Yes it’s that time again! Sugaring season has begun! I have been preparing for a while now actually. It started with getting the sugar house plowed out after the blizzard a few weeks back. I haven’t seen snow this deep in years! It took some time and serious tractor work but I got plowed out. Trying to break out the old road that is our main sap haul road was a different matter. I got part of it passable but it was rather futile. I decided to wait and let nature melt some of the snow which happened last week fortunately. We kicked off our sugaring season by building some strings of sap tubing down on the steep ridge near Beaver Creek. I wore snowshoes the first day but it was a total pain so I just waded through the deep snow the following day. We got about 40 taps in that first location. Our next stop was on the Gap Ridge across the meadow from the cabin. It was super tough going there as well! I managed to get the tractor across the meadow after the snow started to melt. Unfortunately I got the side by side stuck! But it was easily pulled out with the tractor. We gained an additional 20 taps in the second location. Progress was slow but still progress!
The warm spell had settled the snow so I made another run at the old road hoping to break through which I did. I made it up onto our neighbor’s property and went down one of the sap haul roads for a short distance before deciding to turn back. Getting stuck would be no fun! The weather was turning cold so I took the weekend off spent it in Saranac Lake. I picked up some syrup supplies in Hermon to get further prepared. Every little bit of preparation helps. Zane and I had started to set up the evaporator and piping systems. That’s a necessary preparation also.The weather was promising Monday so I began putting out some mini tubing runs up on the neighbor’s property. We take them down each season and flush them out before storing them. They are numbered and named as to their locations. Mini tubes pick up several trees and flow into 15 gallon containers. What a time saver! Not to mention we build them where the trees are difficult to reach. Our father started building them quite a few years ago. We had quite a few at one time before the big sugarbush die off in 2016/2017. Most of those mini tube strings are worthless now. I have started repurposing them for parts.
It was so difficult getting around the woods on Monday that I decided to hang buckets beside the main sap haul road on Tuesday. Wading through the crusty, knee deep snow was exhausting and frustrating. Working beside the road was much less challenging. Zane showed up to help me and we got quite a few buckets hung before the rain drove us in for the day. We got back out on Wednesday and managed to do mini tubes and buckets in a section of woods on our neighbor’s called The Great Northern Loop. We got rained out again by lunchtime but went back out before dark and got more buckets done. The sunset was absolutely beautiful! We were pretty tired from wading through the snow but were happy with our progress.The tap count was growing!
Thursday would see a lot of snow melted and mud was beginning to appear in spots. We had gotten a lot of rain and the trails were tough going for the tractor. We tapped the remainder of what’s known as The Southern Loop. It’s a fraction of the size of the GNL. After lunch we decided that we needed to get the trailer set up to gather some sap before the cold snap hit. The weather was changing fast and the temperatures started dropping. We worked fast and the wind was blowing pretty hard. Then a light snow started. We ended up with about 120 gallons of sap that we got unloaded at the sugar house. It had been an eventful day fighting through the snow with the tractor. And also wading through it! But we were once again happy with our progress. We finished setting up the evaporator. Our tap count was now 386. We plan to have over 500 eventually. I like to hold some of the sugarbush in reserve in case the weather turns cold for a while like it is doing this weekend. The wind really howled last night and we got a little more snow.
Today was a little more laidback. With the colder weather there’s no sap to gather. I put out 23 more buckets near the sugar house in what’s known as Zane’s Bush. It really suffered during the big die off. Many tree were lost and that’s unfortunate because it had held such great potential given the number of young maples. We harvested so much wood out of there after the event. There are more trees needing to be cut as some continue to die.Some are barely living but we have so much wood around the farm that I will leave them for now.
We may tap more trees tomorrow but haven’t decided just yet. The weather warms next week again and we expect to see some sap runs. Late in the week the temperatures approach 60 degrees. Not ideal sugaring weather but the snow will certainly disappear. Sugaring seasons can be fickle these days. They have become more compressed and unpredictable. But we have to accept that which we have no control over. What we can do is blitz the forest with taps for a big play for sap. Wading through the snow has been challenging. I am happy to once again be outside every day making a play for maple syrup. We are down to our last half gallon almost. Putting it into my coffee each morning goes through it! But I need that battery charging to keep my spirit energy surging! It’s great living here on the farm and engaging in my rural heritage hobbies! It is enough I often write. And it truly is a blessing to be living in this moment. The transition is underway now. Soon all will look different here. And we will have gone through another syrup season. We still don’t know how bad the evaporator is going to leak this year. It’s a tense moment for me that is coming soon. For now we will continue setting taps and waiting for the big sap runs. Then we can begin the next step. It’s going to be a push! But when wasn’t it? It’s in my blood this sugaring obsession. And I am a most fortunate man to have experienced this annual event. I may not get time for another post soon. But I will eventually get you caught up!✍️