The Maple Sugaring Season Has Ended, BUT

We went from winter-spring syrup season, to planting season in a matter of days.
The uncles and cousins involved with the farm operation are all busy preping and planting oats and alfalfa.
The few of us left, pulled all the buckets and spiles and carried all of them to the roadsides.
I have been washing buckets here at my home with the pressure washer. As of last night I had 1100 bkts, washed and stacked to dry in my driveway. There are 25 buckets per row and 44 rows in the pic.
I took today off, to go to Runnings and buy my garden seed, and BS with a couple of friends.
We still have 1200 bkts, covers, and spiles lining some woods roads waiting for me and hopefully a faimly member to pick the rest of them tomarrow, so I can get them washed, and then get them back up to the sap house to store them away until next year. I have been concentrateing on getting the buckets cleaned. Tomarrow afternoon rain is supposed to set in for several days and I am hopeing that I will have some help to wash up the evaporator pans and other equipment in the saphouse and get all the buckets that I have washed stored away for next season.
Still waiting for the fat lady to sing, HeHe.
Loren, the Acg.

Whoah, that's a pile of pails. I didn't realize you were that involved till this spring.

Loren;
From your post I gathered that sap season starts when the nights are below freezing and the days are above freezing. This starts the flow of sap up into the tree.

BUT......

What signals the end of sap season?

We can assume sap runs up and down the tree all summer long carrying nutrients the tree needs.

Is it that the flow becomes so slow it is not worth the time?
The sap takes on a different flavor once the tree buds out?
Or some other reason I am not even thinking about.

It's the buds on the trees. They make the sap milky and give it a funky taste.

Few people who buy the end product have any idea at all at the work required "behind the scenes", they know that the sap is boiled down to syrup, but the preliminary preparation and the cleanup process make it a much longer task. To be honest about it, I didn't understand the full picture myself until I started reading these forums.

John,
Weather is the determining factor. Temp varients during each 24hr period. the other factor is the amount of sunlight which causes bud development.
Moisture does migrate from the ground during the entire growing year, but the trees go dormant during the winter months. The spring sap flow is like a glucose infusion, to revitalize the trees back to life after their dormancy.
Trees are very resiliant, and like a human, if they are wounded, (hole drilled in their skin), they heal, and no longer bleed. The healing and budding usually corespond time wise. One could retap a tree and more sap would run, but since the tree no longer needs the rush of sugar/energy from spring sap to develop leaves the flow becomes limited and has far less sugar in it.
Besides that, once it warms up the sap in the buckets attract all kinds of bugs, especially millers, Time to shut down!!!
Loren

The mount of sap flowing in spring was really made clear one spring years ago. I was cutting back some small trees and cut a small maple about eight inches diameter.
The amount of sap that bled from that stump was amazing! It covered the stump and ran down onto the ground. If I had cut the same tree two months later, there would have not been nearly as much flow.

(quoted from post at 21:00:40 04/18/15) Few people who buy the end product have any idea at all at the work required "behind the scenes", they know that the sap is boiled down to syrup, but the preliminary preparation and the cleanup process make it a much longer task. To be honest about it, I didn't understand the full picture myself until I started reading these forums.

Click to expand...

I would bet that sap used to make 90% of the syrup in stores never sees a bucket. The high producers use mainly tubing run between trees then downhill to larger tubes and larger join to even larger. It then runs to roadside tanks that hold thousands of gallons or direct to the sugar house. In Canada I have seen six inch pipe used to carry sap. many operations apply vacuum to the lines to help pull it through and help "milk" it out of the tree.

All the work (remember the firewood too) reminds me of the ant and grasshopper story.

Yup, we did our cleanup gathering two days ago and pulled the buckets yesterday. Now all I got do is wash the darn things and put them away! Geez, Loren. I thought washing 700-800 of the things was bad enough!

I would guess your estimate is probably pretty close. Most of us smaller guys do it the low tech way. However once you get into the multi-thousand tap operations, Tubing is almost a necessity simply because of the lack of available labor and the expense of that labor.

Loren, I want to order some syrup. I tried emailing you from an older post where the email was open, but apparently you have not received it.
thanks

Dan,
Try it again and see if it works.
Loren

When you factor in all the hard work, discomfort, unpredictabilities and variable factors you guys have to deal with, I'm surprised you don't charge $500 a gallon for your syrup.

That was neat to see. I'd love to buy some syrup if I could! Be great to have some fresh, we don't get that down here in GA.

Thanks for posting all of the pictures throughout the season. Our neighbors have a similar setup here in Iowa. Your comment about climate change is very true. They haven't had a good year in ten years, in fact they almost didn't get ANY sap until we had one last week and half cold snap around Easter.

Jim