33 deg this morn, heading to the woods, it's going to drop in temp all day back to BIG COLD. hopefully get some laterals done today! just a bit of mainline to finish up first though.
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33 deg this morn, heading to the woods, it's going to drop in temp all day back to BIG COLD. hopefully get some laterals done today! just a bit of mainline to finish up first though.
I spent about 3 hours yesterday afternoon repairing damage to my tubing in my biggest bush which has about 235 taps on it. I assume it is squirrels as I saw one eating on one of the lines during syrup season 2 years ago while the sap was flowing. I caught a flying squirrel last year and that put a stop to it for a while, but now they are back at it again. I just fixed everything in this bush less than 4 months ago. I have 2 rat traps set up several feet off of the ground, so hopefully I can catch the tree rats that are doing this.
I was off for the King's bday last monday, so I spent the better part of the day cutting a hole in the end wall of my building and adding an attic fan with a thermostat on it. Since I closed in the eves last year on the building, it gets warm in there fast when boiling. I have 8x16 inch vents every six feet in the eve and the building is not insulated, but it can be 20 to 30 inside when you start boiling and in 2 hours it is 60 or more. Not bad on cold days, but when the temp is warm outside, it runs you out. Opening the windows helped a little, but when someone else was boiling, they always wanted to open the 9 x 12 garage door I have and this caused the fine ash that comes out of the top of the stack to get sucked back into the building. I hope this attic fan takes care of this problem once I get the thermostat on it set to where it works best.
Also installed more lights behind the evaporator where I park my tractor and inside the wood shed too, so it will have more light out there other than what the nightlight sheds into it. Before installing the light above the tractor, I only had 2 eight foot flourescent lights in the entire 24 x 48 building. I did a good job all around the evaporator, but it was lacking some in other others. I got one of the cheap clamp-on lights to install above the canning area since I am hoping to frame up the kitchen and bed and bath rooms this summer, I didn't want to install lights for just this season.
Did you bait it with a small peice of tubing or peanut butter? When you say you caught it does that mean you release it into your neighbors sugar bush or did you dispatch it.
Brandon- I dont know if anyone lives where your bush is but if they do they like to come to bird feeders bigtime. If they do that and someone is in the house watching the birdies and maybe they have a 22? Theron
Got one in my backyard today with a 22. The 22 does a good job keeping them in check. Plus I got one with my truck a couple of miles away. Everyone helps alittle.
I began adding alittle mainline to a section that I've been waiting for the trees to mature. So this year I'll pick up about 25 more. Last year was my big addition 60% increase So this year I should be around 1175
Keith
I did put Peanut butter on it and it did attract the flying squirrel last year. I hadn't thought of the bird feeder and birdseed, but that is a good idea if I had time to go and watch it and shoot them. My brother has a big feeder for deer, etc, so I thought about putting it up sometime as they like corn too. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time to patrol it.
Attended the annual NWPA maple assoc. meeting yesterday. At least a half dozen other traders were there. It was great to see and talk to everyone. We're all getting excited.
Test tap hole ran less than a quart for the 2 warm days. We're back in the deep freeze for now. No above freezing temps in the 10 day forcast. So we wait ..... and dream.
Well here we sit in the deep freeze again ........... -7 this morning.
Looks like it's going to be below 0 for the next few nights and not getting out of the teens and twenties during the day for awhile.
Two days ago was the "January Thaw", one day at 36!!!
Went with NHMaplemaker,his son and son-in-law to the New Hampshire Maple Producers Assoc. meeting yesterday.
Russ was there, great to see you again!!
Had a great time with them and the info was great, very interesting!!!
Oh yeah, thanks to Jim, I am now a member.
Stay safe and keep warm!!!
Dave
Deep freeze here also, about -10 an hour ago, I'm just waiting for it to "warm up" a bit, -8 now and climbing. Setting of for the north bush again, got may mains all tightened up and side pulled, ran about 1300 ft of tubing. hope to get another 3000 ran today(deep snow will slow me down) not sure about using snowshoes, I worked pretty good in boots but there were some spots I went up to my knee, avg is about 12+" in the woods. still kinda fluffy.
I started trying using braided nylon rope to use as grips for the tubing to trees or the mainline... It works fantastic! and makes it so easy to pull and tighten the laterals and go back later to make the tye in to the main! I'm not using a main line wire so this works out much better than using line hooks!! I will take a few pictures today Yellow Nylon rope is cheap!
Still in waiting to tap. On Friday it looked like Tues would be the day now it looks like it might be Thurs.
Oh well, while I am waiting I found a couple more yard trees to tap. They are in my parents yard. Heh Heh, should I tell them first, or just surprise them.
At least it is giving me a few more days to be sure everything is ready to go.