Tapped in Hamilton County

[ihoskins]

17 tapes on 5/16 tapped on Saturday. Today had a great flow.

[Andrew Franklin]

Where are you in Hamilton County? We live at 126th and Gray, but I tap on my lake property down by Bloomington.

[DougM]

I'm kind of glad we didn't get anything tapped yet; with this rain we'd need an air boat to get to our trees on bags.

[maplefarmer]

Doug, I see you use sap sacks to collect with,i have been using the blue sap bags, and every year seems like towards end of season something will chew bottom corners of the bags, and i'll go in woods to collect and sap is just running out bottom. you have any problem with this, or any idea to stop this?

[DougM]

More squirrel hunting in the fall? I really don't know, the amount of chewing we have really seems to vary from year to year, and it doesn't look like there's much you can do about it.
In our largest woods we've switched around 100 taps from bags to a Lunchbox vacuum setup; hopefully the tubing doesn't get chewed as much as the bags do.

[ihoskins]

I'm at 116th and River Road... Were not too far from each other.

[DougM]

Not all that far. If you're not boiling March 2nd you should stop by, we're having our annual open house day with food & stuff, 10-2.

How many taps do you have out?

[NoblesvilleIN]

Thank you again for the link to Sugarbush supplies. I ordered 2 hydrometers, so that I have 1 as a back up :(. Where is your open house, we might stop by on March 2nd.
10 taps from trees (6 sugar, 4 red) I transplanted 25 years ago. I wish I had moved more - they were volunteers on my parents place in Carmel.

[Andrew Franklin]

Looking like a good weekend for collecting, and even better for the next week for a guy like me who only can collect, ro, and boil on weekends. Those of you who see it day to day, mind sharing how it's been from last weekend through tomorrow or Friday? Thanks!

[TonyL]

This week started off slow for us, but yesterday it broke loose and became a great run. Started running 200 gallons through the RO starting last night, got to within 25 gallons of emptying the sap tank when the lines thawed around 10:00 am this morning and it’s back to pouring in now. Finally just shutdown the RO so I can wash, as it’s not big enough to handle a run this large. The collection tanks in the woods are full also, may be dumping sap in order to keep the freshest stuff. Oh, the collection tank on the tractor is still full from last night also. Simply nowhere to put it.

[DougM]

I'm trying to get two more IBC tanks right now, as it looks like we're going to run out of storage. My partner is out collecting now, bags are mostly full but still have some ice, and the tubing is running well.

[Andrew Franklin]

Thanks for posting your updates Doug and Tony! Hoping to see some full tanks when I head down tomorrow. I'm only at 90 taps and collected last Thursday, so hopefully have a lot, but not too much to ro through the night and the day Saturday so I can get the concentrate home and boil and bottle Saturday night and Sunday.

[DougM]

We boiled off 835 gallons of sap in 13 hours yesterday, working through another 450 today. That doesn't include what's coming in, but they seem to have slowed down today

[Andrew Franklin]

Hey Ian, meant to follow up sooner, but work and the kids and of course maple kept me a little busy. I've got a bunch of 5/16th taps and some line for you...I'll try to get it by in the next week. Ok if I just set it out by your garage if nobody is home?