Just finished collecting over 125 gallons in my buckets...most were overflowing! Looking at buying a RB-10 bucket from robucket.com. Read some good things about it and it is a good size for my backyard operation...problem is that power is over 1/4 mile away...need to find deep cycle marine battery. RB-10 will cut my boiling time in half (I evaporate 10gal/hour in my pan.

Has anyone have any experience with an RO bucket?

Thanks!

I saw ads for fresh maple syrup on Craigslist today. It might be a short season here. It's really warm already. I sweated through 2 tshirts moving quail around today.

I don't think I have even a single maple on my whole farm. I would like to make maple syrup again sometime.

Keith

Dinorocks the reviews of the RO Bucket I've read are very positive.

Sapping coming out our ears here. 125 gallons in the tank tonight and should have 500 gallons by the weekend. Going to be lots of boiling this week.

Thanks Ross! I’m up to about 200 gallons of sap after collecting today. Forecast looks great...plan to start boiling Friday after work and all day/night on Saturday....lots of friends and family planning to hike out to the sugar shack this weekend...hopefully they don’t share too much beer with me...need to keep focused! I have had to deal with a burnt pan once and don’t want to make that mistake again!!

Collected yesterday evening. Got 16.5 gallons. Collected again this morning and got 28 gallons. Made my rounds again this evening and got another 19 gallons. That gives me 47 gallons today. We only have 10 trees tapped with a total of 22 taps.

I plan I tapping a bunch more trees next year if I can get the sugar shack made and set up this summer.

Hope the sap is running good for everyone.

We will do our first collections tomorrow. We are finding some help. My lead partner is not able to carry any buckets at this time. Hope my new hip holds out. Had to move a couple hundred bales of hay today and haul a half ton of grain. Life speeds up in the spring!

Bryce

Started 10 days ago. Have 50 taps in so far, the older I get the fewer I put in. Haven't bottled anything yet but have 14 gallon or so cooked off. Haven't had the best of runs yet but the R O Bucket I purchased has been a blessing on the cooking side. mike

I knda feel funny about it but think I'm going to give my trees a rest this spring..Got a few jars syrup still squirreled away from last spring.. The river isn't running over it's banks like last year. so I think I'm going take a break this spring concentrate on fishing..
I will be following you guys on your adventure..
I wish I could set up a deal like Bryce is doing.. But not sure I could hack it.. LOL!
I'm leaving for river soon as I can see bottom of my coffee cup.

But I'll be checking up you all daily..

Mac

Collected about 250 trees today and got 450 gallons of sap that ran 3.0% sugar. We have 160 trees to collect tomorrow. When the wind quieted down the bigger trees in the sun were running today. We are patching together a labor crew to help us out.

Bryce

I give you guys that run buckets/bags a lot of credit. My dad's buddy has over 1,000 buckets hung on his place.

We're tapping this weekend, probably put in around 100 or so taps on hoses.

We got 240 gallons off of 124 taps. I figure It's going to be over before It really gets started.

We have set up a reverse osmosis device this year so we will see how this works out.

I purchased the 15 gallon R O Bucket, very happy with the way it works. Earlier when the sap had some ice in it I could get about 12 gallon/ hr but with the sap not being froze this week it is running 20 + gal/hr. I can boil 10 gallons an hour so it doubles my output. If I could just concentrate it before I carry it out. After a little over 500 gal through the bucket I say it is worth every penny. Mike

Tapped a my backyard tree on sunday (1 March) as a test to see how the sap is running, seems to be running pretty good, we have about 5 gallons collected so far. how long do you guys let your sap sit outside before boiling? Will it spoil if you let it sit outside for a week? currently we collect sap every 2 days and keep in a spare fridge until Saturday and boil once a week.

No run today so It looks like we will be collecting on Saturday.

Just tapped our 40 hobby taps today and things were flowing fast. Looking at a small RO setup - how often do the membranes need to be replaced? We use now empty fur freezer to freeze concentrate sap. Four 8 hr cycles in freezer in gallon jugs removes enough water in slush ice that it take only a couple hrs to finish on a propane turkey fryer. Trying to see if RO would be as economical I know it would be faster.

We just got through our 380 trees the first round yesterday and today. We collected just shy of 800 gallons. We are not planning to collect again until Sunday afternoon. Lots going on this Saturday for all of us. Pretty stiff right now as today was some longer carrying in the snow.

Bryce

Sunday and Monday we collected a bit over 1,200 gallons. Sugar content is running 3-3.4% Won' t collect again until Wednesday or Thursday. We have got 2000 gallons to date. Snow really melted away. We were able to tap another 55 trees today.


Bryce

Had sap go bad for me one year. The weather was warm and started to ferment. Gnats were in the sap.

Our experience shows that if you get cool nights say below freezing you should be good for 2-3 days. If you get 50 during the day and 40s at night you want that sap collected as soon as you can. Refrigerators are about 35 or so degrees.

also if you can't cook it right away, freeze it and thaw it later. It will cook down very well.

Bryce