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There's a mention of Chester Village, too! That's where I'm located. Woo-hoo, Chester is famous. :)

Keep it coming, I'm enjoying the installments.

GO

Just a quick postlude to this thread. I successfully boiled on this rig until last year, when I bought a Mason 2x3. However toward the end it was pretty problematic, mostly due to the fact that the...

Hey Aaron, I'm curious, why did you go with a custom 20x30 setup from Mason, rather than his standard 2x3? If you were only planning on doing a dozen trees max, I could understand that, but with 50+...

One thing I don't understand is this:



You have tapped 12 trees and got 30 gallons in that first week? That is an excellent first run. If you normally get six quarts of syrup, you are already...

Bigshuss is right, and you can do either of those things. But if it were me, I would be too excited to wait for my first syrup of the year, and I would cook it off to syrup.

GO

I have had some very concentrated sap, after tossing ice, that looks a little brown, and is very sweet (nature's RO). Not sure it was quite that brown though.

GO

Interesting. Sorry to post bad advice for people working on a large scale. I'm surprised. I would have guessed that even on a large scale it would be more efficient to locate last year's tap in...

And another thing: don't be an idiot (like I was) and jump around all over the tree from year to year, looking for roots to tap over, and big limbs to tap under. It makes finding old tapholes a...

That is up there! With this little bit of sun and warm temps today, taps running, or not yet?

GO

Nice! I love to see a couple drips when I tap. I tapped yesterday in the snow - no drips then! I'm just north of you, in Chester. My sugar shack is around 900' elevation. I imagine you must be...

There is one area I've walked through a few times that might be a good prospect for tubing. It's too far from the sugar shack for me to have considered it, but it is near an old logging road that...

LOL. I do have plenty of slope, that's for sure. I've thought about tubing, but it really doesn't appeal right now. Most of my maples (all sugar maples) are mixed in amongst the forest, very...

Yeah, if you don't have vacuum, you're probably looking at a two to three days of sap running, but it really tails off, and the sugar in it really drops. That is, it will just keep dripping slower...

Yeah, for sure it's over a foot of snow on the ground. Hopefully that won't keep the trees from running this week.

Thanks!

GO

Tapped today. Quite the snowstorm driving home. My niece came along, she has been getting more and more into it the last few years. She picked it right up, and was able to drill, install the taps...

Nice! Good luck! I'm tapping on Monday.

For most of the arch it doesn't matter (aside from weight and space, as you say). But I would consider picking up enough to do the top row (against the rim) in half bricks. Otherwise you're going...

Thinking about tapping next Monday unless the forecast changes radically.

Gabe

Yes, this has been asked many times. There is a ton of info on the question on this site already. Basically, what it boils down to (pardon the pun) is this:

Drill too soon and you risk your...

Anyone want to comment on this protocol for a divided flat pan? ^^^ Or have any thoughts about the question at the end?

Thanks!

GO

Definitely will be watching it closely, as this is my first year on this evaporator - always batch boiled before. What concerns and confuses me is that most folks seem to be saying that the oil...

I would love to learn more about tapping depth on gravity, but I don't think any of the videos you suggested mention that. Are there other resources you could suggest?

Thanks again,

GO

Well now that is interesting!!! I had always thought that 1.5 - 2" was the limit (not counting heavier bark). I thought more than that and you don't get much benefit compared to how much more of an...

Okay, so let me see if I have this right. Please correct me where I'm wrong:

1 - While I'm sweetening the pans, no defoamer. I'm guessing it will probably take me two or more boils at 15-30...

Oh, and just to be clear, I was planning to bring a little bottle of vegetable oil, not synthetic stuff.

Gabe