February Journal.....

[red maples]

PRESSURE IS ON NOW!!! looks like about 8 days 'til tapping time for southern NH!!! watching the weather very closely!!! Feb 10th first day over 40 in the forecast!!! Although it could change any minute... gotta finish up the woods....get done in the sugarhouse. want a few days to just be LAZY and hang out before I start!!! because after that as we all know I will be in the sugarhouse 'til the season is over!!!

[maple flats]

Me too. I still have about 800' of main line to put in laterals and drops on, reclean tanks, remount engines, finish setting up and cleaning sugarhouse and then tap. There will be no rest here til after the season. I hope to start tapping 2/9 at this point. Still need some parts I ordered too. I also need to order more syrup storage, thinking 20-40 @ 5 gal and a 6-10 @ 30 gal bbls.

[boondocker]

6526Im with ya there RM. I have been off work since the first week of December and have worked pretty much every day in the sugar house getting things ready. New sugar house and all new equipment leaves me with alot of questions. Since its just me and my yellow lab doing this and she is not much help i have been a busy man. I just got my head tanks plumbed in and all my pipes hooked up yesterday. I pressed the system last night and found a couple leaks that i took care of today. I got my rope operated stack cover rigged up today and finished up a bunch of little things. It took me two years to decide what i wanted for a evaporator and to save enough money to do all this and now im going to fire my new evap. tomorrow for the first time to boil some water and get a handle on it. Worst part is i go back to work on monday....lol but they know what i have invested and what my passion is so my bossman told me i can take a week or two when i need it to make syrup. He asked me today on the phone if i was comming back on monday.......i said maybe.....we will see!

[Paddymountain]

Time is short. Tomorrow I'm going to set a cage tank to run about 100 taps on gravity into. I'm going to tap the trees also. It's still plenty cold here in central Pa, but these trees weren't tapped last year and I need to let a little run through to clean up the tubing. It looks like the end of next week will see the break towards sap running weather. I want to get this tubing done this weekend so til the end of next week I can start putting up buckets. It looks like I'll have about 140 roadside trees, 150 on gravity, and 78 red maples on vac here at the house. My friend will be bringing sap from at least 60 taps on big sugar maples at his dad's house. We will be about double the number of taps this year. I don't know how we are going to do it, but like Parker and PaTheron say: " Ya Gotta Waaaaaaaaant It!!!!!!!"

[red maples]

Boondocker the sugarhouse looks amazing and that shinny thing sitting there in just looks great!!! nice job!!

[lakeview maple]

I spent the day at the Lakeview sugarhouse getting the new wiring done,I got the wire in june and decided to run it in 22 degree weather,lol it came out really well.I now can fill the head tank with the flip of a switch .Ive been going crazy trying to get the sugarbush ready that Im going to install the new Guzzler in .Im not 100% sure if Im doing it right,I know that Ive read here enough that I shouldnt have 18 taps on a lateral,so Ive been redoing some of the laterals and in the mean time Ive picked up another 8 taps that I didnt have before.Any advice on running vac lines would be appreciated ,maybe a diagrahm ?Thanks everyone on this site for all the great info,hope you all have a great season and your sap be 3%,Al

[jmayerl]

Way too much **** snow here............i have plowed 10 days in the last 14 and another 3-5" tonight. I think its time to go plow a few roads in the woods.

[Yellzee]

Pretty quiet on here, everyone must be busy in prep mode!

-15 celcius here but i cleared the lawn tractor out of the shack and started getting it organized. too much snow on the ground to drag out wood with the 4 wheeler. Notice about 5 projects i need to finish this week

[jmayerl]

Well since everyone seems like there making syrup except for us poor souls in wisco and minn, I thought I would take the last 3 gallons of bulk out of the freezer and boil it on the stove and bottle. Should be a fun little morning.

[maple flats]

No tapping here yet either. Heading to woods this PM, final "getting ready" Start tapping tomorrow, Wed, Fri and Sat. Hope to get it all by then. Bigger woods first then the smaller. Hoping for 1400 this year. Right now I've got the charger and block heater going on the diesel since we were at 1 degree earlier, now up to 7. Then I've got a "honey do" project before we can head out for maple.
I canned up the last of my grade A on 2/7. did up 16 gal and it's almost all sold out again. I'm down to 1 gal, 1 half, 0 qts and 2 pts, 0 half pts. I sure hope I make some real soon. Any flow after tomorrow will get things going, but I need about 250 gal before my first boil.

[Dill]

Had a total PIA day in the woods. The old motor on my RV2 had been making some noise on start up but quieted right down. This morning looked like the first good run in a couple days. Plugged the motor in and it would not, could not turn. Not with the belt and not with out. So I pulled it off with an absolute minimum of tools, a crescent wrench is just barely a tool in my book. Anyway turns out its the original motor probably from the early 50s, its lead a good life, just wish today wasn't its end date. Evidently brushed motors aren't repairable. So I got to buy a new one, which they don't sell 1/3 hp everywhere so I stepped up to a 1/2.
Got the motor wired and going the right way, brought it back to the woods and installed. And zero vac on the releaser. Spent about an hour messing with every fitting and possible leak on the pump and releaser. Finally take a walk in the woods, turns out 2 mainline fittings, one on my sap ladder and one on right next to the ladder came apart. I thought it was deer, but the more I think about it, could ice be the culprit? Neither fitting was broken, just backed off the barb. I had them secured with hog rings, not hose clamps, but they were clamped on tight.
Good news is I finally got it pulling 19inches for the first time this season. Hoping to tie in a new bunch into the ladder in the morning.

[maple flats]

One delay after another. Yesterday I had a problem with the ATV. The throttle keeps freezing. Freed up the throttle cable and the gas line was frozen. Went back today, put in a can of Dry Gas (I use ethanal free gas), installed a couple of new laterals and then the ATV started. Drove the ATV out of the woods and hauled it in for a new throttle cable, which had been ordered. They called 2 hrs later, wrong cable sent. They now have Polaris Tech support working on it.
Back in the woods, finished connecting 1 new main to the wet/dry, added all laterals to another main. Sunsetting, went home. Tomorrow I have 1 more new main to tie into the wet/dry and 1 to connect directly to the releaser. Then it's tapping time. I don't think the sap will flow much, barely above freezing forecast for 10 days. Trees will take several days to thaw. I sure hope this delayed maple weather doesn't go directly into hot weather. Mr Murphey was all over!

[Bruce L]

Mounted the old milk receiver jar beside the tanks today,installed the liquid level controls on the wall above,ran the dry line support wire from the vacuum pump down to the receiver/tanks,another good day or two should be catching up on schedule?No sap weather here yet,but getting itchy

[sjdoyon]

Had our second post on our RO installed on Friday at the sugarhouse by a technician from Lapierre. Received excellent customer service.

[Yellzee]

Finished squaring up the bends on the new 6 drop flue section fabricated with the help of Big Eddy. Will cut the bottom out of my flat pan tommorrow and get tig welding it all together. I think it will work great. Will post some pics when complete. Hopefully all done before we get a good sap run. Trees are tapped... Almost ready! 2 straight days in the woods... Now that's a weekend.