Spring is arriving late with what we hope is our final snow storm. We received 7" of heavy snow and the forest looks more like mid-March than April. But, the good news is the drop in barometric pressure and the moisture laden snow, has stimulated the sap flow.  In the last 24 hours, we have collected nearly .75 gallons of sap / tap and we have 1000 taps.  This places the flow in a "moderate" range, which we judge as between .5-1 gallon / tap. This is good news for all of you wanting to satisfy your desire for our premium maple syrup.

We'll most likely open the website for orders within the next week. If you want to dash off an email for your order, we'll get it ready - dsomers@citlink.net.  We are looking at possible options for ordering syrup in addition to Google checkout. Tomorrow, processing sap into syrup and bottling.

This has been a challenging year, trying to predict when the sap might flow and yield our long-awaited syrup. Flows have been weak to moderate and we are optimistic the weather forecast for the latter part of this week will be beneficial for several strong runs of sap.  Though the flows have been low, the sugar content of the sap has increased from 1.8% last year to 2.3% this year, perhaps a reflection of the drought.

We know there are many of you eagerly waiting to order maple syrup and we hope to satisfy all of you.  Be patient and check back with us next week when we anticipate bottling syrup. We hope we're deluged with sap and subsequently, barrels of syrup.  The latter part of this week's forecast looks promising with lows below freezing and highs above freezing. 

Tuesday

Apr 9

Hi 37°F

Lo 30°F

Details

Wednesday

Apr 10

Hi 36°F

Lo 28°F

Details

Thursday

Apr 11

Hi 36°F

Lo 23°F

Details

Friday

Apr 12

Hi 39°F

Lo 23°F

Details

Saturday

Apr 13

Hi 43°F

Lo 27°F

Details

Sunday

Apr 14

Hi 48°F

Lo 30°F

Details

The sap flow has been surprisingly slow during what appeared to be ideal conditions, with lows in the 20's and highs in the 40's.  It took 3 days of sap flow to collect enough to justify starting the evaporator.  The sugar content of the sap is 2.3%, which means it takes approximately 37 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Because we had stored the sap for several days, the sucrose in the sap broke down into glucose and fructose, which resulted in a darker syrup upon heating in the evaporator.

The process of conversion of sucrose (a disaccharide) into two monosaccharides (glucose and fructose) is called hydrolysis. This is seen more commonly when the weather is warm or sap is stored for extended periods.  Our first batch of syrup had a very robust flavor for this reason.

The weather looks favorable this week and we hope last fall's drought will not carry over to decreased sap flow.

Check back later this week for an update.