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Think of asparagus.
How long does it take to get an asparagus plantation to yield?
What happens to asparagus when it is harvested? Jeez, they cut the tops off!
It is criminal and immoral. I'm starting a "save the asparagus" foundation....
Seriously, it would be one thing to cut the crowns off all the saplings in your sugarbush effectively destroying regeneration of the bush, but entirely another to create a plantation for the purpose harvesting sap from maple saplings. No?
Fields, whether open or brushy, support a wide variety of wildlife from deer and turkeys to songbirds and mice. That said, a field planted with maple sapling "stumps" could still be suitable habitat for many of them.
No bags needed, just some farmer ingenuity.
I think of the idea the same as an vineyard you raise trees for the purpose of a harvest and I don't see anything wrong with it. I believe that it will be easier to take care of the bush and clean the tubing at the end of the season when the trees are all together in a field rather than spread all over a mountain side. You may even be able to make better syrup if the lines are properly cleaned and sanitized at the end of each season. What if the northeast gets hit with a pest that kills the maple trees the same people that are against the new way of tapping will be happy that we have a tried and true 2nd way. I have to agree with an earlier comment most people are looking out for there best interest and afraid the new technology may effect their way of life.
Looks to me like Mountainvan has hit on some kind of "happy medium." Can't see the picture too well, but it looks to me like he cut off one thumb-sized limb of maybe a 3-inch-trunk tree. So you plant your "maple orchard," and do this limb-tapping on some alternating fraction of the trees each year as they mature, and then take the conventional route once your orchard is suitably grown-up. So you're re-couping something while on the path to a perfectly-layed-out block of tappable maples. And you've scored "enviropoints" for having planted a whole bunch of trees.
I'm really neutral on this method and I don't see it any different than a lot of things with maple production or other agricultural changes. I just don't see how anyone who runs miles of tubing into the woods and drills holes into perfectly good trees and then turns on a vacuum can say that doing something sustainable in a field in any more less ethical than what they are doing. What's wrong with moving out of the woods and into fields like lots of other food products?
One of the first questions I often hear is - "doesn't that hurt the tree"? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell them that the woods are now left alone and I only tap what's in my field? If people have problems with that, they should stop eating because there's probably a lot of things in agriculture that would disturb them.
I need to do this for sure, just think a jug of syrup with a picture of a field of cut off trees in the fore ground of the sugar camp, who needs that old bucket hanging on a tree jug anymore? That scene alone will sell syrup like never before!
Mark 220 Maple
The reality of maple production is already quite different from the romanticized and frequently advertised scene of wooden buckets on trees with horses pulling a sledge and men in wool jackets emptying buckets into a wooden gathering tank. Apparently maple tubing, vacuum pumps, and RO machines are not quite as picturesque or appealing.
Very true. Today the modern producer uses oxen to pull the sledge.
In our bush we have numerous spots that small maples try to establish themselves. Nearly all fail when they get to be about 1.5-2" at 4'. The canopy is taking most of the available light and they die. So why not take these trees and harvest them for a few season and get something out of them?
I see this as a slightly altered version of the person that stops at our Registered Angus Display at the County Fair. "don't touch them they are going to be Hamburg in a few months." the mother says to the 4 year old little girl as she is about to touch a three month old Angus Heifer calf. My wife responded go ahead, these are breeding stock that are used for replacement heifers and bulls. Our commercial cows are at home and they make the hamburg; but they would have never been born and had a happy life on our farm, until they were full grown, if there were not people to feed. Wont that be said...to think that if people stopped eating meat, farmers would not grow calves, and these beautiful animals would not be around either. The women had never thought of it in that way.
So am I to feel bad or remorse for mowing mowed millions of maple seedlings that grew in our lawns and field edges from the seed casts the past year? For that matter what about the billions of grass and legume plants that were harvested to feed our cattle? All we do is cut the tops off?
Everything on earth has a purpose. Ask an elderly person that has farmed all their life; what it is like to see the farm grow houses or just grow up to brush and weeds. Most would rather leave this earth.
A tree that is harvested and produces food for the earth...That's a Productive Life. The person that is born into the city and does not work and survives off public assistance will never know the pride of producing food for themselves and others.
Being at the top of the food chain is not for everyone, nor is producing food for others, unfortunately there the needs to be people, take on the hard decisions associated with these responsibilities and spend endless hours feeding the hungry.
In some place, in a server somewhere, there will be that romantic picture of the past for those to see what things were like in a slower time...and then they can look at the world of electronics and automation and see the great strides forward that Agriculture has taken to keep up with the ever growing number of humans on earth that want to eat every day.
The best story from the fair over the 30 years or so we have been there is the women;"Thats a bull right...How do you milk them?" My son and his and his girl friend smile and respond back. "Madam, the bull is like the husband or father" The women looks to her friend and they both laugh and said God Blessed him well". When they told me the story I asked how old were these women..."Hard to say, they were wearing long black robes and had on these funny looking hats and they were all related" related??? "Yes they all kept saying sister, to each other" LMFAO
We still laugh about that one.
DR Tim. Thank you for Helping me help others to have a diet that is not just rice, soy and corn products thru your research. We have a few galloons of syrup that are going today to make Maple flavored beer.
Ben