Spring Harvest Maple Farm 2010

It seems like everybody's going for it now and I can't be left out. I'm amazed the season's a week early...almost two weeks as I could've tapped last weekend and would've gotten something most of this week.

It looks like with the weather everything should run for the forseeable future. I should have enough to start boiling Sunday night.

Still some last minute items to get done, which will be tonight. Tapping first thing in the morning with the help of Dill. I'll be heading over to his place Sunday to help him out. The rest of the weekend will be getting more mainline and tubing run to get another 50-100 trees online.

Tomorrow I'll have all of last year's 370 taps online and coming back to the SH via a 2-pipe sap ladder. If that works as designed, this will be a great year...no trucking sap. The big issue is I'm completely reliant on vacuum, which I'm not 100% confident in my pump. It's still making noises when it dumps. I'm still getting 20"+, so as long as it makes it through the season, then I'm happy. After the season I'll take it apart and see what's going on.

All I can say is bring on the BIG SAP because I have an RO to buy for next season and they don't come cheap.

yes it is early. I am still learning my stuff. this year will be a big learning curve for me. trying to get everything dialed in. I don't think I will expand much for next year. except for a stainless tank and a few other things. after next year we'll see.

sap's not running to much today wind is killing the run. but the rest of the weekend is looking great perfect weather!!! good luck...pray for big sap!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by red maples

good luck...pray for big sap!!!

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This just made me chuckle, Josh's sugar bush and sap ladder is right next door to a church. Does that mean it runs more on a sunday?
The wind is cold, but the sun is strong, the forecast should be for big sap.

Josh sounds like your almost there. Just came home to see if its running and it is. Turned pump on and back to work till 1:30 tonight. Wife will shutter down later. We will be boiling all day tomorrow from the looks of the tank. Michelle run pump till 11:00 last night when it stopped running.

Dill good luck over there sounds like your just about ready also.

Havent heard from red roof maples (home of the boiling sodas)on tapping yet. Always liked to read your blog Russ. Keith

Dill, I didn't pick up on that...pretty good.

I got word from Russ that he'll be tapping tomorrow afternoon after work. I don't know what his official tap count will be. Last I heard he had 70 more than last year ready to go.

Keith, you need to get a bigger rig if you're going to spend all day boiling...have fun putting the pallet wood to her. If you're going to wait until mid-day to turn the pump on, I'd leave it on 24/7 so you don't miss a drop of sap.

my lines froze up at about 2:00am last night and turned thepump on as soon as the cloud broke and melted everything. its running but not as much as yesterday.only got about 100 gallons today!!! SO far.

Lets start with how my weekend ended, I have burned my pan again...fortunately not bad and just needs a cleaning to get back in shape. The syrup pan valve where the float was wasn't working properly so I was regulating flow with the valve on the opposite side. I think the bubbles coming into the float box were confusing the true height of the sap. Also, I used the fiberglass type gasket and I don't think it compressed evenly keeping the pan level.

Back to the rest of the weekend. Alden and I got me tapped in Saturday with everything online around 3pm. I spent the rest of the afternoon finding vacuum leaks and making repairs to squirrel chews. By the end of the day, I had 21" at the bottom of the ladder. I hope to get the rest online and more this weekend.

The sap ladder is working beautifully. At least on Sunday it thawed out about the same time as the trees do. I'm thinking I'm going to walk down at night and drain it. One thing I found odd is I get better vac. transfer w/ a single pipe than 2. Running a single pipe I lose about 1" from releaser to bottom of ladder, with both open it's about 5".

Sugar content is low. I measured 1.6% last night. I ended up with about 300 gallons over the weekend and filled my pans and boiled off about 120 gal...still some more left in the tank. With everything dumping into the 850 gal tank, it's hard to measure daily totals.

It wasn't my fault this time, I wasn't even there! I drove by a few weeks ago and saw you standing on a ladder working on lines. I was tempted to stop in but I had my kids and figured you didn't need any distractions. I might have to swing in to see the hollow core rope trick, I bought some tubing to play with this year.

You didn't buy that tubing over at Gooches did you? I ran out saturday and remembered they had some there. 20 cents a ft is a bit much. Hey Josh gave me some used drops that aren't being used by me either, swing by and you can have them.

Nope, ordered it up from Bascoms for about half that price. Now I just need to figure out how to use it. I'm not sure I got the right fittings, just taps and tees.
Why wont you guys use em?