One thing we’ve learned in 30 years of sugaring is you never know what’s going to happen any given year.  The weather in January had things warmer than usual and even before that temps had been mild.  So when Brian put a test tap in the tree out back as usual, it was not a real surprise to see the sap running in the middle of January.  But the sugar content was still pretty low so he held off tapping.  But the more recent weather patterns have pushed things along so he decided at the end of last week to tap half the trees we usually tap.

This week he’s had enough sap to boil for 3 days in a row and sugar content in the sap is up over 2%.  So we’ll see how things go.  In a couple weeks he’ll tap the rest of the trees so we should have a full 6 weeks to collect from those trees before the tap holes start to close up or the season ends.  Who knows what will come first!  Stay tuned.  I’m sure there’ll be plenty of surprises along the way.