Collecting Maple Wood - Big_Eddy style

[Big_Eddy]

I burn a lot of small wood in my evaporator - it's too small for the house but perfect for maple wood.

I can boil about 300 gallons per cord with this wood. Takes about an hour and a half to collect and cut a trailer load (a day's worth) of wood including travel time to the woods and back. I back my dumping trailer up to the sugarhouse door and move it inside between firings. (Keeps me busy - sometimes I just feed the evap from the trailer) A small armload every 6-8 minutes.

Mostly maple, ash, ironwood and beech. If we can drag it, we'll use it. Mostly standing (leaning) so dry as a bone. No splitting required. Doesn't matter where we stop along the trail, we can collect a trailer load without having to go far.

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Wear your chaps and face shield.

[doop]

I've been doing the same thing this year. I wish I would have thought of it earlier its a lot easier to collect and cut, haven't had a chance to boil with it yet, maybe this weekend I'm thinking it should burn great.

[Michael Greer]

Cleaning out the woods like this also makes it a LOT easier to get around, with fewer trip hazards and debris. A little thinning can go a long way toward promoting good growth in the trees that remain. I knew some old-timers that had sugared and cut sugar wood in the same parcel for over 100 years. They claimed that they'd never had to cut a live tree for firewood.

[maple flats]

Never cutting a live tree goes against good sugarbush management. The trees need to be thinned to grow the best, just like carrots do. When they're crowded the crowns are smaller and thus less sugar in the sap.

[PerryW]

I took 55 cords of hardwood and 15,000 BF of softwood out of my 18 acre sugarbush and it hardly made a dent. I plan on taking more out this off-season as the sugar maples desperately needed thinning. I'd like to get my sugar content of my woods trees up and get more syrup that way instead of putting a vacuum system up.

[maple flats]

I regularly thin my own bush, but don't have that option on my 2 leases. I'm trying to encourage the land owners to thin, I even offered to do the felling and help drag but so far no luck. They also try not to cut any live trees except those grossly mis-shaped or leaning/crooked.Thus my sugar runs 2% generally and my late season sap ran as low as 1.5%. Without the RO that would take a long time to boil!!
My own woods, that are thinned run 2.3-2.5%

[Michael Greer]

A good first step is to get in there and cut out the diseased, the bent over, and the storm broken trees first. Get rid of those invasives like Box Elder, Hawthorn and Honeysuckle while you're in there, and you'll be amazed sometimes how much ugly stuff can come out of a stand, especially if your area is prone to ice storms. After removing the junk trees, (you'll have all the firewood you need), but you can get a clearer view of what's left, and then make rational and careful decisions about thinning.