January Journal 2019

The new year is here along with the hopes of a good maple season. I have some tubing upgrades in the works but have dropped expansion plans. My long term goal used to be to upgrade everything before I retire, which is 4 1/2 years from now, to double my tap count. The plan now is to maintain what I've got and most likely sell out when I retire.

My son and youngest daughter now live in NC and the desire to be near them and retire to some place warm made me rethink my plan. My daughter got married in September and her and her husband just bought a house. There is also talk of grandchildren in the future although that happy news hasn't happened yet.

I'm not sure what I'll do when I move down there to keep busy but my son has a 1931 Model A Ford slant window that it's in need of enough restoration to get it back on the road. There is also the possibility of doing some extreme south tree tapping because they do have some maples and freeze thaw cycles in NC. The natives won't know what to think!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you too Russel.
Back when I lost my long time help, when all 3 graduated college in the same year, my plans also changed. I sold off one of my 2 leases, initially cut from 1320 taps down to 650. Then my brother-in-law (BIL) came on board. We are both retired but we are hoping to get between 900-1000 taps this year. Yesterday my oldest son, a good friend of his, a 10 yr old grandson, my BIL and I worked changing drops in my one lease. That was the first time for the first 3 to help in the woods, with the exception of my oldest son who helped me run my first ever mainline, on gravity, back in 2004.
All 4 of my kids are all quite local but 2 of the grandkids aren't. A granddaughter chooses to live in L.A. and a grandson chooses to live wherever the Navy chooses. He has 5 more years come next month if he doesn't decide to re-up.
With the kids so local and the fact that both my wife and I can't take hot weather we will not be moving south. The AC bill runs too much now because we need to keep the t-stat set at 65 all summer and 63 all winter.
I now hope to be able to keep doing maple into my early 80's, if the good lord allows. While my dad was not a syrup maker he did work in the woods most days until he was 86 or 87, cutting firewood for himself and my brother, both had outdoor wood boilers. My brother and I even bought him a hydraulic splitter but he preferred splitting with wedges and a maul.
Happy New Year to all the Maple Traders and it would be great to finally have the world at peace. To all a great maple season!

Happy New Year fellow traders, 2018 was definitely an experience. In chronological order...

Finished tubing up our 1st 40 in -20 below weather. We lost Grandpa Feb 15th to cancer and started tapping the 16th. Went through an extreme learning curve from running a flat pan to a 3 membrane RO, vac pumps, and 4x16 evaporator. Survived syrup season with below average yields due to weather. Worked around the clock selling retail throughout the summer, lost my wife's grandma in July. Lost our dog in Sept to cancer. Worked tirelessly to drive sales through the fall into early winter selling all our syrup retail in our first year of large scale operation.

2018 was full of ups and downs trials and tribulations but we came out alright growing our sales by 6x from 2017 to 2018 with goals to do the same in 2019. We're currently working on doubling the tap count and developing relationships to obtain contracts with big players to move more maple than I thought was possible.

Hoping your 2019 is filled with family, friends and 1,000's of leaking maples.

I decided to fix/reroute my pump-out line to the road today. The pipe did go around the right side of the locust tree, and I was getting pretty worried every time the wind blows like it was the other night. Can't believe it didn't come down, although it is leaning more, and the roots are higher out of the ground too. If the tree comes down on sap lines that is just a minor inconvenience, but if I can't pump out during a major run (and that's exactly when it would happen), that is bad. lol


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If you decide to cut that tree, be very careful. It is a recipe for a barber chair. If you do decide, start with a slightly smaller face cut, then do a plunge cut to leave the hinge defined, the from the plunge cut, cut out to the back. that way the tree might hold on until you exit the back. be ready to get out of the way as soon as anything starts to move and if necessary, leave the saw. A saw can be replaced if needed, you can't. Might be a good place to ask a friend with more tree felling experience to help.

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Originally Posted by maple flats

If you decide to cut that tree, be very careful. It is a recipe for a barber chair. If you do decide, start with a slightly smaller face cut, then do a plunge cut to leave the hinge defined, the from the plunge cut, cut out to the back. that way the tree might hold on until you exit the back. be ready to get out of the way as soon as anything starts to move and if necessary, leave the saw. A saw can be replaced if needed, you can't. Might be a good place to ask a friend with more tree felling experience to help.

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Thanks for the advice. Now that there isn't a cable semi-helping holding it up, I am hoping the next good wind storm will take it down. I'll give it a year or two before trying to get it down, the top is also being held up by nearby maples. In my younger years I would have cut it without even thinking about it. Now, I don't even drop a 10 inch tree without someone else around. And if it's big enough (like this one) I do have somebody else with more experience to do it.

I'm jealous of you guys working on your lines with no snow on the ground. I thought last year was bad. This year snowshoeing started mid-November:mad:

We worked in our woods last Saturday and we only had 1" of snow. It sure was nice, however barkless limbs under the snow are extremely slippery when stepped on.
Not needing snowshoes is a huge plus. I remember one year I had big problems climbing steep hills with 3+' of snow on the ground. On the flat or gentle slopes, not too bad, up steep slopes (45-50%) were very difficult indeed. However the bush does better with a blanket of snow.

Been really busy of late trying to get everything ready for the coming season.
Sap tank is placed, vac pump is set and hooked up. Did all the major work on the lines, just need to do leak check.

Sugarhouse is cleaned and ready for the Dept of Ag to do its inspection.

Now just waiting for the weather to cooperate. We have not had any cold spell yet! 1 may be 2 days that the day time temps never got above freezing but mostly it has been in the 40's or higher!
What if I never get a cold spell? Will I have a season?
In the ten years that I have been doing this this is the 1st year where we had no freeze up yet. I am hoping for a few weeks in Jan to get cold.
As of right now not really worrying about anything, I guess I could not change anything anyway so why worry right?

I was able to spend another day in the woods today. I'm replacing a 700' mainline and I got most of it done. I've still got to put on more wire ties, drill in the manifolds and connect the laterals to finish it. I hope that we don't get to much now between now and next Sunday when I'll be able to work on it again.

Sounds like you've been busy Russell, I've been busy also, still bottling syrup and getting things setup for spring. I plan on tapping in 6 weeks. I still want to get down there to see your bubbler setup but I don't know when it will be.

My wife and I have been busy running new mainlines,replacing 20 plus year old stuff. Have got 900’ done so far,new wire,mainline,ties etc. We have probably over 1000’ to go yet,but we will just do whatever possible,and not bother tapping a section of bush again this year if we don’t get it done. Too many bugs,and ticks in the bush to do it in the summer,plus with sudden death of her twin sister last summer we have decided to enjoy life more camping,touring etc when the weather is nice

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Originally Posted by n8hutch

Sounds like you've been busy Russell, I've been busy also, still bottling syrup and getting things setup for spring. I plan on tapping in 6 weeks. I still want to get down there to see your bubbler setup but I don't know when it will be.

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Like you I've got too many things to do and not enough time to get them done. I'm happy with the progress that I've made so far but it seems like it will be time to tap and I won't be ready. Somehow I always manage to be ready when it time to go though. I want to be ready to tap by the first of February. I normally tap on Presidents Day weekend but have started sooner and later depending on the weather. Let me know when you can fit a visit in and I'll plan to be here.

My Dad and I just put up the fourth side to the new sugarhouse and have to finish leveling the top plate. Then we are ready for the trusses...with 1200' of vacuum line, pump line, and mainline to put out for the expansion it seems time is running a little close. It will be nice when it's done. I am hoping the trusses will be up next week and maybe a good portion of the sheathing.

Mike

I finally made it back into the woods this morning and finished the mainline that I was working on. It was cold and I was pretty much chilled through by the time I got back to the house for lunch. I had to replace the recirculation pump on my RO and the inside flapper on my releaser. I got both of those done this afternoon too. It was nice to work in the heated RO room after the cold morning in the woods.

I was planning to go to Bascom's today but decided it would be best to get the work in the woods done before the big snow storm tomorrow. I'll go to Bascom's next Saturday to sell my remaining bulk syrup and buy the taps and other supplies that I need. It wasn't looking to good at first but I will be ready to tap when it's time to go.

4’ of snow in the woods. 2” of crust on top so you have get the snowshoes all the way up each step. Then you miss one step on a 45 degree incline going downhill and it’s 552 pickup of spouts, tees, straight connectors and whatever else you were carrying. What an awesome day!!! More snow Wednesday, can’t wait! And I do this for fun, what a moron :cool:

Finished rerouting the head tank and plumbing in the shack today. Still want to wash the pans but that shouldn't be too bad of a job. I have some work in the woods left to do as well. Seems like its 0-5 degree wind chill each of the past two weekends, so I've put that off and done other projects. Hopefully I will find a decent day soon, and I only need an afternoon I think.

I am looking forward to boiling this year. Should be the first time I have most, if not all, my sugar wood split before the season. That will make life easier.

I have spent all my free time over the last few weeks in the woods ahead of the snowstorm. I have shortened all my long laterals and added many new entries to the mainline to try and get to 5 taps per lateral. I have built 2 new small releasers to replace my aquatec pumps at my parents property and set up the new gast pumps on balance tanks and added temp switches and hour meters. All three releasers this year have dump counters on so i can kind of track what sections of woods are doing what. I have epoxied the floor of the sugar house and fixed the warped top rail of the evaporator. I switched all the drops on my 3/16 to 5/16 taps and drops and all remaining taps are new waiting to be drilled in. I am getting the utility sink ready to install and my tankless water heater is going to be delivered on Wed. Thursday i plan on setting up the pan washer i have built to hopefully make pan cleaning quick and painless. I have also added a winch and cables so i can raise and lower my hoods by myself if needed. i would like to find a small (20 gallon) tank possibly wall mounting to put my sweet into while washing pans if anyone has any suggestions on that. I would like to mount this high enough so after cleaning pans i can gravity feed the sweet back into the sap pan. i have to still replace the 3/4 hp motor on the RO procon pump and run 220volt line to RO closet for new 1.5 hp i got for it. Its going to be cold and snowy the next week so i should be able to get most of this done. Still plan on tapping presidents week unless something changes weather wise. Jeff

Been pretty well bedridden for a week now with a slipped disc. Doctor asked on a scale of 1-10 about the pain I would give it a 12. Good thing trees aren’t tapped yet

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Originally Posted by Bruce L

Been pretty well bedridden for a week now with a slipped disc. Doctor asked on a scale of 1-10 about the pain I would give it a 12. Good thing trees aren’t tapped yet

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That sucks! Are you going to be able to tap this year?

I made my Bascom's run this morning to sell my remaining syrup from last season. I bought the taps and a couple of other things that I needed for the new season while I was there. Next Saturday, a trip to Lapierre to buy a new high pressure pump for my RO. After that I'll be ready for the 2020 season.