Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

Thank you Dr. Tim for a bunch of helpful information. Clearly there must be differences in my woods and my neighbors woods. Although the trees all look to be about the same size it sounds like even a slight difference can result in higher sap/sugar yield. After fighting with back issues for several days I was able to go check my lines today to see why my vacuum was so low. Way in the back corner (where the snow is the deepest) I/we missed about 50 spouts on a short mainline. I cannot believe I'm the first to make this mistake (haha). I'm running 26 inches now so there still is some smaller micro leaks somewhere but I'm not going to worry about it now. My sap is still testing 2.3% today so I am very happy with that. I ordered my CV2 spouts months before the season started and they came in the day after I finished tapping. We did not want to wait any longer. I'm using clear smart spouts this year in my woods. 5000 of the trees have 6 year old drops so I know i'm going to pay the price for this. My free help flew in from Alaska so we had to tap when we did.

Spud

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Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins

What is somebody from PA doing on the Vermont thread? :D

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Dr. Tim- since you wouldn't let me stop in last April during my trip to Vermont, I have to "creep" on this Vermont thread to learn what I can. LOL. I enjoy reading this thread, it is very informative. Its also interesting to see the differences between sugaring in VT versus sugaring in PA. I hear a lot about 2% plus sap, and we have been stuck at .7%-1.5% all season.

Woke up this morning and the thermometer said 34. Gassed the pump up for the day and went and checked the releaser and to my surprise nothing was running and the releaser was froze up! Must have dipped below freezing at some point. Hopefully recharge the trees a little for the next couple days.

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Originally Posted by spud

I ordered my CV2 spouts months before the season started and they came in the day after I finished tapping.

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We were likewise too far along with tapping to switch horses (to the CV3, clear CV adapter) mid-stream. We do have at least one smaller section with them this year though....just not as many out there in our woods as I would have liked.

had a late night boil last night. got in around 2 a.m this morning and it was 38 degrees out. woke up at 5 to go to work and to my surprise it was 30 out... quick temp drop! it was still only 32 at 8:15 so hopefully that'll recharge the trees some! the sap is coming in pretty decently at the moment (36 degrees)... hopefully it'll keep on going through tomorrow!

Made another 25 gal. of AR tonight. All systems go here. Still have some ice in the tanks which should be helpful tomorrow if it does indeed hit the 60s. The trees are still not running very well unless the sun comes out. Started to run well this morning and then it clouded over and it slowed way down. Lots of frost in the ground still but we lost all our snow yesterday.

reminding me of 2013, snow almost gone, hardly any frost, 71 on my thermometer. We are an early bush, south facing in sandy soil in castleton. Only at 1/4 crop hope the weather holds out! Yikes!

just looked at records and it was 2012 that ended early

Sap is running good today. Going to freeze tonight and all tomorrow. Should have four good sap days next week. The fun has just begun. I still think the season will end in March. Time will tell.

Spud

Finally things are starting to smooth out in the sugarhouse. I think tonight was our 6th boil and we're getting the most out of the new filter press now so that's nice. Our autodraw temp. probe isn't reading correctly but we've been able to reign in control of our density. Only bad thing is one of our membranes stopped working yesterday evening at some point. My dad and I don't know much about ROs so we haven't tried to fix it, hopefully we can get some help Monday. A guy who sells sap to us started delivering today and brought a 525 gal load on his tractor. I think we've made about 370 gallons from 2900 taps from sap here at our home bush so we're at what i would consider 1/4 crop if we expected .5 gals per tap. We got some wind today and both our bushes dropped 1/2 inch of vacuum. Anyone experience that? Not sure if it was the wind dropping branches on lines and pulling out a spout, or just maybe some tap holes finally ceasing to flow sap after so many days, and that creating extra air flow from that hole. What do you think? Good luck to all.