Yesterday we went out to the Maple Supply Warehouse out in Lake Odessa. It’s always interesting going to these places since the owners know so much about making syrup. As this was a new start-up operation (the old one retired) we had a lot to discuss.
Today’s post is an interesting one: maple math.
While people assume farmers are dumb, the opposite is actually true. Farmers have to CREATIVELY use their math skills to ACTIVELY sold problems. We are one of the few that actually still use that math you learned in High School (when am I ever going to use this?!).
If you plan to tap more than a few trees, you’ll need to brush your math skills off. Here’s why:
We plan to tap just over 150 trees (and just bought an extra 25 taps and buckets). We can certainly tap well over 300 trees, but we are sticking to 150 for now.
Here’s the math:
If, on average, a tree tap yields enough sap to make 1/2 gallon of syrup during a good season, that tree has produced 22.5 gallons of sap (assuming your sugar content is such that it takes 45 gallons of sap to produce a gallon of syrup. Sometimes it’s40, sometimes it’s 50).
WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS?
If you have 150 taps, that’s about 75 gallons of maple syrup . . . WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT ALL THAT?!
You certainly don’t sell your syrup as gallon jugs, usually it’s in quarts. But that’s 300 quart jugs (4 quarts = 1 gallon).
Crazy lots.
ROUND 2
Ok, so let’s look at the sap amounts now. If each tree produces good numbers of sap at 22.5 gallons for the season, multiply that by 150 (number of trees tapped). That’s 3,375 gallons of sap for the whole season.
Seems like a lot, right?
Well, if your season is (on average) 6 weeks long, that’s 562.5 gallons a week! You’d better have enough storage for all that sap!
Fortunately we have 3, 275-gallon tanks, and that means we will fill just over two tanks a week (562.5gallons per week/275gallons per tank=2.04 tanks).
That means cooking twice a week!
Ok. so you have 562.5 gallons a week. Each tree tap has one bucket, and each bucket can hold 5 gallons. 562.5gallons/7days = 80 gallons of sap collected PER DAY.
Now that’s curious . . . we have 150 taps out, but are only collecting ON AVERAGE 80 gallons. A good day will yield 1 gallon a day. An excellent day will yield over 2! However, some days yield 0, so that’s why we average.
But this is why we do the math. Numbers that seem EXTRA-ORDINARY at first, show to be average to below average once you break it down.
SO now you might be wondering, “What happened last year?”
Well, we DID do 150 taps last year, however, it was a bad season for ALL sap farmers with the weather warming up so fast. Half our trees had been silver and red maples. It wasn’t until the last 2 weeks I tapped 75 black maples (saved our butts too!). We only had taps out for 4 weeks total.
Last year our sap sugar content averaged 1.5%. Many producers dump it if it’s that low because it takes too long to cook. We didn’t have that option.
We ended up producing around 15 gallons of syrup from 150 taps. Pretty far cry from 75, huh?
But this is why farming is a “gamble” you know what you could/should get, but there’s only so much you can control on YOUR end.
Honestly? If we ended up with 75 gallons of syrup this year, we would have NO PLACE TO STORE IT. We would fill every jug we have and need to run to the syrup warehouse again and buy MORE!
I fully expect to get at least 30 gallons, but it’s still a gamble! It could be 15, it could be 75 . . . throw the dice and hold your breath!