2025 Season

[Brian]

Well,I am going to start tapping this saturday. I got the drills out and batterys charged, tapping bits marked and tubing on them. The spouts are bagged up and the tapping hammers are ready. I have to gas up the sleds and I should be ready for saturday. I have 4 people coming to help, I have never had so much help. That means if each one puts in 500, that woods should be done saturday because there is about 2500 up there give or take a few. I might start on friday to give a little push. I got the heat on in the ro room and new membranes to put in the ro, I have a dairy plate cooler this year that I am going to try. I am going to put it on the out go of the concentrate. I hope it will drop the concentrate temp down 10-15 deg's on the warm days, we will see what happens.

[Mooneybc]

Good luck tapping! A few producers in my neck of the woods are starting this weekend as well.

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Hey Brian, can you post the link to the new software for Smartrek?

I appreciate ya!

[Brian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J65QKJOSJVI&ab_channel=H2OInnovation%E2%80%93Leader. This should help you out and get you started. It takes a little time to get things done or at least it did for me.

[BAP]

Well,I am going to start tapping this saturday. I got the drills out and batterys charged, tapping bits marked and tubing on them. The spouts are bagged up and the tapping hammers are ready. I have to gas up the sleds and I should be ready for saturday. I have 4 people coming to help, I have never had so much help. That means if each one puts in 500, that woods should be done saturday because there is about 2500 up there give or take a few. I might start on friday to give a little push. I got the heat on in the ro room and new membranes to put in the ro, I have a dairy plate cooler this year that I am going to try. I am going to put it on the out go of the concentrate. I hope it will drop the concentrate temp down 10-15 deg's on the warm days, we will see what happens.
Make sure you keep the plate cooler flushed well when you are done for the day. When we had one on the farm for cooling milk many many years ago, we used to have problems with it not cleaning well over time. It became a source for bacteria growth. Of course, milk fat is different than sap sugar as far as accumulating. We eventually went to tube coolers.

[Brian]

Thanks BAP, I grew up farming so well aware of that, good point all the same thank-you Because that could cause A big problem. BAP, I Ro 2 passes first 7-8% next pass at 21-23% so if I run the concentrate through 2x do you think it will drop 10 deg a pass. The water is 1in natural flow out of the spring 38 degf the flow out from the ro 3/4 stream. The first pass out of the ro is around 4-6 gallons a min depending on sugar. the second pass it is around 10 gallons per min. The plate cooler came from an eight cows milking parlor with a raise platform. The parlor milks 8 cows at once and is a 61 plate cooler. I can't wait to see what happens. I know the math is vague but the water runs out the over flow anyway so free energy-free cooling hoping for 10-12 deg drop. If this works good I will put plate coolers in my pump shacks before the sap goes in to the tank. The 2 bigger woods have water cooled vac pump anyway.
Any one doing this already? I will post what I find.

[Brian]

I got one woods tapped this weekend and got a start on another woods.That woods had about 2444 taps. I hope to finish get the other woods tapped on the back of mollys pond done this coming weekend. I got a good start and the snow wasn't deep pluse I had 4 people helping. We will see what next week brings.

[Brian]

I got about 1800 the last 3 days, almost done tapping. I hope to finish up next weekend only a few hundred left to go.

[Brian]

I still have a few hundred left to tap. The snow is getting deeper and the weather is not looking good for a while. The long range weather looks like march before the season get here.

[VT_K9]

We are upgrading a mechanical release to electric. The addition to the collection point is done for the year (just needs metal on the roof and hemlock for siding). We are working on setting up the electrical releaser, installing heat, and setting up the battery generator and solar charging. Then it will be off to tap. We should have the releaser and heat completed this weekend and likely have the power setup for the releaser to function this weekend. I would welcome a few more colder days to have some extra time.

Mike

[Brian]

Vt K9, I hope you got every thing done.The snow has made things a little harder to get simpel things done. I have two pump stations that the vac pumps use water still. The brooks are frozen over and the snow is deep. I ended up with about 2800-3000 gallons of sap. I didn't check the sugar but will check next run. I got that through the ro and ended up with 250 to 300 gallons of around 18%. I plan on sweeting the pan in the morning befor the big freeze up.

[TapTapTap]

Hi Guys,

It looks like I finally got past the login problems!!

Brian - good luck on the first boil of the season. Here in Williston, we had only a couple short runs that haven't amounted to enough to process. The snow has been a crazy challenge to work in. I thought it was turning better last week and then things froze a crust on us.

Ken
'

[DrTimPerkins]

Good luck to you all on the 2025 season.

[VT_K9]

Brian, Still plugging away...tapping away. While tapping today not many taps running or running much at all. I have about 150-200 left to put in and the CDL lifter hut to setup. We have the new electric releaser plumbed and wired. We are running the releaser off a battery generator which is charged by 4 full sized solar panels. We spent last Sunday clearing some tall pine/hemlock trees to allow for some morning sun (had Town Meeting on Saturday and that nixed any work). Sunday ended on a low note...the tree (30" pine) I dropped ended up dropping another tall pine tree onto the tractor cab. It took out the roof, liner, mirror, part of the hood, and some small parts. No glass or frame damage fortunately. Just one more thing to add to the mix. The blockage of the mid to late afternoon sun is primarily from maples so that won't be changing. I'm headed down in a few minutes to check the sap level. I am hoping tomorrow will be the start for us.

Mike

[Brian]

It has been a hard season, The snow is so deep, the sap was flowing so slow it was hard to find leaks. I have one woods at 26, one at 22 and the other at 25.5. the sap ran a little ended up with about 5600 gallons of 1.1% sap. the Ro keeps shutting off on high temp. The red light comes on no matter if i am rinsing or roing sap and the display that shows the temp and the temp shut off for the wash cycle all go to zeros. I have to remove the wires from the red light to get it to reset. start it up and it runs for awhile. I am headed to St. Albans monday to get a new display panel. It is a CDL 1200 with 3 towers. I tried the breaker but when I turn the breaker back on so is the red light and the display is all 000000 I hope that will fix it.

[Brian]

I went to St. Albans yesterday and got the new display box and got that in this morning and got the directions to program it. It seams to be working,i am doing a wash right now and was told to keep watch and make sure it turns off at the right temp. I am hoping to boil later when it warms up a little. the temps look good to get this party started. good luck!!

[BAP]

I went to St. Albans yesterday and got the new display box and got that in this morning and got the directions to program it. It seams to be working,i am doing a wash right now and was told to keep watch and make sure it turns off at the right temp. I am hoping to boil later when it warms up a little. the temps look good to get this party started. good luck!!
Great that you were able to get the parts quickly and get it up and running

[Brian]

Every thing is up and running for now. The sap has been running and so have I. The vac is up and down but high 25's could be better and it will. I gathered 10,000 gallons of sap yesterday but the sap is all around 1% -1.25% not verry good. We have made 14 40 gallon barrels since the 14 of march. I am starting to feel it. My wife is sick of filter press changes, last night was the first time they went longer than 15-20 min. They are the bigger 10 inch presses. The sap truck is un loading and should be empty. Good Luck!!

[Brian]

Well things are good. The sap slowed down for a bit, the syrup is filtering great and finally making fancy, My wife Tamie felt like the maytag repair person because the presses worked so good. I made alot of amber rich. The last 10 barrels have been fancy. We hit 1400 gallons tonight and hope it keeps going. good luck

[Brian]

Still at it, sap has slowed up alot. We are around 1680 gallons so far. I am looking forward to the season to end. It has been long and slow but good season. I hope to make a couple of hunderd more gallons still before the season ends, time will tell.

[Brian]

Still at it, things are froze up and this will be the last go. we are at 1800 gallons. I hope to hit 1900 but we will see, this has been a long season for us. It has been a while since we made it past the 15 of April. I hope to make it to saturday.