2025 Tapping Season

Hi All,
Just figured I'd start the 2025 thread.
Hope you are all well and looking forward to the season ahead.
Bryan

Looks like another year of "should I or shouldn't I " It was 0 here a few days ago, going to be 50 in a few days. You could get sap almost any day, the traditional season seems to be a memory, here in Ct. anyway.

Strung my lines up but haven't attached drops or tails yet. Probably get the collection tanks in place in the next week or so and tap two or three weeks from this weekend, depending on the forecast of course. Tapping a previously untapped section of my woods that required running 400' of 1" poly pipe from where I'm setting the collection tank back up to the sugar shack. I have it hanging from 1/8" stainless cable strung between trees and tightened with fence strainers. Hope it works like I'm imagining. Had to find another 600 gallon milk tank which I did just west of the Hudson a couple weeks ago. Also purchased another whack of buckets as my 14 year-old is convinced we're better off on buckets. As long has he's chasing after them....

Fingers crossed for a better year than last!

Good luck to you all.

Lots to do here before I tap. I'm hoping for a Feb 1 start, but as we all know the weather is less than predictable here...
I'm going to make a push in the next 2 weeks to get everything ready and then closely monitor the forecasts and then throw my hat to the wind and pick a day.
Lots to do....

Excited to try out my new arch for 2025. I think I must be the first person ever to decrease the size of their operation over the years. Most folks seem to start with 50 taps for fun, and by the end of year five they're running 5000 taps with a new tornado evaporator and RO. I've gone the other way. We used to do a few thousand on an old 4X16 D&G arch we had new flue pans made for. Didn't have time to keep that up after my grandfather died and while I was in university, so I bought a used 2X6 setup and kept it down to a few hundred taps. Now I'm married, have a second house in town to look after, and work is crazily busy so I don't even have time to do that. I work as a designer in a fab shop with plasma cutting abilities, so I drew up a 2X6 natural gas arch to use with a 2X4 flat pan I had kicking around with a front finishing section. Probably only good for a few dozen taps. The plan is to keep a gathering tank in the back of my truck and a holding tank in the garage, collect from 50 or so taps right along our road that I pass on the way home every day, then boil down at in town on natural gas. Kind of excited to do things in a little more relaxed manner. Took some finagling of various orifice sizes and air mixers to optimize the flame using the H-style fire pit burners (which I chose for their wide distribution pattern), but it ended up working pretty well. Two 90k BTU burners and two 60K BTU burners, which should be plenty for a small flat pan setup (and about the max I can pull off my home's natural gas line without risking starving out the furnace)

Big jump from 120 to 160 taps. Any numbers on the 5x400 RO?

I only used the 5x400 for the latter half the season, and didn't have it fully dialed in with recirc etc.
I used the 4X150 as in seasons past and then used both when things got busy.
I plan to build up the 5X400 this year per Dan's published plans.
Should have about 175 this year and a handful of buckets to make my son chase..
At least thats the plan.

If it wasn’t still the first week of January, I would be really tempted to tap already, as the temperatures are doing almost the perfect day vs night swing. I do expect to tap late in January, but we’ll see when we get there. Meanwhile, getting everything ready.

Still too cold on my 10-day. Most highs are just flirting with +32F and my woods tend to warm slow during the day.
I'm hopeful for at least another couple weeks, but keeping a close eye on things...

Spent some good time on the evaporator today, with final clean and assembly tomorrow. Then I start shifting my attention to the lines/drops. I have a long list to get through yet...

Tuesday -1, Wednesday 2, not even close.