tapping in New York 2013

[highlandcattle]

Ron had a nice day on January 30 -31 and got in 400 taps. Using some of the new ones this year from Catskill Mountain Maple. Pump has been running off and on all day. steady stream from both ports of the releaser. 45 degrees right now and sunny, high winds off and on. Our sugarbush is still pretty thick even after many years of sustainable logging of hemlocks and diseased or "ugly" trees. It's a cold forest, so it takes time to warm up enough for a run. Let's all pray this is a better year than last!

[adk1]

yeah, up here in the Southern Adks its just starting to run the past two days for the guys on vac. I havent tapped yet, was waiting to see what next weeks weather is gonna do but only looks like possibly one day near 40 and the rest cold. Looks like I will be holding off for another week. Next weekend tho I will be pulling the trigger no matter what.

[lakeview maple]

Had a great day with our first boil to sweeten the pans up started out with 250 gallons and ended with about the same after 4 hours .The sap was flowing as fast as we boiled ,awesome day.The only reason we stopped is we have an open house on Monday and I wanted to make sure we had some sap for then.I emptied the tank with the guzzler on it this morning and hooked it up and it was pumping better with the warmer weather ,and the better sap run.When I cma ehome after boiling the tank had another 40 gallons back in it.Good luck all and God Bless ,Al68196820

[highlandcattle]

What is a sap guzzler? Never heard this. Thanks

[adk1]

ITs a sap puller basically that uses a diaphram pump. You can check it out on the Maple Guys website under Vacume Systems.. LVM, glad to hear that the Guzzler is working out for you. I was wondering how it would work if there was a good sap flow.. With this good sap flow, were your lateral lines full of sap?

[briansickler]

Looks like we'll tap Friday Feb 22 here in Franklin, NY Sickler Maple Weather forecast looks great after that. Will spend this week making final preparations. It's almost Go-Time!

Brian

[adk1]

yeah and I cant wait. This hurry up to slow down stuff sucks..bring on next saturday!

[maple flats]

We now plan to tap this week. Likely finish adding laterals tomorrow and start tapping Tuesday. Our weather doesn't look like we'll get much this week, but the time is coming.
Ron, glad you got some good sap flows.

[lakeview maple]

6939So.....I went to the sugarhouse to see everything kinda still frozen,not solid but enough were I wasnt going to light a fire,so what to do? I grabbed a couple rolls of tubing and a bucket of fittings and a tool belt with a drill and 2 batteries and took a walk.I went onto the side on the mtn were we havent tapped anything yet and went as far as I could and started to run a new lateral line.I ended up with 15 taps on my first run and tied right into the mainline I had .I went back up and started a little farther over and a little farther back and ended with about 25 taps on this run.I know it sounds like a lot but this is really steep and it flows really good ,a nice piece of woods thats never been tapped,all the trees are around 14 to 26 inches through.So I had an awesome day ,doing something that I love to do.The weather was kinda cold with a bitter wind ,but the last 2 taps on the last tree the sap started running ,thank you God above.Hope you all are ready for next week ,looks liks perfect weather coming ,Al

[briansickler]

Well, we are started. 175 taps in this afternoon. Quit at dark. They didn't run today. Vacuum pump is in place and ready to run. Hope to get at least 100 more tapped in the morning. Looks like rain and snow tomorrow they say. Monday looks good for a run though. We'll see. Let the sap flow. I may run a test line on the cold side of the hill this year and see what happens.

Brian

[adk1]

I am all tapped in as of yesterday..No real run on tubing, sap sacks ran alittle around the house. Looks like Monday with the sun and warmer temp might start to run.

[briansickler]

6979

Sap started to run here about 5:30 pm. I went down to check it at 9:00 and it's running pretty good. Gassed up the vac pump and let her run tonight. We'll see what we have in the morning. First run on the new lapierre hobby double releaser. I could see bubbles coming from one of the elbows inside between the manifold and the vertical receiver tanks. Had to shut down and take it apart. The o-ring was out of the groove. I got it back together and in the groove. I never had it apart there. Must be a factory assembly error. Fired the vac pump and no more bubbles. Running 18" vac at pump, releaser and at the far end of the main line...no leaks. Made one repair when tapping. Squirel chewed the drop and the top of the end tree ring off but that was it.

[maple flats]

I finally started tapping yesterday at 3:00 pm. Very little flow. only about 10 gal to tank on with 150 taps in. More on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Need to get all batteries charged and ready again.

[Snowy Pass Maple]

Our 1/2 - 2 gallon ice cubes are thawing, and we're finally seeing some drips on the taps - a night without a freeze seems to finally be getting things loosened up.... maybe we'll even get a little more today as we haven't really had a run since the last hard freeze. At minimum, hoping the ice breaks up a bit today and we can finally collect for the first time in a few days.

This has been a painful wait after the awesome run last Wed-Sat - hoping the sunny/42 forecast for Monday finally pans out!

[zachhll]

had our first run yesterday got to sweeten up our new setup got 40 gallons of sap from our 140 taps hoping today gives us a good run 7023

[briansickler]

First boil last night. Ran 580 gallons through the ro and boiled about 150 gal concentrate. Sweetened the pans and drew off about 5.5 gal syrup. Lightest syrup I've ever seen. After today looks like a break in the action with a cold spell..Maybe run again Tuesday. Looks good after that if the weatherman is correct.

Brian

[jimsudz]

This evening will be my first boil,have 550-600 gal. I will be trying out my home built RO Hope it works. I'm a little anxious/nervous, never ran an RO before. Wish me luck.

[briansickler]

This evening will be my first boil,have 550-600 gal. I will be trying out my home built RO Hope it works. I'm a little anxious/nervous, never ran an RO before. Wish me luck.

Good Luck! Hope it goes well for you. Keep us posted.
Brian

[lakeview maple]

Well I boiled on monday the 25th ,had a only about 4 hours to work with but I couldnt wait,made 2 gal and a quart of medium amber ,then went back to the sugarhouse on the 27th and boiled until we got low on sap and made another 4 and half gals .It was a little darker so I classed it at dark amber,looks really good.The sap isnt flowing hardly at all today ,Ive been running the sap guzzler when it isnt freezing out and it seems to be working like its supposed too.I would like to find someone nearby to take a look at my lines and see if Im doing it right for vacuum .Im hoping it warms up this afternnon and we get a good run in the next 2 to 3 days.Im thinking Ill be boiling again Tuesday,good luck all and God Bless ,Al

[briansickler]

Boiled another 150 gallons sap without concentrating Friday night. It pushed another 5.5 gallons of syrup out of the highly concentrated pans from the first boil. I didn't run the ro because I wouldn't have had enough permeate left to rinse well. The boys enjoyed the 3.5 hour boil. We had a great time. Looks like we'll be flooded with sap from Wednsday on. This cold spell is giving us time to get more organized after the normal chaotic first boils of the year. There are always some little bugs to work out it seems. Also got the new kitchen sink hooked up. It's a double basin, each basin is 24" x 24", with a 24" drain board on each end, all stainless. Commercial restaurant style sink. I picked up another draw off valve for the other side and a switch so all we have to do is move the probe from side to side and change the plugs around to reverse flow.

Brian

[briansickler]

Processed 850 gallons yesterday. Started ro @ 3:00. Fired Evap @ 4:00. All done by 9:00 and had 18 gallons syrup drawn off. Nice to have a good amount of sap to run. Still runing hard this morning. Gassed up vac pumps this a.m. About 300 gallons in tanks now. I have a semi retired producer who tapped 180 of his trees on buckets. I just have to go pump out his tank which is about 4 miles away. He had 250 yesterday. That will help bring up our production quite a bit. He just wants syrup for his family and church. Can't beat that. So, right now we have 280 taps on vac. and 222 on buckets with his taps. We only have 42 buckets here to collect. We may add a few more buckets where handy. Happy Sappin!

[lakeview maple]

7312We started the 9th with 800 gallons and I started boiling by 630am ,everything went really good.We had alot of friends stop by and we cooked up breakfast ,it was great showing people who had never seen maple syrup being made how it was done.Some of the funny questions you get tho,like "what do you add to it to make it so sweet?".I laughed and told them alot of sweat, burns from firing on your forearms,and long days.We ended the day with 6 and half gallons .We started out on the 10th with still around 400 and had a late start,we had church in the morning,ended the day with another 3 and half .So for the weekend we got 10 gallons so far and Im headed to the sugarhouse now to try and finish it off.It stopped running here yesterday afternoon around 4pm.I couldnt keep up on Saturday it was flowing so fast it was going to overflow my main tank,I called my friend Alan and he came and we pumped off 200 for his evaporator,it saved me from an overflow.Hope everyones season is going welland God Bless,Al
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[briansickler]

We had another good run yesterday. Ran 880 gallons of sap...1.75% through the RO and boiled until 9:00 p.m. Ended up with 18 more gallons drawn off. Sap still running this a.m., but slower. These colder days coming up will set us up for more good runs. We've already made as much syrup as we did last year. Keep on sappin'.

Brian

[briansickler]

Another 620 gallons of sap processed Wednesday night. 1.75 % squeezed it up to 7.5% and boiled. Lots of niter problems in center sections...Must be the warmer weather or all the rain we had. This was like end of the season niter. Hopefully this cold snap will "reset" the season. We ended up drawing off about 13 gallons or so. Have been bottling it up with the break in the action. We have 41 gallons of light amber through the canner and looks like around 13 left to go. The last 5 might be medium. So that puts us around 54 gallons all together to date. Hoping for at least double that for the season. We'll see. Good luck to all.

Brian

[danno]

Mid March and I'm bored. This makes no sense. I don't think we've had as cold a March in the 13 years I've been boiling? I can remember 1 year several years ago where the trees did not bud and we had a very cold late March/early-mid April and my last boil was around my birthday, April 22. We're usually done here last week of March/first week of April. Thinking about a ski trip or a cruise until syrup season returns.

[stoweski]

5 years ago we had a cold spell like this, mid March. Took a few days off and went skiing. Felt like January. Would be skiing today if it wasn't for all of the green snow & drunks on the hill. Sap ran hard last Wednesday through Monday. Then it just got too warm. Looked like nice weather in the 7 day but then the temps dropped even more. Collected only about 50 gallons in the past 6 days... on 175 taps. Yep, I'm bored too. Got everything cleaned up and ready to go again, just waiting for another big run... and for the storm that's set to bring 12" - 20" to the Adk's and Greens. Sounds like a snowday is in my future! When spring makes it's return I'll be ready.