January Journal 2008

Thanks for the compliment Brandon. Got my 24volt batteries charged, good for 600+ taps. Plugged in my 19.2, good for another 400. That's enough for tomorrow afternoon! I've been studying my records from last year, tapped early and used alcohol on the spiles and the bit, and the taps from Jan. were still running into April, after reaming, but I like a challenge. I still have to hook up and rinse the ro, vacuum the evaporator, and then I'm ready for sap! Andrew, if you read this go get some isoproply/rubbing alcohol and dip your spiles and bit in it, it will add time to the life of the taphole. Tap shallow now, 3/4 to 1 inch, so latter in the spring you can ream the hole and tap down to 1 1/2 ".

I bought a new 325 gallon poly gethering tank today to replace the tank that was in the way of a falling tree clearing for the bigger sugar house last year. I didnt need that tank last year but will be going back to 100+ roadside taps that I havnt tapped for a few years. Going back to these roadside trees will put me over 400 taps for this year. I will be using liners in the buckets this year and hope it works out well enough to save all the bucket scrubbing. The price of 1000 bags was way cheaper than a day of washing buckets. With mild temperatrures for the next few days it will be a good time to get the sugar house in order and rebuild the trailer I use to haul the gathering tank.

Parker,

We have alot of Hard Rock Sugar in WV, The West Virginia State Tree is the Sugar Maple, The area Brandon refers to in Pocahontas County is loaded with Sugar Trees. That area of the state is the coldest and usually gets plenty of Snow. I know I don't have trees like my friends in Somerset County,Pa. Some large producers are located there. My friend Ivan Puffenbarger of Highland County Va. has a large camp with around 11000 taps. If I could get my cousins in Pendleton County to open their trees they would probably have the largest camp in WV. On their 450 acre farm 75% of the trees are sugar, the sad part of the story is the other 25% is Red Maples. I have one sugar bush in Pendleton County, It's 98% sugar 2% Red, a 593 acre property that borders it is for sell. It is loaded with sugars, almost half of them could be hooked into my system. Unfortunately I don't have a extra 2.1 million laying around to buy it. However I do have another cousin that does and is working on the deal now. I've been told I could tap the trees if he indeed does buy the property. My grandfather owned that property at onetime, he bought it for 1700 dollars and sold it for 3500 dollars. Doubled his money from 1942 to 1947. Now his grandson will pay 2.1 million if he wants it. That my friends is Inflation

Mark 220 Maple

220

It is inflation, but it is more supply & demand. Population keeps growing and "they" stopped making land years ago!!

The test tree i tapped today is running... slowly right now but the sugar content is 3.5% which for that particular tree is about 1.7% higher than it was last year. Perhaps this will bode well for the season. Still on the fence on whether or not i want to tap the rest of them.

Van, let me know how your tapping situation went over there! i'll be excited to hear if you'll be boiling tomorrow. I'd anticipate that they will run well tomorrow.

Mark,

You are right about our state tree being the sugar maple, but it is defninitely not in all areas of the state. I live in Raleigh county and sugar in Greenbrier county and you can't hardly find a sugar maple unless it has been planted in someone's yard in Raleigh county. Maybe it has to do with temperature, the colder the areas, the more sugars there seem to be. In Highland county, VA where you were referring to, there are tons of sugars everywhere and they like a lot of Pocohontas are 3500 to 5,000 feet in elevation. There are areas in WV like that too, just not this far south.

Hung tubing on the roadside sugarbush today, about 50% complete (219) and ready for tapping. With trimming brush and working alone it takes about 1 hour to hang tubing for 20 taps. If I take it down and re hang it next year hopefully it will not take that long. I am using black spray paint above and below the tubing as it crosses each tree to record the elevation. Looks like I have plenty of slope on all lines.

I did get these 219 taps on about 700 feet of 5/16 tubing.

This week I need to get some more 5/16 tubing and try to finish the rest within the next couple of weeks. I am going to try not to hang any buckets this year. Big change for me:o Every one I had talked to about tubing said that it takes longer to set up and tear down I agree so far. Looking forward to easier time gathering.

Dennis, I did not enter anything in the PA farm show this year. My syrup is almost all gone, and I have been to busy hunting and hanging tubing:)

Dave Y, Hope the maple event was fun, how far is Verona from you?

Jon, as you see I am going the other way. Moving from buckets to all tubing. I will even be passing up some fairly good trees that I could hang buckets on.
We will have about the same number of taps (400+). I have a 325 gal leg tank that I like real well for the truck. I may pump direct into the tank this year since I will not need the dumping station.

Regards,
Chris

Chris, I got back from Verona about 3hrs ago. It is a 5hr trip. I took the Mrs. with me. We both enjoyed our selves. I ran in to Dennis H. It was nice to meet a fellow trader.We enjoyed some good conversation. I picked up some supplies while I was there. I stopped in Troy Pa. and looked at some tanks Patheron put me on to. I plan on picking them up next weekend. I will go tho the woods tomorrow after work and try to finish up the tubing.

Hey Dave good to hear you made it made it back safe and sound, I think I should have stayed over also. The first 2 1/2 hrs was through a mixed bag of crap, rain sleet, snow. Made for some real terrible driving, I knew I should of put the winter tires on the car before leaving, BUT the weather channel was calling for a very low chance of rain. They are never wrong right.:rolleyes:

Anyway it was great chit-chatting with you up at the conference.

I will have to plan ahead for next year so I can get the other seminars that I could not attend.

45 degrees and rain today, really knocked the snow down. was able to string more wire today. i got about 300 feet of main line on 1% slope hope it will work??

RICH

Sitting here hard at work, really I am at work, looking for anything good and dreaming of what is to come.:D

working today putting up a setup that gets taken down after the seasons
over. Great day for it! Snow is soft; no coat required. Winter will return soon.

Called AndyP tonight just to chat. He is working on the sugarhouse and dreaming of steel head fishing.
I canned some honey tonight (just 20 1/2 lbs plastic bottles).
Also moved the 325 gallon sap collection tank closer to the driveway and rinsed it out.
Sure feels like tapping weather as it reached near 60 today. I would have liked to have been home to check on the bees. They should have been flying well today.
My son Eric just closed on a house today. It was built in 1880. I have a feeling I may have several projects to help with:) All the more reason to get my tubing working as I may lose him as a gather also.
I have a lot of cleaning to do in the sugarhouse, to get ready for syrup season. Several years ago I did tap on Jan 22 and had a good season. Will probably wait till mid Feb.

Chris

Just got home from taking a little trip up to my buddies in Maine, Vermont, and New Hamshire. Wanted to see how the big boys make syrup in the far North. I wasnt dissappointed. Checked out Royal's, Russ's, Parkers, and Jeffs sugarhouses. Had a good time, learned a lot, and appreciated everyone's hospitality. Did freeze my %&# off though. Bad climate that far north. Rode around with Matt, Russ, and Parker and all I could think was how lucky I was that sugarmakers of that calibre would let me hang with them. I tried to listen up and learn what I could and now its going to have to be go time. Hope to be ready in about three weeks and hoping to tap early next month. Good luck to all. Theron

Theron - just curious, where in NE PA are you. Close to Binghamton?

Danno- Im just south of Elmira NY. Im about an Hour to an hour and a half from Bingahamton. Theron

Theron - bought many of my supplies in your backyard - my 30x8 came from horseheads and all my mainline just outside of corning.

Theron it was a pleasure to be a part of your maple tour. I am glad that you learned alot while you were up here. You have every sugar makers dream down there. Lots of nice trees on a hill that runs down to the sugar house, a new evaporator, vacuum pump and RO. I am sure you will be able to figure out how to run it all and we are here to answer any questions.

Russ

We are feeling pretty good here in the Champlain Valley---just finished the total replacement of 500 taps. All repairs have been made, just need to put sugarhouse together! We will put the releaser and vacuum pump together this weekend. Looking forward to the Maple school this weekend in Bristol. The last time I was this ready for sugariin', we got 3' of heavy snow in March. I remember shovelling lots of lines that year!
Mike

well yesterday i finished the main line for this year. i figure that i will be lucky to fill in all the trees that will go to those lines, the bright part of this is it will all run to the sugar house.

Matt, Russ, Theron, and Parker,
Sorry you guys didn't make it through Newport area until late Friday night, would have liked to have met you guys!
Well maybe next time.
If you guys ever come over this way, don't be afraid to give a holler.
I have a good idea where Parker is located so I may swing over that way sometime.
If you guys take a run to Bascom's and you come ths way, let me know if you want a passenger over and back.
45 degrees here right now, I'm thinking of last year, right after this it got some cooold till the first of March.

Dave

Hi all! Sounds like everyone is busy during this nice thaw! I was up on the hill most of the day too, fixing lines and doing a little re-engineering here and there. I checked the temperature when I got back down to the house, and it was 65 degrees! But if this year is anything like the last two, winter will lock down soon for real, and I won't get tapped until March.

Finished up checking all my lines and making repairs. My biggest bush has close to 50% of my taps and the squirrels ate it up this year. The other two bushes they only bothered each bush in 1 seperate place and that was it. There were a bunch of fox squirrels around the one bush and they ate it up. I have never seen this much damage. Definitely won't use any chlorine in the future. I had used it for years and hardly had a problem, but they must have got on to it this year.

Sugarhouse is nearly clean and about ready to go and just waiting for tapping time. I have about 2 or 3 more hours of just putting finishing touches on the inside of the sugarhouse and I will be ready to go. I have the largest supply of wood I have ever had this year and it is nearly all seasoned for 2+ years and has been in the woodshed drying for 6+ months. I did my 50 hour service on my Kubota last month the last day of the 2 year warranty as it took me almost 2 years to get 50 hours on it and it is ready to go also.

I did invest in a Craftsman shop vac a couple of months ago when they had a good sale and it definitely was a good investment for keeping everything clean. Since my entire sugarhouse is concrete floor, it definitely helps keep it nice and clean and would work good for anyone looking for something to help keep things a little cleaner. They have a floor brush that is about 16" and it was extra, but works great to keep the floor clean. Sure beats a push broom that stirs dust and it is wet/dry and sucks up to 9 gallon of water.

I just came in from the woods. I am putting the finishing touches on the tubing. I have 30 drops to install and tie some mainline and it will be complete. Except for the tanks and I plan to have them taken care of in the next two weeks. Theron I will be out your way on Saturday. Send me a pm w/your address and Ph# an I will look you up.

Dave- Im sending you the address and number, see you sat. 3%- Sorry we missed you. I wish I could have stayed longer but had to head back. Ill be sure to look you up next run up. Theron

Well, the daffodils may start blooming soon here. I am putting in 200 taps on Friday, and will take Brandon's advice, and put the additional 150 taps in about 10 days later - depending on the weather - after getting back from Georgia for a 3-day family event. Thanks for the advice Brandon. Long range forecast (15 days) shows it to be very favorable sugaring weather. I hope to have syrup by next Tuesday. I will keep you posted.

Andrew

Boy, I always hate the January thaw, but sure is great weather to get good work done. Took the day off from work - cut new holes in the sugarshack roof to accept the new stacks, washed out all the holding tanks and ran laterals for another 100 taps. Jumped a nice buck on the way out of the woods. Good day!

Not sure if it was the nice weather or closing in on tapping season, but it sure in nice seeing the Trader "come alive"!

Ok the old Leader 2x6 is up and ready. I had a new stack base made for it
and changed it from 7" to 8".The blower I installed on it is 4"diameter and came out of a computer. I'm not real happy with it because I don't
think it moves enough air. I have a small squirrel cage fan I may try. I did a test
boil last Sunday to get a feel for the rig, seems like it whent pretty well.
I chicken out on putting a preheater in the fire box. I went ahead
and wrapped copper pipe about eight or nine times around the stack.
It worked pretty good on my old evaporator so this will have to do for
now. The water temp ranger from about 175 to 190. If I can figure out
how to make my camera talk to my computer (blue tooth stuff) I"ll
post some pictures. Gerry

VA Maple Guy,
Spent several nights leaning over that rig at Jim's, visiting with them.:) about making syrup. I fact I think you might have the front pan that I sold to Jim for that rig? I think you will like the way it boils. Seems you may need a bigger blower? But try it you may be surprised?

Regards,
Chris

Chris - I just took a look at your website and photos. Wow! Very impressive and attention to detail is remarkable. Excellent job rebuilding that arch! I rebuilt mine, and it came out fine, but yours looks fantastic. Sugar house is real nice as well.

Gerry,
Glad to here the test boil went well. The blower I had on that was a 265 cfm Dayton that I ran at about half speed or it would blow ash between the doors. I have been told that running those blowers on a dimmer switch is not good for them, makes them wear out quicker. I was told the better method is to put a damper in the plenum, run the blower wide open, and adjust air flow with the damper. Those blower motors are made to run against alittle back pressure, keeps them from turning too many rpms. You are further along than me. I still don't have the new rig set up.

Jim

Got back around 8:30 pm Wednesday evening from the PA Farm Show in Harrisburg. This was my first visit to the Show and I'm sure I will be going back. 24 acres under roof with everything farm related you can think of. It's billed as the largest agricultural show in the country. Spent 8 hours between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning trying to take everything in and I know I didn't see it all.

One of the most impressive sights was the 900 lb butter sculpture. The picture was too big to add here so I will try to load it in photobucket.

We submitted six entries in the maple competition and I found where we can make some improvements for next year. A real learning experience!

Jim

I took the day off on tuesday and did the test boil on my new rig. I think that I did some things right this time like raising the evaporator high enough so that I can use hot water to rinse collection barrels eliminating any kind of funnel and bucket set up. It is small things like that that make life better. All buckets are rinsed and ready. All collection barrels are ready and waiting. Most of the tubing is up ( still some work to do). I do need to re calibrate my feed tank and sight tube. It said that my rig boiled off 35 gallons of water in 45 minutes. This seems a little high for a plain jane 2x6. My wood is real dry and I was doing the timer routine. Overall it was a good day and for once everything worked well.-ss

well i was in the bush yesterday cleaning line and found some fallen trees from that wind storm we just had and some broken lines so im back there again today

I've got over 3000 feet of mainline wire up to carry the new wet and dry lines in the bush down the road. Bringing in couple thousand feet of pipe today to start stringing up. Couple more wires to run to get more dry and wet lines and I will have at least gotten the sap out of the woods and pretty close to the paved road & electricity. I should be able to get the wet line run, part of the dry and hopefully some more wire. It should start coming together nicely now. Then got to weave the maze of blue, but at least I'll have 500 coming to the road. Can't wait to see how many are in that bush, or at least the 1/2 I am setting up to tap. Lots that is for sure.

Ramona is thirsty, got to make sure I got enough to quench her thirst.

I've put about 45 new taps on reds, and removed quite a few extra taps off my sugars, and still have half the bush to go. I wish I'd kept track better, because I've already lost track on how many total taps I've got now.

I also bought some neat cast iron health spouts for buckets, and will put more trees on buckets around the house.

Looks like those runs are a bit longer, the wet was 1700 feet, and dry will be the same so that's 3400 feet wet & dry. Got the wet in decent shape. Shot some more videos this morning on running tubing and splicing mainline. I'll see what they actually look like and see if they are worth posting. Kinda hard to hold everything and film at the same time.

Should be one priceless moment, when I am walking backwards and showing off my new tubing unrolling trick, and a log jumped out and clipped me behind the knee's and on my A$$ I went still filming.

There's ton's of nice trees in there, I bet I'll have 1500 easy, if I can keep up the pace.

You guys reminded me, I need to get out and check lines (roadside drive by) after our big wind storm two nights ago. May have pruned some of the old dead maple limbs?
Jim,
Can't wait to hear about the farm show. Sounds like you had a great time. Any food down there? How about tractors?

Chris

well i went out and check are bush today and all that main line we just put up was never touched but the other side of are bush were we have not tapped yet there was like 3 trees that fell. we also cleaned more lines and found a broken line that had been eaten and we also found 4 spit taps know i have never heard of split taps has any one else ever had this

Worked on 1/3 of the bush last weekend! Took down trees off the lines fixed sagging lines and put helpers on the saddles....Replaced some old drops and shortened some....Will start the other 2/3s this comming week....Hope to get it done in 2-3 days....Will start adding the other 500/600 new drops on the new mainline we put in earlier.....Its about 500 ft long with maples on both sides.....Put a rail system on the preheater hood to make it easier to clean the back pan.....Took barn door track and bolted it over the hood....Put chain from hood to door rollers with turn buckles to raise hood and then slide it out of the way.......Works real good..........