obvious as some smaller maples began to stop producing sap. We hoped to see the syrup turned dark and lighter with the fresh infusion of clear sap.

So we continued to chug a long making dark syrup and working to fill our barrel. The weather swings determined when we needed to gather and sap continued to flow but not everyday. On March 25 I pulled buckets off the Great Northern Loop as they stopped producing. Zane and I bounced around in the upper fallow Meadows and added about 35 taps on some miscellaneous maples there.Later that day I hit a section near the cabin at the base of the Gap Ridge and added the final 38 new taps of the season. We were chasing sap and trying to keep our sap intake coming in. It was working out for us. It turned cold over the weekend and there was a break in the action. An ice storm hit that Sunday though and we couldn’t get out for a cleanup sap gather until Monday.

Monday would find us having a decent amount sap to gather and it was going well, until the tractor quit late in the afternoon. We tried to figure out the problem quickly but nothing worked so we used the side by side to gather the remaining sap. The next day I boiled and Zane gathered everything he could with side by side. Wednesday morning I tried to fix the tractor but still no luck . So it’s been side by side gathering ever since. A friend helped me tow the tractor out of the woods on Thursday after I finished boiling sap. But the weather turned super warm by Friday and I decided to have Zane make a final gather of the newest taps. Most of the trees had stopped running anyway. And so it ends just like that. And I will follow up on the conclusion of the season in my next post as I reflect on the season as we enter the next phase. It’s worthy of words I feel. Things have happened fast and it’s been a blur. But that’s how this hobby works!✍️