Tap wise and pan foolish

[Tor Haxson]

Spiles are cheap, maples abound, tubing is cheap. Slavery to a fire is the price you pay in the end.

My eyes are red from the smoke. My fingernails dirty with ash. The hair on my arms is singed. My fingertips calloused and burnt. Unwashed dishes fill the sink.Unopened mail sits in the mailbox. All because I could not resist the urge to "Tap a few more" .

Young tappers take heed and learn from my foolish mistake.. :-)

Pans are like tractors, You never wish you had bought the smaller one.

;-)

--
Tor

[Bucket Head]

Sell the small tractor and put that money towards a bigger pan. Problem solved.

Lol. Yeah, your right. I think everybody on this site, at least once, put out more taps than what they could handle. I remember the days of boiling day and night and not putting a dent into the sap we had gathered. You know you have a "problem" when you start bringing home quite a bit more sap than what you boiled off!

Steve

[TIMIKE]

Nothing wrong with a little extra sap...heck it can put a nice chunk of green in your pocket.

[Sugarmaker]

Tor,
Yep you need a bigger pan!
Other than that it sounds about right.:)
Regards,
Chris

[RC Maple]

I felt like that last year. As long as we didn't have good runs or big runs like we had once the season got going, I could keep up and having the extra sap was great! The first time they all cut loose though I knew I was in trouble. I learned from that and this year while I have put out a few more than last year I will not be ballooning up to the number I was at when I was at my max last year. I did add a preheater in the hopes of gaining some efficiency to help process some of my additional sap but I like to think I learned a lesson last year.

[farmerfletch]

I know the feeling. My first year tapping I had 20 taps boiling on a propane BBQ grill boiled forever finally had to pull my taps about three weeks into the season.


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[Gary R]

Don't worry, soon you will have a bigger pan and won't be foolish. Then, you will think this is so easy you will put more taps in:lol:

[Bruce L]

When I had a 2x6 I tapped one whole bush with about 450 buckets, and the sap really ran, tanks overflowing, buckets overflowing, had to give away the sap to a neighbor to catch up. Learned from that to only tap what your rig can handle.

[Big_Eddy]

You can't boil sap you don't have, but you can easily dump sap you can't boil.
In my opinion it's better to have too many taps than too few. When I've had enough, I open the valves, pull my taps and clean up.

[kiteflyingeek]

Tor,

Thanks for the "warning"!! I had that problem last year with just steam pans but I solved it by purchasing a 2x6 drop flue pan. Now I HAVE to put more taps out or I don't have enough sap to even light the fire.

--andrew