I think it was 1.5%.
I think it was 1.5%.
Figured I would post on here as I'm getting pretty excited for the season. When are you all planning to tap? Maybe i'm the only one excited and nobody is really browsing the Trader yet. We have only a day or two of woods work left before being ready to tap. I'm ready to tap now as long as the weather would remain cold through the first of January, but my dad is not so sure. We have 13K to do this year and I like the idea of tapping with minimal snow, having more time to tap so we don't have to rush or hire a lot of outside help, and being ready for an early or mid January run. I really think it's in our (and maybe most sugarmakers) economic interest to be all tapped in by mid January. Sure it's a headache to deal with all the cold and draining the evaporator for a cold spell, etc, but financially I think it i makes sense. What do you all think? Anyway, we definitely will begin by January 1 or earlier and I'm excited for what the season has in store. Here is a 2008 publication by Tim Wilmot regarind the timing of tapping. http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc/tapping.pdf I found it very interesting and it certainly challenges the conventional timing of tapping.
I plan to pick up my CV2 spouts next week. My buddy from Alaska will be arriving on the 22nd of January and we will start tapping soon after. He plans to stay until we are all done. Im looking forward to a very productive season with no break downs. Haha. Good luck everyone.
Spud
Started tapping on the 3rd. Should be done the woods around our house by Sunday and then onto the big bush in Jericho. Looks like I'll be walking lines on Wednesday!
Great! I hope you guys have a great year!Originally Posted by WestfordSugarworks
Neil
Send him over to our place when you're done and he can help our tapping crew.
Best of luck to everyone with the 2017 season. See you on the other side.
Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Ctr
http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc
https://mapleresearch.org
Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu
Hello fellow Vt maple masters. We have been making a lot of changes around here. Three of us have got together to combine our forces on one focus this year. We have the sugarhouse now just about in order, new to us 3.5 x10' D&G rig, new to us lapierre RO things are going to be fun. Focusing now on the woods work. Starting this weekend in the 1200 tap bush,making repairs and tightening things up. then moving on to the others. We still need to service vac pump and clean releaser. The other bush I will be fixing all damaged lateral runs with 3/16, as there's the perfect slope for this type setup.We will be watching the weather closer towards the end of this month. Not getting to antsy yet, haven't even seen the drill, let alone found the batteries.
Hope you all have a great season.
JBM maple
Parker Maple
vacuum
RO
filter press
auto draw
New leader oil fired
http://s712.photobucket.com/albums/ww123/jtrap/
It looks like a bunch of rain and warmer weather in the next ten days for my area. I don't think I'm missing out on and sap yet. There is some bare ground spots in the woods and it will not hurt my feelings to have no snow on the ground while tapping. The ground is saturated with water this year. Waiting for my 4-wheeler to get out of the shop and then I will start cutting limbs on lines and tightening up laterals. I have a really good feeling about this season and I hope for big numbers. I just had a series of Steroid injections in my low back so I'm hoping this will allow me to get the job done.
Spud
I just started putting my sugarhouse back together. used it as a lumber mill/storage as I was building my addition/house this summer. got in the woods yesterday afternoon for a few hours... lots of limbs down. I have a few more hours of work there.
Spud, if your steroid injections worked as well as mine did you'll be back to normal soon. I had to do two sessions because I had 2 discs that were totally herniated. it worked well the first time but was still struggling. a week after the second one, I was back to 100%. good luck with it! one hard thing I learned from it was to not keep on doing things with the same muscles every time... like swing the axe with the left hand dominate, then the next with the right! having a bad back is not fun at all!
Awfully thankful for an understanding wife!
“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
- Vincent “Vince” Lombardi
Good luck to all!
We got tapped in at our home bush (3k taps) in time for the run that started yesterday morning. So far have pulled about 5000 gallons of sap that averages 1.2 brix. Don't have the RO ready to go to concentrate and running out of storage so we had to call someone to come buy a truckload of sap. We still will be sitting on full tanks until early next week when we'll get the RO going and concentrate, collect more and boil. Pretty excited to be tapped and pulling high vac.
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