Quote:
Originally Posted by drewlamb
Ahhhhh, yes, I see now. Right O!! Thanks Drewlamb!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drewlamb
Ahhhhh, yes, I see now. Right O!! Thanks Drewlamb!
Another boil yesterday, sap tailed off the majority of the day. Need to lose some frost before bumper runs cam start, overall I feel it will be a good season with good sugar hold out, unlike last year.
Ran probably 3500 gallons thru yesterday, made 65 gallons of amber, lighter again yet than previous 2 boils.
Nice freeze up this week, Looking forward to a day off, been14 hr days for 2 weeks!! Good chance to fine tune a few things and maybe add a dry line I was debating.
Collected about 7,250 gal of sap over the weekend (about 1.3 gpt) before it froze up again yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately not real sweet, 1.45 Brix, but will likely come up when things get rocking. An "early" season run...slow accumulation. Trees need to thaw out a bit more and have a good recharge cycle and snow needs to melt back from the tree base some.
Looking like no sap weather until early-mid next week.
Tim do you leave your vacuum on throughout an extended cold spell? Any detriment by not leaving it on?
The only time they are turned off is if we get a real cold snap and want to do some maintenance. Otherwise they are on the entire season, and the VFD slows the pumps down a lot when everything is frozen up. If you do turn them off, make sure everything is frozen up first. Note that not all pumps can be operated this way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimatetreehugger
i run an old dairy pump... it's a BB4. i shut it off when nothing is expected to run, but always wait to shut it off when things are certainly done running. i'm curious... i don't think it'd handle it well if it was left on the entire season.... and on 220 volts it pulls a lot of electricity. but i'm assuming that my type of pump is the kind dr Tim is saying it shouldn't be operated 24/7.
picked .50gpt last evening, testing just under 2% nice solid early run, making nice med amber
There are plenty of folks who know more than I do about this, but dairy pumps typically are made to run only 12-15" Hg. Keeping them cool is an issue, especially if you're trying to get as much vacuum from them as you can. When the sap lines freeze, there is very little CFM moving through the pumps, which can cause them to overheat.
made my first batch yesterday knowing the cold was going to freeze my sap collection bins. Very good syrup.
What do you do if your plastic bins are completely frozen????
Not too much can do if weren't able to drain, they will thaw, look for cracked valves as they do. Most the time they hold up fine.
Yep agree with that, I've used dairy pump, you can get them to run 16-18 depending on model. Im more familiar with the delaval vp series. These models when overheat will usually start to experience vanes that stick and you'll start to hear it clanging, different than a pressure difference across the pump from a severe leak. Although I've never seen a vane break from this it is possible.
I suppose a vaccum regulator would help. I've ran mine for days at a time, just have to regulate vaccum. As long as it has oil it's fine.
First boil today. Yup, you read that right. Today with high wind and near zero temperatures this morning. Frozen up? Oh yea. But nothing a little heat couldn't fix - plus a couple of replacement fittings. I had Dave on site today, our heavy construction company's water break foreman. Darn good thing we weren't called for an emergency water break. He was busy at my sugarhouse!
All in all, it was a good exercise to get the rookie team tuned up. Only had just over 1,000 gallons of raw sap so I concentrated it lightly to about 6% to make it last a couple hours. No syrup today but the pan is sweetened and ready to put out on the next boil.
Ken
i get my pump to run around 27-28". it does get warm... but i can spray some water, or put a bit of snow on it and it doesn't hiss back at me... so i'm assuming it's not "to hot". it's a big pump. i also put a 20" box fan on it later in the season when it warms up a bit. the thing has been used by me for 8 years, and by the former owner for 10-12 years. i think keeping good, fresh oil in rigs like that is very important. back when these pumps were made, was the era when they made things right and not cheap!
Tim,
Thanks for this post:
Collected about 7,250 gal of sap over the weekend (about 1.3 gpt) before it froze up again yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately not real sweet, 1.45 Brix, but will likely come up when things get rocking. An "early" season run...slow accumulation. Trees need to thaw out a bit more and have a good recharge cycle and snow needs to melt back from the tree base some.
Looking like no sap weather until early-mid next week.
was getting nervous I'd miss a lot of the season.
I will 100% back that! Grab onto some of those older dairy pumps and you'll know they aren't cheap!! That's a fact they use very high carbon steel and made things to last.
Deffinantly a different system than a delaval vp! They don't run over 20" very well.
Attachment 22123
What's wrong with this picture? Ran across this one in the woods today checking lines and thought you would appreciate. Clearly too tired for proper tapping!
Double taps are on wrong tree? It looks like the single tapped tree is larger diameter?
Neither one looks big enough for 2 taps
Yup. Also found a dangling drop line we missed during tapping.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowsap
Yep, prime example of someone who is unconscious! Precisely why I do everything myself. It's pretty clear that the larger tree should have had the second tap as it looks close to a 20-inch tree, versus the other looking to be 16" or so.
I guess you'll have that on those big jobs!!
Hey at least it's better than my neighbor who would put Four Taps on both of those trees! I'll have to stop and take a picture of his tree someday it's a complete joke and probably a great way to kill your Sugarbush especially when you don't untap every year and leave 3 to 5 unclosed entry holes for disease and bugs
Anybody else getting bored! I guess I'll Go kick the snowbank again today!
Yup. So much to do once temperatures come back up but can't do anything right now. Could go check the woods for problems but I'll still need to do it again when I turn the vacuum back onQuote:
Originally Posted by blissville maples
Ken
Yeah, being on the trader midday is not a good sign for maple activity! We stayed busy the last couple days doing a complete sweep of our 4 bushes to look for downed lines after that huge windstorm a few days back. Nothing on mainlines thankfully but a dozen or so laterals to fix. Not sure Tuesday will do much for us here except loosen things up but Wed/Wed night looks like a gusher.
Hey Drew Lamb, you could go hang out and wait for melting temperatures at the Whammy Bar! My wife and I went there a few years back after stopping to buy some buckets from you. What a cool little joint. And its located at "Maple Corner". Have a great season!
Ken
Ha! That's fantastic. Yeah, the Whammy's been closed throughout the pandemic. Just so small. Everyone is on everyone else's lap just to fit a dozen people in there. But no doubt an awesome community spot!Quote:
Originally Posted by TapTapTap
You guys certainly have stepped it up from bucket days, wow. Guess most of us start that way and it often goes one direction after that! We got up to about 700 buckets before switching over. I think that was 2012. Hmm, that means my oldest laterals are 10 years old. Wonder if I need to think about switching that stuff out. Not sure I know what happens to tubing when it reaches the end of it's lifespan. Is it really not useable? Perhaps at some point it just starts to fall apart or not hold fittings well?
Good luck with your season Ken!
I spent 9 1/2 hours on Thursday and Friday fixing fisher chews on 304 taps on a 1,500' long 1" mainline. I did 81 repairs from replacing multiple chewed drops to 15' long sections of completely chewed 5/16 line. The only way to find the "hidden chews" (one bite on a drop) was to run my hand over every inch of the 5/16 tubing and every drop. That made for two rather unpleasant days. Time to set the traps out again. Plus one deer chew, but that one was easy to spot.
The power went out during the storm, turning off my heaters, making all my pvc shatter. What a mess. So tomorrow I will be working in there again...
****. Feel for you treehugger. We've probably all been there in one way or another. We have no heat in our sugarhouse so there's always a long list of ice mitigation to do at the end of a boil.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimatetreehugger
Is that the same Joe that sold me all those 15 gal kegs a few years back? Still using them, but like you have mostly switched to 40s. Curious, how do you know the damage is fisher and not porcupine or squirrel or whatever? Most of our line chew is squirrel, but you can definitely tell when it's a porcupine instead. Just shredded. I don't think there's much to be done with a shotgun to help knock back the squirrel population, perhaps I'm wrong there, but I've taken out some porcupine and have noticed a huge difference. They are pretty territorial and can occupy large parts of a stand, so taking one out can save a lot of damage and a lot of tree girdling. I never feel good about it but feel the need to protect the resource.
Drew,
Yes, the same Joe. The fishers bite and chew the lines. You can see the two fang punctures about an inch or so apart top and bottom of the tubing.They do not nick or cut them off like squirrels will sometime do.
When I do manage to trap one of the fishers, the damage goes away for a while.
Joe
How would you describe each different chewer’s damage? I’m new and knock on wood haven’t seen any yet. But I sure would like to know what to look for, if anyone would be so kind as to describe each critters signature?
I've set up a temperature monitoring device in my sugarhouse kitchen. It connects to the internet and notifies me of freezing or extreme hot temperature. I also have an internet camera aimed at the RO and it's clear enough to read the system temperature so I can monitor the actual condition. I won't have either system if the power fails but I'll get several notifications when that happens. I've got a stand-by generator and auto switch for the house. But I need to manually switch to the sugarhouse. If all that fails, I can grab the Buddy heater.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimatetreehugger
Ken
Attachment 22146
From my experience, squirrels will nick, make a small cut or chew a whole or chew off a 5/16 line or chews large holes in main line or chew on saddles. Deer will raggedly chew 5/16 line with their molars or just cut the line off. I have never had any deer damage on a main line. I have had coyotes chew the 5/16 into small pieces 1/2" to 1" long, chew up 5' to 8' of 5/16 in one place and even chew on saddles. Fishers will bite 5/16 and leave fang marks that pierce the 5/16 or just bite up an entire 40" drop line. You can tel it is a fisher by the small cat like tooth pierce marks. I have never had any main line fisher damage. Bears will leave large tooth punctures that are several inches apart. With my first attack by a woodpecker, I though a kid had vandalized my main line. The hole were so perfectly round, equal in size and spaced the same distance apart, that I thought that the holes had been drilled in the line. I just had my first woodpecker attack in 5 years this season, with four holes in a 12" space. Just great for vacuum. The only thing good about woodpeckers is that they seem to always make a big enough hole that you can hear the air 20' away.
This may not be a complete list or exactly describe each problem, but this is what I have found.
Joe
Finished taping in today. Man snow is deep in Weston. 4’ in places. But it’s done.
3500 +\~ is what we did. More coming next year. Hoping this week starts us all off to a great season. And that the prices of wholesale go up as well.
Best of luck
Thanks Joe!! That’s very interesting and good to know. I’m going to be walking all our lines tomorrow and again, knock on wood! I know we have a fox and sometimes her kits in the wood, but we named our operation after her (Foxy Loxy Maple) so maybe she will get protective and the others will stay?
Does tomorrow open the sap flood gates??? Weather forecast looks like it'll be drenched with sap.
Just tested my sap brix and it's 3.75 ish on calibrated spectrometer. RO should get me above 8 easily.
Man if I only had a few thousand trees that put out 3.75 %Quote:
Originally Posted by tapdrinker
Life would be great. Mine tested just below 2
i'm guessing there will be no gusher up in my neck of the woods. barely above freezing here today. upper 40's to lo 50's wednesday through Friday, but also no freezing. probably have a half way decent run followed by a long trickle. sure hope i'm wrong though!
I jump up and down with happiness... I'm getting an average sap above 5.5 brix from a collection of all my trees. YES!!!!
Sorry for my excitement. First real season for me with all my new equipment. It's running great here in Randolph VT right now.
I should mention-I only tap sugar maple. NO red, silver, etc.
Did you toss any ice out or was that straight from the tree? If from the tree, that is excellent sugar content. Yard trees or woods trees?
I would probably check my hydrometer or get a new one, just to be sure, I suppose not impossible but that's quite high. I'll see 4-5 on my one bucket tree but I think some evaporation is involved.
I grabbed 800 gallons that had big ice chunk in it and it tested 2.3.
Well all leaks are pretty well found. Had new bush up to 29" yesterday, and 27.5 on another. One still at 25 so some more critter problems there. And my remote generator site at 18" on dairy pump, no high vac this Year which is kind of sad, but this site may be a thing of the past next year as I focus closer to home.
Things pretty locked up still only about a half gallon per tap. Ground is becoming visible so I think after this warm spell we'll be looking for some bumper runs, until then the trees are a little locked up.
picked .30gpt at dusk yesterday testing 2.2%, good freeze last night here next few days should be epic
@Tim - yes straight from the spile-nothing to do with the buckets at all. Straight up from the spile onto refractometer with atc. Oh... I'm so itching to have enough to boil now. I'll probably ro this afternoon and boil first thing in the morning. One tree was over 7%! It hasn't been tapped ever and probably 100 yrs old or more.