lessons learned on first year attempting larger scale

[seandicare]

well, this was my first real year i tried going more than a gallon/season. it has been a learning experience for sure...

-----first off i learned that you need a solid structure to boil in............i started with an aluminum popup gazebo.....worked pretty good until we got an inch of the wet heavy snow.......the gazebo is now toast.......tried tying a tarp for a roof over it, but the wind keeps ripping it down every few hours at most....and the days i am able to boil around work schedule it seems to constantly want to rain.........now i am in the planning stages of building some kind of shack over the summer for next year.

-----next is a wood fire is a pain in the BUTT........i do not have ready access to a wood lot, so have to buy my wood.....also don't have a wood splitter, so have been splitting by hand.....at my age, my back is asking me what the heck i am thinking......then takes me close to an hour to get the fire going good enough to get a boil going.......after talking to a large scale producer with an oil fired evap, i am thinking of converting my homemade arch over to a gravity fed oil burner. another project for this summer.

-----finally, don't let sap sit......i boiled down a good 60gals of sap over 3 weeks and only got alittle over 1/2 gal of syrup.....the sap tasted OK during that time, so kept going.....guessing i lost alot of sugar to bacteria, but not enough at a time to spoil it.....final product tasted fine as well.......

also i realized Mother Nature is bipolar....sap run has been very unpredictable this year.

after ALL of this, i am still debating on how i can expand my taps for next season

[mspina14]

I am also tried stepping it up this year.

Built an 8X12 sugar shack from a kit (jamaicacottageshop.com)

(See photo of it below).

Works great. Very solid shelter.

Have to add windows and an overhang this year to protect split wood .

Mark

[Galena]

Welcome to the madness of maple season, guys! It doesn't let up. Definitely don't let sap sit any longer than necessary - the sooner you can boil it, the better. And this season was a completely freakish year, with that gigantic 1-week sap tsunami. More than a few of us weren't going to tap at all because it hadn't been very cold for most of the winter! And yes, if you are older and use wood, you probably do need the help of several younger helpers and be able to get together stuff that will burn fast. Slab cedar is a big favourite; many recommend using wood no bigger around than your wrist. My mentors, who run around 120-200 taps, have around 7 grown kids and 20-30some grands and great-grands to help out.

Hope this helps, and be ready for next year!

[Michael Greer]

I hung every bucket I owned on the first day of tapping, then went shopping three more times and ended up with 100 more buckets than last year. Lesson one; it takes longer to gather more buckets. Lesson two; you can't put 400 gallons of sap into 370 gallons of storage....527 gallons won't fit either. Lesson three; sap that takes longer to gather also takes longer to cook. During that big week I worked five back-to-back 13 hour days.