I slept in today, until 8 am.  Even though, the evaporator was to be fired.  Time in was just over 13 hours.  To clean.  Not a drop of product produced today.  Overall we made 58 gallons of syrup this year.  The last of it dribbled out a week ago.

Since then we have been starting the year in the orchard.  Late.  Pruning, when we should have a month ago.  All seems to be fine however, in that the weather has been  ideal anyway; not too cold at night but around 25F to promote dry up in the area cut, and not too warm at day to incite the tree into a its spring growth cycle.  Which means, no expanding buds evincing anything close to verdant.

Today the sap was still flowing, a fraction of it's volume from the first run near February  20th, but still viable at 1.5% sugar.  While I went through the three boil and scrub process of season end evaporator cleaning, I used an Induction Burner and Stainless Brew Kettle, which serves as the finishing station and filtering unit in production, to boil down what was still coming out the end of the main collection line.   At shut down we did not make syrup there.  The residuals were palatable, proving that had we waited another week our total could have been 59 gallons, instead of 58.  Oh, executive decisions.

The data helps.  Next year, given our observations, we should be able to produce what we did this year, all years being equal(fat chance), and perhaps a schmidge more.  The season turns on a dime with the hormones of the trees.  One day the sap is processable, the next, it produces an aroma in the processing area that harkens back to ripe gym socks as opposed to sweetly celestial; or at least that is what all the gurus online describe it.

So far, we have not made ropey syrup; the gym sock stuff.  We have made some righteous dark and what now must be graded as commercial, according to the new guidelines.  The picture is of samples from first draw until the end of March.  There were three more production runs in April.  All in all we are proud of every last drop and grateful that you the buying public find it not only consumable but affordable.  And today we cleaned everything in preparation for next years run.

Until then, thanks for your response to the syrup and we think that you will have similar reactions to the fruit that is to start coming this year.  Stay tuned to this channel as we try and document our first year of apples from bloom to bushel....