Hop Kiln Road 2020

Well jeepers, with the weather and all I should have gotten a big jump on the season. But nope, got caught up in the dangerous www.emergency.virus. Went down to Concord to get my pre Valentine's day shear like I always do before the maple season starts. When I got home I sneezed and my ears were cold, and I was feeling light headed. Figured no big deal since I had gone off caffeine awhile back and sometimes cold air makes me sneeze. Well oh no, M says I might have stepped in some global epidemic puddle getting out of my truck downtown and the CDC folks - I'd never heard of 'em before but sounds like their office must be next to the FDA - said the cure was a mandatory 14 days sequestered below deck. Like by myself! If it weren't for having to chuck wood in the furnace when M banged on the kitchen floor, I might have lost track of the weather and never tapped! Thank goodness she was ok and able to leave me food at the top of the cellar stairs. Big relief to get out in the woods tapping and forget about the rest of the world.

Bruce I'm sorry to hear that you were ill. You haven't missed much. What at first looked like it was going to be a flashback to 2012 is now looking more like a normal season. I tapped last weekend and haven't gotten much more than 3 releaser dumps worth of sap. Of course you're down in the tropics so you could have gotten a little more than me from those well fed sugar maples though.

I'm not in your neighborhood, but maybe I can cheer you up. I have maybe 2-3 boils left and about to finish my best year ever down here in Southern Ohio. My season started out the same way, decent runs but very spotty and would go days with nothing. Then all of a sudden the dam burst and I was flooded. I boiled 24 of the next 28 days. I was almost ready to pray for it to stop. Maybe that will come your way.

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Originally Posted by buckeye gold

I'm not in your neighborhood, but maybe I can cheer you up. I have maybe 2-3 boils left and about to finish my best year ever down here in Southern Ohio. My season started out the same way, decent runs but very spotty and would go days with nothing. Then all of a sudden the dam burst and I was flooded. I boiled 24 of the next 28 days. I was almost ready to pray for it to stop. Maybe that will come your way.

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It's only late February here and March is our sugaring month. Back in January we had a couple of thaws when there hadn't much of a January freeze. February started out warm too which was much like 2012 when the season started early and was over by the third week of March. Then the cold and snow hit us and there hasn't been much for sugaring weather since. I'm optimistic that the season is going to be a good one with near record flows.

Okay, okay, yes I may have false flagged my Vermont friends, hailing from wherever the satellites still don't line up, with a wee bit of alarm, vestiges of being able to catch CNN I guess. With no fever it's just a 3 day quarantine and you can spend it in a motel, just no cracker barrel time. And besides feeding the furnace I also finished rigging out my new shurflo. The 3/16 lines on the Wordsworth Brook orchard work well except they empty at a point only a 1% grade above, and a long way from, the road tank so the drain line never empties and will freeze overnight backing up the next day's production. So I figure elevate the drain line to 2% and have the shurflo pump the sap up 8 feet to the drain line which should now drain when the sap stops. And since it's way off in the woods and solar powered, I got a Mt Maples' automatic gizmo box to run it. Bet ole retired Red Roof is just in stitches.

Got over 1,000 gal by Tuesday morning. But no freeze so its tapering off. First run will be in the 2 to 3 gpt range. Everything is operational after I finally got the solar panel talking to its controller.

1700 gal of 2.3% for the first run. Syrup was 61% on the Hanna. Smooth start up considering the run was front loaded! I did finish my orchard inventory updates: 1,200 sugar maples with 900 >10" and 710 taps. Incidentally, 300 trees are on a conservation easement where I tap 10" trees and the group is trying to enforce some antiquated UNH rules calling for Attachment 21073a 12" minimum tapping diameter but the rules also allow 7/16 taps in 2 1/2" holes. Go figure. My thinning and fertilizing programs are yielding good results in growth and sugar production. The picture is a 6" cull that was released 13 years ago at 1.5" when it was ~30 years old! So it grew 4.5" in 13 years. It's brethren which were not culled, will be 10" in less than 5 years. Anyway, even with the .225 spouts, I'm thinking of going to a 12" minimum and one tap per tree regardless of diameter, to cut back on the sap volumes as the sugar content rises. Otherwise I'll have to sell sap or get a bigger evaporator, neither of which appear cost effective.

Last fall I decided to thin two new maple sections adjoining Wordsworth Brook. But after I dug out my hardhat, the husky and starting looking around for the chokers, M figured out what I was up to and nixed the idea. Well I was pretty bent but got back in my armchair. A couple days later she said she'd found me a "Minder" and if I agreed to follow instructions and not get into political discussions, the project could proceed. She said this is the man people call when trees are too big to be cut down by a machine! Yellow pages I guess. Sure enough, the next day over to Wordsworth Brook, this "Minder" dude arrives. Well Tall Trees and Tough Men indeed: this "Minder" brought 14 chainsaws, all of 'em bigger than what was under mom's deux chevaux yellow hood. Yup, and I know the cracker barrels over toward Weston feel I abuse hyperbole but, yup, 14 honkers, and I got $20 that says he could pin an excavator in the 1st round. Got pictures.

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You can never have too many chainsaws!

I noticed....a whole truck load of Stihls and he has a Husky in his hand