Tapped 50

Thought I'd get out today and tap one of my pipelines that was the furthist from my house. I decided to leave the snomobile behind and snowshoe to the pipeline and at the same time check trees along the way that I will be putting buckets on next week. Wow, lots of crust and sinking down about a foot. Turned out to be quite a workout. The pipeline is located about 1/2 mile from my house so snowshoeing ended up to be a mile round trip. It wasn't bad tapping because I actually could take a break between trees. I think this is the first time I have ever looked for the shortest distance between trees. LOL Even managed to break a shoe about 100 feet from a snomobile trail I was trying to shortcut to on my way home, and had to get creative and rest my boot in the sled I had my gear in just to keep going. Hopefully next wk. is better - I have another 100 taps to put out and think it might be a good idea to have someone else with me just in case. :lol:

We went out the past weekend to check things out too. All I have to say is, our taps will be 3 feet higher than last year!

We hung 20 buckets today just to get things started. We began with trees on south slopes in full sun. It was running pretty good, we'll see what the next few days bring, then we'll tap about another 100. Snowshoes are a must.

I will be putting in my tubing taps tomorrow, and my buckets this weekend. Sugarhouse is ready and so am I. Hope to do my first boil next Friday.

We went out today to collect for the first time this year. :lol: We collected a little over 10 gallons today. We have about 70 buckets out now. We will probably put the rest of our buckets out next week. Mostly frozen sap in the buckets. Still quite a few dry buckets.

We haven't tapped yet- and originally planned on tapping this weekend. Now the weather is looking like it's going to stay on the low side (yes, I see mon, tues, and wed are above freezing). With it being cloudy and such for most of the week I think we may wait until next weekend. Anyone having similar thoughts?

I wanted to tap everything this weekend. the snow didnt help, spent most of this afternoon snowblowing and shoveling when I should have been setting up the vac. so IF my buddy can set the vac up tomorrow morning while I'm at work then we'll tap the 325 +/- on vac in the afternoon, and probably wait another week to tap the gravity lines and buckets.

yeah im gonna be gettin in this week as well. out this AM in the woods and noticed quite a num,ber of snow rings around the trees even with the new snow. All hands on deck fellas the times acomin'

We spent the morning cleaning out the tanks and the rest of the sugarhouse. We're ready to put the mainline in when it defrosts. It may be a while. It was frozen solid today, and it doesn't look like it will run until some time next week. When it does, we're ready!

So glad that the maple world is getting ready for sugaring season. Here at Bacon Farm Maple Products over the weekend we set tanks and got the releasers and pumps out, tested them and cleaned everything and set them in the woods. The weather looks like we may be making syrup this coming weekend. Ready or not syrup season is here!!!!:):lol: