Syrup Season 2024 and Cheers to 10 years
If you read the news at all, or at least see the headlines then its no surprise we got going early this year. Being farther north we generally begin to collect sap at the earliest end of February and more regularly mid March. This year on February 3rd we tapped in 60 buckets. The mild weather we were experiencing made it challenging to sit around and do nothing. After a few days we had enough sap to start a small batch. Our all bucket batch came out to about 5 gallons. We put it in the freezer and waited for the later February mild temperatures to tap in our lines. This year we tapped in 400 line taps plus our buckets. We had a nice two days of sap collection before the temps dipped down to minus 15. We collected roughly 600 gallons of sap and Mike boiled it all down to a beautiful dark syrup. He added our bucket batch to it making it the largest batch we’ve bottled at 60 L.
The weather has stayed fairly mild and above temperatures over night make for an excess of sap and a lot of late nights and some delicious syrup.
It’s hard to predict just how long this season will last, but if it started early then I think it will likely end early too. Time will tell.
This is Mike and I’s 10th year making maple syrup together. Every year we try and improve our set up and slowly but surely it’s getting better and nicer to make syrup in our shack. Long term we are working towards setting up our 3 x 12 woodfired evaporator in a new shack. Short term some equipment purchases and upgrades are on the way. This year we’re using a new bottler from Smokey Lake Maple Products. It’s water jacketed and has a higher capacity then our old bottler and we are very happy with it.
It’s pretty amazing we’ve come so far in 10 years together. We do a lot of the work ourselves but we also couldn’t do what we do without the support of our family, friends and customers. A big Thanks to everyone along the way who has helped make this happen. We are truly living a dream and appreciate the privilege and opportunity to make it our reality for a couple months each year.
Cheers and Enjoy!!
