Here I grow again?

[maple flats]

I was asked by 2 different people this week if I wanted to tap their woods. The first is where i have about 100 taps road side and yard already, now he has offered his small woods too. I looked at it and think I may add about 50-60 taps there this season. The second one who asked (both of these people are co-workers) is going to have her husband meet me at their woods. It was his idea and he says there are a lot of sugar maples in about a 2-3 acre section of woods that is uphill from the road about a hundred or so off the road. I will meet with him this week end to check it out. If i get both of these set up I could have my hands full because unlike the last 2 years I will be going solo during the week where my wife boiled while I worked the afternoons for those 2 years. I will see how many I think I can tap at site 2. It would be super if I found enough to tap several hundred or even a thousand in 1 location. Right now the 425 I have are spread between 4 locations, with 100, 60& 30 at remote sights and the rest in my woods at the sugarhouse. The farthest I travel is about 5 miles for the 60 spot. The new spot would be only slightly farther, but farther west of any I tap now. I will need to get a bigger truck and haul tank someday. Now I use a half ton and a 125 gal. tank, I do not think my half ton will handle much more with the hills I have to travel. After I check the second woods out I will chime back in.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Maple flats,

Why not get a 5x8 trailer for around $ 700 with a 3,500 lb rear end under it and haul 350 gallon tank in the trailer behind the truck. That way you are wearing out a $ 700 trailer that if it is well made will probably outlast the truck and not hurting the truck any.

I have one I bought about 8 years ago and it is still about new and I have hauled a lot in it and everything you can imagine and towed it as much as 700 miles in a day. I don't use it for sap, but I have used it many times with at least 3,500 lbs of sap wood loaded on it behind a tractor.

[mountainvan]

Watch yourself. Before you know it you may be a fulltime maple producer.

[Bucket Head]

Mapleflat's,

I rarely dump sap because that is not why I hauled home. However, I have had to do that on a couple exceptional run's. But is is better to have too much sap than not enough.

I would tap them. By the end of the season you will have a good gauge on how many tap's you can comfortably handle. Maybe you could do more, maybe you could use less, but you need to find out one way or the other. My mother alway's said "you'll never know unless you try".

Are they good sized tree's? Big canopy's with a good sugar content? Maybe the "new" tree's will have a better yeild than the one's your tapping now. If you find out you have a few too many tap's you can discontinue tapping the "smaller" tree's next season.

It does'nt sound like you would be adding too much drive time to the collection route. My father and I go a little "out of our way" for some nice tree's. They put out a lot of sweet sap so it's worth the extra five mile's or so and the time we spend collecting there.

And don't worry about all the sleepless night's you might have during the month of March and April because of the increase in sap. Maple producer's are not supposed to sleep during sap season. Sleep in when you can during February and you can get caught up on the rest in May after the tubing is washed. LOL.

Steve

[maple flats]

I might have to go the trailer route but would rather a heavier truck. I have a heavy trailer but think it is too big to be handy. The trailer is only 7000 gvw but is 18' long and 101" wide, fender to fender. I often have brake issues and would not trust it unless I got new brakes installed, not just pads but everything. I have never used it on snowy roads.
The woods I was going to check out tomorrow has now been changed to next Sat because the landowner had something else come up for tomorrow thru Sunday.

[maple flats]

MountainVan,
I would need to get mentored by you to be full time. I also need to get a bush big enough to make good use of vacumn. Right now my biggest bush is only 235 taps and it looks like vac would take too long to pay for itself on so few taps. If I find a bush of 4-500 or more i will go with vacumn.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Maple flats,

A good sturdy 5x8 steel trailer is not that heavy and very easy to manuver around things. One of the 325 gallon tanks fit well in them and would be a lot less wear on even a newer truck and cut down gathering time to. It is also much easier to step aprox aprox 12" vs 36" to 48" inches into a pickup bed.

[mountainvan]

You're welcome down anytime for a tutorial on making a living off of maple syrup. I've gotten two vac systems for $1,200, releasers the most expensive part. It only takes an extra 30 gals of syrup to pay it off.

[Russell Lampron]

I only have 200 of my taps on vacuum and like Van said the releaser is the expensive part. I have a Delaval 73 dairy vacuum that was given to me, I spent about $100 to put a new motor on it and the releaser was $600 4 seasons ago. It paid for itself in the first season and that was a bad year. If it is at all possible go with the vacuum and you won't need the extra taps.

Russ

[maple flats]

I still have not gotten achance to meet the guy who offered to let me tap. He posponed last week and then was going to call me when he got out of work yesterday, said it should be about 11:00AM, thecall still has not come. Today and tomorrow he and his wife were going to be out of town visiting their son who was in a horrific car crash last Mar. and is still in recovery. He gets home too lateat night so I will have to try for next weekend at this point. Right now I have very little idea how big of a section I might be able to tap on his property. I do know that there is a woods uphill from the road, about 150-200' from the road that looks to be maybe 2-3 acres and has a lot of sugars but I am not sure how many are tappable size. Part of my agreement is to not tap trees that look to be good for prime sawlogs and to help him identify those trees for him to save for future harvest. This will reduce my tappable trees available. I have no idea what is behind this woods but only know that the land continues uphill for a very long ways and i think they own over a hundred acres.

[maple flats]

I got permission to walk the woods without the owner present. On a good arial photo I was told what was ok. I checked the woods out today and it looks good. There must be potential for 400-800 taps when completed. The woods are uphill from the road starting 125' uphill and then are a moderately steep uphill for 200-300' uphill and this woods runs approx. parallel to the road and run about 1000' long. The woods are predominately sugar maples. Most of the trees are smaller, many of 6-8" dbh, which will not be tapped. There are a good many mature trees in parts of the woods, often along woods roads and along the edges. In addition there is a fairly decent spread of 12-18" trees throughout the woodlot. It took me so long to get permission to check out the woods that I will not get the whole system set up in the woods. I will set the main line and start running laterals on Saturday. I plan to use 1" main line on a 5% or steeper slope running along or near the bottom of the hill and will go uphill as needed to get that slope. Then I am going to try to get upwards of 300 taps in this season. I am designing it for eventual vacuum set up but will only have gravity this year. Then I will need to plan getting vac, maybe an RO, a heavier transport vehicle or trailer/brakes, get a bigger woods tank, and then tap the rest when I can handle the sap increase. This is going to be great when completed. As part of the deal I am helping the landowner identify trees with prime sawlog potential and marking them so as not to tap those. This will be a very small % of the tapable size trees and several of the pre tap size trees. If my quick in my head math is right I think this is about 12-15 acres, mostly sugar maple and I did not see any reds or silver maples. Over 2/3 of the woods have been thinned properly in the last 4-5 years and a lot of the trees slightly undersized have good sun for better growth and sugar. I have not tested any for sugar and will likely do that when tapping. I am going to mark cull trees for him too to fuel his outdoor wood furnace and am designing the tubing layout to give him good access from uphill which was his request. Now I am pumped. I will give up my smallest 2 woodlots, a30 tap and a 60 tap to concentrate on this. That way I will have a lot less driving to get my sap even though this woods is 7.5 miles from my sugarhouse, it isalso about 8 miles from my 60 tap spot and that spot has no more tapable trees. Now it will not be worth my time to collect it. Wow, I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas to come.

[maple flats]

I just talked to the woodlot owner and we need to get together. He needs to get to his woods from the bottom and not the top. We will need to decide how I can run tubing to allow him access from the bottom of the hill, this will complicate my tubing set up. His wife had said I needed to keep the top open and that would have been good.

[maple flats]

Last night I finally got to meet with the land owner of the new bush. Change # 1 What I can tap immediately is a different woods that I did not know he owned, both sides of the road with a potential for likely 400 taps. The west side has better than a 5% slope with a 800' line of roadside trees as the main line, and up from that a 10%+ slope for the laterals, total potential maybe 250+ taps. I will do this piece first, likely starting tomorrow. After setting this up if I do not need to tap yet I will set up the other side but here I need to route the mainline to circle a big rise near the road. I did not get as good a look at this side but I think it will be good for 150 taps or more. The first side is immediately adjacent to where i thought I was being offered but this section has to wait until after he removes a handful of dead ash trees. He says that he will then not touch this woods for at least 10 years, while he works on taking care of another 20 acres or so of woods that would be much more complicated to get to in terms of distance from the road, but still up hill. After he gets this section I can go in this summer and set up a likely 600-800 more taps. When I do this i hope to be able to use vacuum with the 1100-1200 likely taps. Then I will need RO and a much bigger hauling set up.

[maple flats]

I forgot to mention that these are all sugar maples, I have not yet seen any reds or silvers. Now I just wish I had gotten a chance to get with the owner a few months ago. At this point it will depend on how much i can get done before the real season hits.

[Greenthumb]

Went back to a neighbor's that allowed me last year to tap 9 big old sugar maples that did great last year. I was able to add 27 taps, and the older gentlemen said he did not want them tapped this year. Last year he was very inquisitive and seemed very happy I was using them. I gave him syrup at the end of the season offered a little bit of money which he would not take the big old sugars help my % since our woods is all red's. Picked up sticks did all the right things. This year I went back to ask again and he said he did not like seeing all the buckets hang and the questions people had. I thanked him and told him to have a good day and walked back to the truck I guess it was not ment to be. So of course I am back on the lookout for roadside taps. Would love it if somebody would offer some sugar maples sounds like a worthwhile problem.

[Bucket Head]

I know it's discouraging, but keep looking for others to tap.

I've had people first say yes to tapping, then a few days later say no.

One time I asked a retired farmer about his tree's, he said "sure". He had done it years ago and was happy to see the tree's used for sap again. Then two day's later, his son called me, nervous as a cat and sputtering, saying "My father DOES NOT want the tree's tapped, he does'nt like holes drilled in any of his tree's, and he does'nt want the tree's ruined!".

Hopefully soon, scientists will come up with a cure for stupidity and ignorence.

Steve

[slammer3364]

We have about 100taps here on our place with the potential of about 300 we could put on tubing about 300 yards from sugarhouse, my wifes family has 50 acres of forest on a hillside with the possibility of a thousand taps about 8 miles from here so we are thinking but taking it slow only a few hard maples on both places so most would be soft maple

[benchmark]

Been eyeing up a nice bush just up the road from me that know ones tapped for 3-4 years. The maples just off the road are easily 3ft diam. big crowns, anyway I finally got the courage to go up to the house and ask if I could tap. Was going to bring a little syrup and forgot to grab it of course, so I knocked a few times and an old timer comes to the door and I ask about tapping his trees. Looks at me disgusted and say H*LL NO! I Ain't letting anybody in there. Last time I did they left there sh*t everywhere and had to get the grand kids to come and help clean up the f'ning mess. I was thinking whoa, wrong question, i just said sorry to hear that the previous people left such a mess for you and i totally understand why you wouldn't wont anybody in there. Better luck next time was going through my head and then he asks me, you want to tap in there?? Yeah, if you don't mind. :) Go ahead, but don't leave any garbage. Super Exited about this one, lots of nice trees. Took a short walk though it by the road, all hard maple most all averaging 12-18" diam. with some bigger ones. Not sure how many potential taps in there, but ill have to check it out next week. So I guess he turned out to not to be as ornery as he first came across.

[benchmark]

Forgot to add, that I can't believe a person would abuse some body else's property like that. What a shame it is to think that, if someone gives you permission to use their property, trash it, and not even clean it up. That is just so pitiful. Know wonder he was so angry at first.