leasing buckets

[ryker424]

I've got the opportunity to lease a sugarbush with about 800 taps all buckets. The older man that owns the property says I could put up pipe. But I can't front that much money right now. He also owns the buckets that I will be using. I tryed to make a deal with him that I would pay him 1 dollar a tap. He kind of looked at me like I was stupid and said well I guess that will have to do. I myself thought that was fair. What would you guys offer?

[500592]

That sounds about right from what I have read but maybe someone who leases taps could chime in.

[Dave Y]

I would ask him what he was looking for and go from there. However a buck a tap i think is quite fair. However you should make about 5500 dollars worth of syrup off those buckets. you could pay him 1200 and put tubing in next year with vacuum and make twice as much and pay him a buck a tap and he can sell his buckets and make up the difference.

[bobbyjake]

$1 per tap is a typical rate to pay when there is a longer term lease and you tube it and put it on Vacuum, $0.50 is closer to a bucket rate. In your case, you wont have the cost and time of tubing it, but you will easily have as much time in gathering the buckets. The buckets probably wont run as much as tubing (especially on vacuum) but they could run a little sweeter. You are saving the $5000-8000 upfront that it would cost to set it up. On a ten year lease, you could estimate you'd have an equalized cost of $600-1000 per year in the tubing all in. @$0.50/tap plus the $600, you are around $1000, so your $800 might be just a little light.

Look at it another way. 800 taps on buckets is 200 gallons syrup. 200 gallons @ $30/gal bulk price is $6000. Now, if he tapped them and he gathered them (daily or at least often enough to make sure the sap is clear and good quality) and delivered the sap to you at the sugarhouse, it would be worth about $3000 to him. You can't pay more than a 1/3 of that if he has no labor in it.

All in, I'd say $800 is probably a little light, but not drastically. It all depends on what you value your time gathering the buckets.

[adk1]

Geez, I figured .50 a tap would ahve been acceptable! A buck a tap! Maybe he wanted more since he was "renting" the buckets out too.

[sjdoyon]

Most vacuum producers pay right around one dollar per tap for lease agreements. Considering you're basically doubling production on vacuum (normally) compared to bucket, your offer is reasonable. Never hurts to first ask what they want for a price.

If you're looking for a sugarbush lease agreement, UVM Proctor Research used to have draft copy posted for use.

http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/

[ryker424]

I didn't mention that I plan on selling the SAP that I gather. Do you guys even think this would make any sense for me to do this. I talk to a guy just down the road from me and he said he would be willing to buy from me. They use the Cornell percentage system.

[bees1st]

You know ,it's sometimes hard to read people. He could have been looking at you"like you were stupid" because he didn't think anybody would pay so much.