Started in Newtown

[Littlesap]

Tapped ~40 yesterday and this morning. Have a neat little vacuum set up that will handle 50-60 trees - John Langer up in Litchfield made it for me. If any of you were at the CT maple conference he had it on demo in the hallway. Just got back from checking and there is about 30 gallons in there, I'll let it run till about midnight and then shut it off. I feel like a kid at Christmas.

Hope to get another 15 hooked up to the vac and +/- 50 on buckets between now and Wednesday.

[jerseymaple]

Good luck, my wife is from CT originally. Loved the town of Newton and its flagpole in the middle of the street. Used to do a lot of trout fishing up in pond brook.

[oxfordsugarshack]

im from oxford i would like to check out your vaccum set up i have 600
taps out all on gavity

[markct]

you will love vacuum littlesap! it realy takes the unpredictability outa sap runs to some degree. since you saw my vac tank i added a few more lines coming into it and also a dry line to get vac further back into the woods. i attached a picture of the manifold i built for the top of the tank this year

[Littlesap]

That's a nice manifold set up Mark - I had visions of at least putting valves on my two main lines but ran out of time (to go to the hardware store) and just put them through a tee.

Oxford, you're welcome to swing by this weekend if you'd like - I'll let you know on Friday when I plan to boil. I'll also try to post some pics when I get a minute this week/weekend. Since the tank is only 85 gallons, you're somewhat limited in how many taps you connect to it, else you'll be pumping it out several times a day. I have a day job so can not be around to do that and stick to ~50 taps and plan to do it once a day. I'll leave the other lines on gravity and put a few buckets out too.

[Maple1]

Littlesap,
I live in Bethel and have been sugaring for 6 years. What a struggle getting around this year even with a snowmobile. I tapped on Sunday and finished the majority yesterday after work. We plan on starting boiling weather permitting, collecting Wednesday night. Good luck this year.

[Littlesap]

Maple1, we'll have to compare notes - and set ups. I'm on the Bethel side of Newtown in Dodgingtown... you can see my lines from Flat Swamp Road if you look hard enough. I have 50 taps in right now and hope to do another ~50 this weekend if it works out.

[Maple1]

Littlesap,
Small world! We live on Codfish right around the corner from you. We are ready to go and looks like I will be collecting tonight after work. Buckets where half full last night. Sounds good on notes.

[Littlesap]

Just finished boiling about 100 gallons that I collected over the last few days. Only 50 taps in but on small scale vac and the difference between vac and gravity is amazing. I haven't figured out how to finish the syrup on my evaporator (operator error) so I drew off about 4 gallons of near-syrup that will likely boil down to 2 gallons of finished goods.