Wonderful job John. Did you tap the rest of your trees?
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Wonderful job John. Did you tap the rest of your trees?
Maple Creek if you look in my gallery you can find a few pictures of block arches. They might help you out a bit.
I tapped the remaining 60 or so trees today. Have a lot of sap in frozen bags, and need a couple moderate days to collect before the big freeze arrives. In the sunny afternoon at about 40 deg, the sap resumed flowing and some melt started in the bags. Our slopes are getting muddy so I may not be able to pull the trailer (that holds 24 totes) all the way up our hills, will have to haul sap out on the ATV, that only holds 5 totes. Will collect tomorrow and possibly again Monday with highs projected for mid 30's. Its a strange year, but we're getting enough sap to make it interesting. John
We are trying something new this year. Tapping trees on a friends place and giving 3/16 tubing a try. Currently, have 86 taps on 4 lines going to a 65-gallon tank. Collected 120 gallons of sap this weekend and cooked it down Monday night. Looking to get another 25 to 50 taps in yet this year. So far the tubing is working great and the weather looks promising!
Nice going Matthew. I would like to come across the river and see the tubing sometime. We have a nice steep ridge with about 80 trees that would be great for tubing but we would need a big tractor to get in to a collection tank. And there are so many deer there I would be concerned about them busting the tubing. Our trees ran all night Sunday as the temps did not get below 35 deg. We are still an "all manual" operation with bags and buckets. I collected 180 gallons on Monday 1/28 (when the cold wind started to blow and trees stopped flowing) and we will finish the boil this morning. Speaking of wind, I guess that's another advantage of tubing; we had some buckets blow over and bags blow off the trees in that gale.
I saw your ad on Craigslist looking for sap, hope you find some takers. I've been talking to other MO producers and found a guy with over 500 trees in the Ozarks who burns diesel fuel in his arch. If you ever get tired of chopping wood maybe we can go down there; he invited me to come take a look. John
There are lots of deer in these woods also so this will be a test for this type of setup here. He feeds about 35 every evening. Sounds like you may have a good place for tubing also, I will let you know when I get it all up so you can come check it out. I just got a new Leader catalog and they are now selling oil fired half pint kits. The burner cost more than the evaporator though!
The deer won't cause you much trouble, they learn to duck under it. Now squirrels, those are the real devils of the sugar bush. I hate squirrels with a passion. I can't hardly get a week without them chewing a line. I use up an 800 foot roll of 3/16th tubing just fixing squirrel chews........ARGGGGGGG
Heard that. Little suckers are biting my line this year rather than gnawing through and shredding it, making it hard to find the leaks. I've had years without a single chew (450+ taps). Not this year, though. Now I did have a deer stumble through mine the other day - must have been moving full throttle because it popped the lines off several taps and left a chunk of fur on one of the tees/ trees that it hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by buckeye gold
Got 16 taps out down here Monday. Hoping for epic flow the next couple of days. Best of luck this season.
We got the 5th line in tonight with 21 taps on it, that brings us up to 107 taps going to one tank this year. Looking forward to a busy weekend!