The 2020 Kentucky Maple Syrup Season is Right Around the Corner!

The 2020 maple syrup season is right around the corner and we have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks to be ready to tap our maple trees the first week of January. There is a lot of work, planning and investment that goes into making maple syrup each year... To be ready for the season we need to inspect each inch of our 3/16” lateral lines. Squirrels are our enemies...they like to chew the plastic tubing every so often which can put holes in the line. If there is the slightest hole in our lateral lines we loose our vacuum resulting in loss of sap production

Once the lines are repaired we will start marking trees in sections of our property that are not in production. This year we hope to install 400 taps, this will be 130 more taps than last year. We will need to install 600 feet of new 3/4” main line fastened to high tension wire. This main line will be the highway to transport hundreds of gallons of sap from high on the mountain down to our sugar shack. 4000 feet of new lateral lines will be installed zig zagging down the rugged hills from tree to tree picking up new maple trees. The lateral lines will last for many years or at least until the squirrels decide to chew them.

Once everything is installed in the beginning of January we will drill 400 holes and carefully drive the taps into the trees connecting them to the 3/16” tubing. Once the trees are tapped, we wait for nights below freezing and day time temps above freezing. These freeze/thaw cycles are what causes the sap to flow from the trees. Freeze/thaw cycles, now does that not sum up a Kentucky winter?

Since many in Kentucky are not familiar with maple syrup production, we want folks to learn about the process and how we make maple syrup in Letcher County. Stay tuned, we hope to offer other blog posts describing what we are are up to here on SouthDown Farm.