Northern Ontario 2022

I tapped 9 holes with buckets today, mostly for experience, but 3 of the next 6 days are forecasted to be above zero, so you never know.

I tapped my first spile in, tap, tap, tap, thud. I smiled when I heard my first thud sound. The biggest lesson I learnt is I need to take a backpack, to hold the drill and hammer.

We are likely still 10 days away from when it will be time to really tap, but if I get some sap, I will get some experience boiling and finishing it, even though it might only be a litre.

It will also be a good experiment to see if tapping these 9 trees a little earlier, will affect how they finish compared to the remaining 26 buckets

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Originally Posted by Swingpure

I tapped my first spile in, tap, tap, tap, thud. I smiled when I heard my first thud sound. The biggest lesson I learnt is I need to take a backpack, to hold the drill and hammer.

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Carpenter’s belt. Even a cheap one. Taps in the pocket, hammer loop for hammer. Drill clipped on the belt, or in a holster.Stack of Buckets in one hand, milk crate with lids in the other. Do about 25 trees before reloading buckets.

Today was supposed to be a rainy day and the only thing on the maple chore list was installing 5 drops and cleaning a barrel. Early in the morning I received a text from a friend who was going to be installing his taps today on his lines. The weather forecast had changed slightly and there were three days above freezing later in the week and today was going to be +8 C (46° F).

I decided I would tap my lines as well. On the second tap, I could see the sap running in the lines. I installed all 75 taps on the lines today, plus the five drops. The snow was knee high to waist deep. There had been a crust on the snow, but with the warm weather, it did not support me, but was a hindrance to lifting my foot out of the snow. It was a real workout for my short legs and pudgy body. I few times I fell in the deep snow and I was like a beached whale trying to get out of the non supportive deep snow. There will be many leg cramps tonight.

I learnt a good way of drilling the holes. I would brace my left elbow against the tree, and that gave me a staple base to drill the hole and more importantly the power to pull the auger out.

Surprisingly although the sap was flowing in the lines, it really was not flowing well in the buckets. Not sure if the vacuum in the lines is the reason.

I am not overly impressed with the buckets and lids. It was a very windy day, the buckets did move. What I was disappointed with the most is although the lids protected the buckets, they do not protect the spouts and I could see water dripping from the trees, onto the spout and into the bucket. I might add some duct tape as a shield.

I did do a rookie mistake on two trees that had a lean to them, installing the bucket on the lean side. It allows the bucket to move more freely and allowed more water to drip on the spout from the trees.

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Don't forget a drop of sap is 2.5" in length in a 3/16 line.
So a few drops coursing through tubing will look more active that a few drops in a bucket.
Our trees burp into the tubing initially and then seem to stop
Thursday might be our first run in PS

Rats……!

The forecasted +2 for Wednesday to Friday has changed to 0, -1, -3. No temperatures above freezing now until March 17th, but hopefully that will change. I now have 84 taps in and will put in 27 more buckets in tomorrow and that way they will be ready if the weather changes.

I collected 5 gallons of sap yesterday. 1.5 gallons in barrel 1, 2 gallons in barrel 2 and 1.5 gallons in barrel 3. Of interest is I tapped the trees for barrel 1 last, and it had the fewest number of taps feeding it. What it does have is the steepest, uninterrupted final slope (the crux) and it seems that it really is the engine of the vacuum. Small sample cycle though. Once the sap starts to flow again, I will walk the lines to see how the line flows along the entire length of it. The good news is they all ran yesterday.

There was zero sap in the nine buckets, which I still find curious.

If the weather forecast had held for Wednesday to Friday, I would have done my initial flush and test on the RO and would have set up my evaporator to be ready to boil.

The five gallons I initially poured out of the barrels into pails to measure, I poured back into the barrels to freeze. I tested the sugar content with my un calibrated refractometer and it showed 2%. I need to get some distilled water to calibrate it.

I finished all of my tapping today, tapping the final 27 taps with drops to pails. I sold the buckets I had, as I was disappointed with them. Some of the pails I dug way down to the ground in the deep snow, so that the drop line was the correct length.

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Today was very sunny and around the freezing mark and some marginal sap was flowing in the lines. Tomorrow will be a hair above freezing. The significant temperature change seems to start around March 14 and I could see doing some boiling by March 17.

I am going to replace the nine buckets I already have up with pails and will do that Thursday.

Looks like I will be tapping on Sunday if next week's weather holds.

Today was +1 and the sap flowed a little bit. I love seeing it flow in the lines. So all 111 taps are in.

I replaced my last nine buckets with drops to 5 gallon pails. I added weights to all of the lids on the 24 pails (36 taps) and remembered to drill some small holes in the pails to allow air to escape when the sap flows in.

Next Wednesday March 16, if the forecast holds, the sap should be gushing for several days. That is when it will become very real.

I am going to finally test my RO Monday and get the evaporator all ready. I hope to be boiling on Thursday.

Its been above 0 here the past three days but not enough to thaw roots and trees.
I tried the weights on the lids before and still had some pails get blown around by the higher winds at times.
Since then I use some paracord and tie the pail handle to the tree and dont have to untie to empty them just re-adjust the cord after and haven't had an issue since.
Kind of a bummer when you go check your pails and they have been blown around and the hose is just dripping sap on the ground.

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Originally Posted by Someclown

Its been above 0 here the past three days but not enough to thaw roots and trees.
I tried the weights on the lids before and still had some pails get blown around by the higher winds at times.
Since then I use some paracord and tie the pail handle to the tree and dont have to untie to empty them just re-adjust the cord after and haven't had an issue since.
Kind of a bummer when you go check your pails and they have been blown around and the hose is just dripping sap on the ground.

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Thanks for the tip. Right now the pails are in deep holes in the snow, but I definitely will tie the handles to the tree when they get more exposed. We also hovered just above freezing the last couple of days, nothing to trigger a major flow.