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Ok Ken if you have been to North Bay head south from their down hwy 11 30 min. you pass the towns of Callander, Powassan then you turn off exit 390 onto hwy 522 Trout Creek we are 5 min west of town on hwy 522 right after butterflied rd. on the right hand side.
Hi Mike
OK just past Butterfield by 300 feet or so I see a dwelling with what looks like an equipment shed farthest from the road with a white something on the far side of it. If thats a sap storage tank you sure are thinking big !!!
I see a trail going through the conifers that spits in what looks like your bare maples. So I'm trying to figure if anything looks like a sugar shack ...
where to you boil
PS if you're tapping today you better use a carbide tipped drill. G*& when will this end.
Hi Brent if you follow the trail back in the bush keep to the right of it and at the bottom end of the loop you will see a small black square that is the shack google earth dose not have the greatest pic the shack is only 12' by 20'. if you go into my photo bucket link you will see the shots of inside the shack.
Does the weather in Ontario look as bleak as here. We get a bit of warmth this weekend but the middle of the month looks cold. Man a guys first season could be nicer.
Don't look good here either :( how ever I will probably tap Friday or Saturday this week depending on my work schedule as that's when I'm able.
Well - I'm all set - Buckets and tanks are washed and ready, Friday (in the rain) before the freeze, I blew the snow off my bush trail so we can drive through, then Sat and Sun - the snow in the bush was hard enough I could drive the tractor OVER it with the dump trailer attached. Pulled 5 cords of maple wood out of the bush over the weekend. Lots and lots of standing dead pine - all in the 4-6" range - all dry as a bone. Figured I might as well get a head start on the pile, no boiling to be done.
Looks like we might be tapping come the weekend given today's forecast.
Same in our bush. I got more forewood pulled out and did some misc repairs. A marshy area I wouln't have gone near a month ago I drove over the middle of with the tractor and stayed on top of the crust!
I may get some tapping done this weekend but most of it will probably wait until the following weekend. I've got lots of help lined up and I'm gonna need it!
Well as bleak as the temps are looks like I will tap all my gravity feeds this weekend coming and save the bucket till the 14th may get a small run to flush out the lines in the mean time I will finish washing my taps and bucket and tidy up the shack the weather is got to change in our favor soon, one could hope!
Well I poked holes in the 150 or so trees that are on the new tubing system.
Someone forgot to read the rules. About have of the trees were dribbbling down the bark before I got the spiles in !! And it was about - 6.
Our location is about 30 Km north of Toronto Int Airport.
Going to work on some bags and buckets tomorrow. As usual I suspect the flood will start before I'm ready.
Good luck everyone. Here we go.
I for one don't want any sap until the middle of March. I was checking things over on the weekend and found the smoke-stack base is rusted out. I changed everything a couple of years ago to a stainless stack, except for the base. At that time the steel stack base was so solid I could barely cut it with tin snips. I found a guy that can build me a new one but not before next week.
Oh well it will give me time to be 100% ready, ya right!!
I am going to tap a few this week also just in case this warm spell coming up actually works. If it does I can hopefully get the rest tapped in a hurry also. I am so looking foreward to seeing a tree bleed.
Did 102 taps today and another 50 or so tomorrow. Looks like its going to run Thursday for sure. Here's hoping!:)
I was suppose to tap only on March 14 but now i'm wondering if i'll be missing some action. Its my 4th year tapping and every year it seems that I tap a bit early. I'm about 25 minutes southeast of Ottawa and looking at the Weather Network this morning, the forcast is for at least +3 for the next 2 weeks.....I know these kind of forcast can change quickly. What to do........
I'm looking at the 14 day it looks good for the week starting this fri then it drops again. I should have my homemade 2x3.5 evap ready this sat. Am I still too early tapping thurs or fri? 35-50 taps down my driveway, haven't attempted tapping my sugar bush yet, only my 2nd year.
Mtbguy
you Should be fine I'll be tapping tomorrow if all goes right. even if it does freeze it won't be a problem
I'm making 4000 holes this weekend. The experts say the holes are good for 6 weeks which if started on Saturday takes you to April 19. I'm always done by then anyways so I don't want to miss this next week!Quote:
Originally Posted by traderzach
Mtbguy
Depends where you are located in Ontario, but I would say this week wouldn't be a problem. I tapped 102 yesterday. I am south of
Brantford. Good luck!
Thanks for the info folks. The 6 week time frame is very good info, it's the first anyone has given me a time frame before the holes dry up. I'll start tapping today, finish my evap build friday or Saturday start boiling Sat or Sun.
Our 150 or so taps yeilded a rousing 10 gallons in the collector tank. There would maybe have been about double that but when I got home from work to check them, the manifold I put on top of the tank was leaking around every connection of the 3/4 to the cam connector. Seems the 3/4 is generous on ID and the barb end of the cam commentor almost falls in. I think I need a lot of wraps with tap to make it a better fit.
No vacuum on this system yet.
Going to leave the buckets and bags for later tapping.
I would take 10 gallons right now. This worse then waiting for Xmas.
Brent I have had the same problem with those connector's the odd one seems to be smaller than the others thank god for tape. well one more day of work then off to tap the 350 on gravity and get them going finish the pluming to the evaporator and maybe test fire the evaporator. try and take some of the fun out of any problems that may come up with the new pan!
Finished tapping yesterday and have a total of around 550 buckets, could have done more but ran out of lids. Thanks to all the traders for the helpful information on this site, have a great season. Ian
Friday (skipped work) Warm day. About 150 taps on the pipeline yeilded about 120 US gallons of sap. Freeze here tonight is forecast. Should be good tomorrow. Putting off hanging the buckets and bags ... to muddy to get to them if they were hung. Gotta get the rig together with new air injectors above the fire and then get it lit. 2.4%
I'm still building my arch Brent and was thinking of air injection. Are you putting them above and below the fire or just above.
I'm going to put them above only. The Univ of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center suggests most additional air is needed above.
Last year I was able to get stack temps up near 1300. That's a lot of heat going clear past the flue pans. And I did not use a blower last year.
One thing Proctor says is that with a good blend of draft from below and above you should be able to go from 6 minute firing interval to 12 to 15 min firing intervals, by mixing fresh air above. I don't need hotter, I just want more efficiency.
what's your boil rate with the phaneuf Brent. You must be boiling like crazy to keep up to 410 taps.
Ithink it was near 45 - 50 GPH (US) but that was only a wild guess because we were playing with a little RO system that chnaged the numbers all the time.
But last year our total was only about 225 bags and buckets. The tubing is all extra this year. going to try the RO again this year.
I finally Got my 18 taps in today (Saturday) due to work and all my drops had mud dabber mud in them boy that's hard to get out.
Anything flowing over your way yet. I have one tree with a slow drip. Some of the trees feel wet when I drill but nothing yet. It was 55 degrees here earlyier.
tapped 33 holes into pails, first pail had a litre in it by the time my helper (4 year old daughter) and I had finished last pail had 1 litre (4 taps)
nothing happening at all here today. did pretty well yesterday. The only thing flowing today is the mud rivers in the field
Sorry to hear nothing happening down their Brent Things just started today for us, got all 350 taps in on the gravity, we got about 30 gallons of sap, we will see what happens tomorrow.
well I can now say with some real world authority that 130 gallons is not enough to sweeten and take your first draw on a 2 x 6. Got it up to about 45% and ran out. Nothing running in the bush today either.
Did play with the air injector, had a blower on one and you could see the fire change colour to a whiter brighter yellow and the roar went up . I put in two tubes. Only had one going today. Going to make some kind of rig so I can have both blowing for the next boil. Looks good so far. No backdraft even with the doors open and one fan on. Stack temp went up about 50 degrees.
don't feel bad Brent it dried up here too. 33 taps and only about 40 litres in 24 hours it ran like mad for the first few hours then pretty much stopped. It's good for me though I haven't finished building my arch yet, probably won't be ready to boil till tues or wed.
Tapped 97 on Saturday morning - most were flowing pretty well. Didn't freeze Saturday night, so only the larger trees continued to run on Sunday. We collected 25 gals Sunday evening after the 2 days. Weather looks good for this week though.
As an aside - I have a mix of large trees (30" plus) and smaller trees (under 18") and I have noticed a definite trend where the smaller trees always start first after cold weather, but the larger trees flow for longer. Interestingly the total amount of sap per tap seems to be about the same regardless. Wonder if others have noticed similar trends.
Weather here is
cold, and forcast is cold all week, hardly going above freezing at the best,
mostly minus's.But we all know that can change. Weather is very regional,
went to Ottawa yesterday, 40 minutes north of here, they still have snow
on the fields, here bare except for along the fence rows and in bush.About
the tree sizes, the big ones seem to be the best.What I don't get is why there are some trees that are "duds", just won't run no matter where you tap
it, but still produces leaves and grows? I don't worry about tapping untill March 17, but will admit, Thursday and Friday's warm days got me "stirred".
We got 3400 taps in Saturday & Sunday. We only had 2 tapping crews going and decided yesterday afternoon to get some tanks washed and check for leaks instead of tapping the last 600 in the upper bush. The sap ran some both days but it barely froze Friday & Saturday night so it didn't run well. With the forecast for the week it looks like we'll boil on Wednesday.
I tapped last thursday night and boiled about 12 gallons on saturday afternoon to make a little more than a quart of syrup. The taste was great.
New evaporator lesson # 1 - 12 gallons of sap is definately not enough sap to start a boil as I was frantically shoveling hot coals out of the firebox after 2 hours to keep my pan from burning!
Lots to learn!
Does someone have a good way of filtering small batch lots of syrup?
I had a couple of trees drip today. I have two cups of sap now. At this rate will be May before I have a bucket full.
We got 750 buckets tapped and hung Sat. 250 buckets and 200 pipe line tapped on Sun. So I'm just waiting on my new stack base tomorrow and the sap can flow/run/pour!!