Spring Harvest Maple Farm - 2009

The plan is to start tapping Thursday morning. Taking the morning off and working the rest of the day from home so I can keep an eye on things. I have some more minor line work to do and have about 350 taps already setup so I’ll tackle those first. Then over the weekend I’ll install some more laterals/drops and build another sap ladder to hopefully reach my 500 tap goal. I still need to get the tanks cleaned and the releaser plumbed, but I’ll take care of that tomorrow night. Test fired the evaporator over the weekend and it ran good, just need to work out some bugs.

Hoping to boil over the weekend and make some syrup. I haven’t had syrup in almost a month and I think I’m going through withdrawals… I have all new tubing and fittings. Will the first run produce quality syrup or will I need to wait a couple of runs?

Best of luck to everybody and bring on the BIGSAP.

Josh- give a call if you need evap. help... and for some reason our 130 tap bush ran the best its ever run the very first day we tapped it- without vacuum - go figure...

Thanks...will do. Hoping to have enough to boil this weekend so I'll likely be giving you a call then.

Yesterday morning I got my tanks and releaser setup and was pulling 18” at the pump and 17” at the releaser with everything closed. I then started off taping my 1300’ mainline w/ 250’ branch line and finished that mid afternoon. For now that’s tapped out with approximately 150 taps. I can probably get another 40 taps with some long laterals. Once I got back to the releaser it was reading 1.5”. Walked back through my lines and found the camlock fittings from Bascom’s need to be extremely tight to hold vacuum because the OD of the barb is the same as the ID of pipe so the hose clamps are doing all of the clamping and sealing. The 200’ branch line was used and I found 6-7 old tap holes in the bottom of the pipe I had missed when I was installing fittings. I sealed those up with electrical tape for now and got back to the releaser and was pulling 16”. I then moved onto my 900’ mainline and put in about another 150. There’s still more laterals that I need to put drops on which will get me another 50+ and another short section of mainline with a sap ladder that’ll get me another 50-75. After finished tapping that mainline I was still pulling 16-17” at the releaser so that’s good. I think at this point I’m around 300 taps installed and should be able to get another 180, hopefully by the end of the weekend.

I have more lateral and tapping work to be completed this weekend and hopefully will be boiling Saturday night. I collected about 30 gallons last night and at noon my wife reported that I had about 80 gallons in the tank so today should be a good day.

I collected another 120 gallons yesterday and looking at the tank this morning there's another 100-120 in there again. I should get some more today once it thaws out so I'll be boiling this afternoon.

Josh,
happy to hear it... still sloooow here in the lakes region... haven't check yet but maybe it ran last night... got to mid 40's here in Ossipee last night.

The story is the same here. I had high expectations for yesterday but, the run never amounted to much at all other than a few buckets around the open yard. Here's hoping today will be better. Then again, the weather is only calling for a high of 35. At least there's sunshine today.

Good luck everyone.....

It was a good weekend overall. I found another half bag of spout reducers so my total on Thursday was actually 250. Yesterday I did put out another 100 so I am up to 350+/-. I got one sap ladder working and it’s pretty neat watching them do their thing. I found some more leaks and am only dropping 0.5” between the pump and releaser. I still have some more lateral work to do and another short sap ladder, but I still expect to reach 450+/- and will put out about 20 buckets. I hope to have it completed this weekend.

Yesterday the taps were running good. Unfortunately it all ended up on the ground. I started the day with 100 gallons in the tanks and ended the day with 100 gallons. With the way they were running I bet I lost at least 150 gallons of sap, not including what I may have lost that night. Not very happy about that. When I connected my two tanks I must’ve loosened the bung fitting because it had a solid leak around the fitting. The tanks are in a wet area so it wasn’t noticeable on the ground. Chalk it up to a learning experience.

Boiled about 250 gallons last night, 50 of which just went to fill the pans. I’ve got a noticeable gradient in the pan, just not close to syrup yet. With the sap I lost I would’ve been eating pancakes this morning. Really happy with the evaporator, except for all the sap that’s on the floor. The evap. really rips with that blower on it and it’s sending sap out over the side and onto the floor. I’ll need to come up with something to fix that. Also need to come up with a better method of shutting down. Ended stopping too early and flooding my pans too much to get all the sap out of my head tank.

Glad to see things are cooling down. I don’t have the time because of work to collect and boil. It looks like it’s going to warm up again next weekend.

So your using both of those tanks?

No. I was going to but can't figure out a good way to fix the broken one that I'd feel confident in and the other one has a pretty good smell. It's been airing out for a while and has only gotten marginally better. I'll look into it when I have more time. Currently using (2) 150-gallon plastic stock tanks plumbed together. Doesn't give me much capacity, but it works for now.