Spring Harvest 2012

First post of the season and almost ready. Spent Saturday getting the SH picked up (kind of), tanks cleaned, figured out the RO plumbing (re-working it), and made some improvements to the RO room. Today was spent installing 500 taps (long day) and getting some cleanup work done. Tomorrow night, I'll finish getting the RO plumbed. Tuesday or Wednesday will taking the day off to get the rest of the trees tapped, add in the 20+ new ones I found today, and get the vac. running and woods tight. Should be flushing the membranes then as well and the forecast is looking favorable for some runs later this week. It's looking like I'll get 640-650 out of these woods this year, and probably another 100 if I had 1000' of mainline...next season. It's looking like we'll be putting buckets out this season...some that I'm hoping to get (need to knock on doors) and some that Dill's already gotten. Let's see some 3-4% sap! So the buckets will be going in this weekend, and getting my neighbor's 60+ gravity taps in...busy weekend if we're making syrup too.

Also, surprisingly, the trees in the sun were dripping a bit while tapping them and it was <20F outside.

good luck Josh- I hope those buckets work out for you- they have been a great part of our operation since the start...

Go Josh! Still pretty cold here but just need to set the new tanks and probably tap Wed/Thurs. Keep us posted. Bruce

Good Luck Josh!!! 500 in one day thats a good day and like you said long day!!! yeah it has been quite I wanna go and check to make sure any PVC didn't break I had a valve crack last year in that end of Feb freeze after I was tapped in. Hopefluuy no problems with that this year.

Spent yesterday morning getting the last of the taps in and the vac running in the afternoon. 593 taps total and pulling 25" by days end. Sap's not running, so I'm sure there's other leaks I can't find. Looks like we may get enough sap to boil the end of the week. Still plenty to do, and I wouldn't object if it waited a couple more days. Putting the membranes in tonight and getting them flushed.

The bucket trees that we looked at last night are ancient monsters. Its not going to take many of them to hit 150 or so. It always surprises me the difference with the non maple trees between Northwood and Lee, I can't get over the shagbark hickorys mixed in with the maples down there.

Nah saps not running here either. just not warm enough to get the ground soft enough for the trees to pull in water.

Got ~75 gal of sap yesterday, but left it in the tank. Still pulling 25-26" and haven't walked the woods yet to look for little leaks. Looking at the forecast and I think the season's going to open with a bang. Warm day, warm night with rain (low pressure), and warm day tomorrow...sounds like perfect sap running weather to me. Got the membranes in last night and flushed, but still need to get the evap. hooked up...couple of hours today should do the trick. Found out last night, I forgot to clean the sap tubes in the flue pan and they're full of crud...will need to clean those up and wash the syrup pan and should be ready to go.

Josh-Did you drill or cap your membranes?

Yes and found the hole to be a touch bigger than 1/2" and also trimmed off a bit of the nipple so it matched my old 90's...short one is 5/8" long. I ran them last night. Ran well water through them for the initial rinse, and sap through them last night. Once things settled in, I was getting 275-300gph, so compared to 180 from the old NF-90's, pretty happy.

Collected 325 gal of 1.8% last night and ran it through the RO and filled the pans and boiled off ~50 gal of sap. Fortunately everything went off w/out a hitch. Woke up to another ~400 gal in woods tank and sap still coming in. Walked a couple of mainlines this morning and the vac's 26"+, but found four taps I missed and I'm sure there's others. Some trees are still waking up.