I have been thinking alot about this over the past few days so here goes.

I have been a sugarmaker for 45 plus years and have made syrup on a pan and from high concentrate and everything in between. It is my present train of thought to keep producing as much syrup per tap as possible with the modern technology afforded us today. Now having said that am I any further ahead then when I did all of my sugaring on a gravity system with 7/16th spouts.

I consistantly then made more then a quart per tap and all I had to do was go through the woods everyday and make sure no mainlines had broken or come apart and the same with the branch lines. I would tap when sugaring got here and not fall into the tapping in January or early Febuary detail and not have to worry about frost pushing out spouts and causing vacuum leaks. I didn't have a huge power bill for running of the vaccuum and heat bill for keeping the RO room warm during those gauranteed cold spells. My maintainence was small verses what it is today to keep up a efficient vacuum system. I didn't have to buy new spouts every year as I tapped later then what people do today so bacteria wasn't a issue as I could go right into buddy syrup with no problem.

So my thoughts are starting to be, yes we make more syrup but do we put more money in the bank.

I don't want to see this get into argument, but I would like to see comments.