Mercer County Tapping 2025

[Polish Wizard]

According to an on-line weather site for my zipcode it looks like Tuesday Feb 4, 2025 will be the beginning of consistent sap flow conditions.
How websites or Farmer's Almanac can predict the future with any accuracy is beyond my understanding -- but it's what we have....

Hopefully everyone will have a productive season, ---- and avoid my last year mistake of "walking away".
Luckily I was able to clean my evaporator and continue my season for a few more sap collections.
But I certainly wasted a lot of near-syrup as I had added just a few more small sticks to let the boil gently continue without me closely watching.
Yep - real dumb -- rookie mistake -- and I knew better.
The only good part of this misadventure -- I learned just how well a 50/50 mix of vinegar works.

Good luck with your projects -- big or small.

[Pdiamond]

I am betting along with the vinegar there may have been some elbow grease?

[HowardR]

Polish Wizard,

Thank you for starting this thread and thank you for the Farmer's Almanac prediction. We've had a much colder January than we did the last several years. The ten day forecast for Kittanning/Rural Valley shows that the highs will continuing to be below freezing into the foreseeable future.

I'm actually planning to tap around Valentines Day when my son can come up from Virginia to help me. I'll probably miss out on the wonderful beginning-of-season syrup. In the meantime, I've got a lot of work to do just to get everything ready because we had our whole farm logged during the fall and many of my lines got disrupted by falling trees and some were even cut by loggers building logging roads.

Howard

[Polish Wizard]

When I foolishly let my divided pan turn to blocks of lava rock we pulled out what moved easily, then filled it with the vinegar mix and built a moderate fire.
It was amazing how well it cleared the residue without a need to scrub a lot and potentially damage the bright stainless shine.
I did need to repeat this process a bit, but worth the minimal cost and effort --- and I was able to cook just a bit more before pulling the taps.

Sorry to hear about logging messing with your lines.
With recent bad weather I found a few trees damaged with parts on or near the ground, and lots of downfall branches.
I did my best to clear my usual foot paths for collecting from my tree bags, ---- and then it started to snow....
We'll see how many times this old guy trips and falls thanks to stuff I missed.
No where near as agile as I used to be.
I need to be nicer to my wife so maybe she won't take photos of "the turtle on his back".

[Conococheague]

Vinegar is a great pan cleaner in high concentration. What works better, in my experience, is dairy acid (pipeline cleaner). I don’t know how small of a quantify you can buy because I have several friends with large herds that buy it in 55-gallon drums and tell me to take what I need. I do wear rubber gloves and goggles when I’m using it but it brings my pans back to shiny like-new condition when the season is over. Can’t remember what the dilution ratio I use is but it looks like cherry juice. Boil that for a little while and you’ll notice all that hard-as-glass bunt on sugar floating around. Hope this is helpful

Conocheague

[Polish Wizard]

Having believed the on-line weather forecasts I tapped 68 trees before February 1st.
With weather not playing out as expected I managed to collect about 22 gallons of sap, which I eventually dumpstered.
Wasn't enough to run through my RO, and have enough to fill my pan and make it worth lighting the fire.

I had issues needing attention elsewhere and haven't been back to the trees.
Weather reports since then haven't sounded at all promising, and not worth the cost of gas to get there.

Maybe the weather forecast starting Sunday will be more favorable to sap flow.
Might be a bad year thanks to my too-early timing and the trees trying to heal -- or maybe a great short season with continuous wavering daily weather.

You spin the bottle and takes your chances.

[HowardR]

Polish Wizard,

It's been my experience that the weather has to be warmer than it has been for the tree wounds to heal. And should they heal and there is plenty of season left, you could tap your trees again. (I have collars (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VQXJBM9) on my drill bits so that I, and those helping me, can't tap more than 1.5" deep so as to do the minimum harm.)

My worry is that when the big run finally comes in March, it may be flowing so fast that I won't be able to keep up with the sap flow. There was one year when I had to dump over 300 gallons of sap, but that was before I built my ROs.

[Polish Wizard]

The shaft collars you linked look interesting, but apparently not specifically for drill bits.
My plastic tubing slid over the bit never works as well as I'd like.
Have you had good results with the shaft version -- or should I look for something specific to drill bits?
Will your drill bit actually stop, or keep trying to pull into the tree if you fail to release the trigger?

[HowardR]

Polish Wizard,

I've had good experience with drill bit collars. There's a little screw that fixes it in place on the drill bit. I used to use 5/16 tubing on my bits to control the depth, but the tubing kept creeping up the bit.

I believe that collars are only used on drill bits. They are mostly used by people using a drill press who want to drill holes that don't go all the way through, but only go down to a specific depth.

I'm not using them with augur bits that have a screw on the tip to pull the bit down into the hole, I use them with standard drill bits usually used for metal. I can keep turning the bit after the collar hits the trunk without any pull into the hole. In fact, any additional turning helps clean the sawdust out of the hole. Here's one of my drills with a collar on its 5/16 bit:

https://www.aphomeschoolers.com/media/uploads/economics/drillcollar.jpg