Theron,
Its early for us but with all your taps I understand. Good luck this year! I know you put a ton of effort into making syrup!
Regards,
Chris
Theron,
Its early for us but with all your taps I understand. Good luck this year! I know you put a ton of effort into making syrup!
Regards,
Chris
Casbohm Maple and Honey
625 roadside taps + Neighbors bring some sap too!
3x10 King, WRU, AOF and AUF
12" SIRO Filter Press.
2015 Ford F250 PSD sap hauler
One Golden named Maggie, Norwegian Forest Cat named Lucy
Too many Cub Cadets
Ford Jubilee and several Allis WD's, and IH tractors
1932 Ford AAB ton and a half, dump truck
www.mapleandhoney.com
Go, Theron, Go.
1st Generation Hobby Maple Producer, you got to start somewhere.
222 Taps, all on Vacuum! No more buckets.
Lapierre 2'x5' raised flue w/Hood and Preheater
Surge SP11, Lapierre Hobby Releaser
Modified 5" Filter Press made by Daryl with a Gear Pump
Homemade 2 membrane RO
Kabota RTV Sap Hauler
Hardy's Maple Syrup on Facebook
Thanks you guys, hopefully this will be a real good year. Theron
Woodville Maples
www.woodvillemaples.com
www.facebook.com/woodvillemaples
Around 300 taps on tubing, 25+ on buckets if I put them out
Mix of natural and mechanical vac, S3 Controller from Mountain Maple
2x6 W.F. Mason with Phaneuf pans
Deer Run 250 RO
Ford F350
6+ hives of bees (if they make it through the winters)
Keeping the day job until I can start living the dream.
Been out tapping on and off all day. Trees are dry and its pretty cold. Its been sleeting all day. Its kind of nice to just take your time and finetune little things as you go with no pressure. I was thinking if a guy had a lot of taps and that's all he did you could really do a lot with the newer technology letting you tap earlier. Basically you could just wait till it got cold and just tap all winter long till it finally warmed up. Theron
yeah im right there with you ill only be running 2500 for this year but between college in a two weeks and the dairy farm I wont have much time after the 13th. im going to get my cv2's next weekend and I might throw in 1,000, then the rest at the end of the month. im working on putting in more still, I have about 300 put up out of the 1200 im adding, but im also working on fixing the rest of the woods too. when all is said and done I want to be tapped no later than January 31, I should be able to get it done in a weekend with the right crew and encouragement (Lunch!!!). also working on some other projects around the saphouse and putting in a sap shed so all my sap is coming to the road. no more carrying gas 1,000 feet which is nice. good luck theron, I hope to be right up in that tap range with ya someday, should be able to if I can add 1,000 a year. at least that is the plan lol but nothing ever goes according to plan!
7000 taps on vacuum, just trying to get a little better every year.
Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Ctr
http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc
https://mapleresearch.org
Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu
I look forward to reading that study someday. My guess is you will find production in April to be less per tap if you tap in early January. Between my fall tapping experiments and early tapping (early January) I am seeing a production drop after 12 weeks. A tap hole will still be dripping sap after 16 weeks but the amount of sap per run drops a lot (in my woods). A frozen tree will not heal as fast but does it stay frozen all winter? A lot of people tap 6-10 inch trees and it does not take much sun to warm up the tap hole on a sunny winter day. When that happens the tap hole starts to heal. Several of these mini warm ups might have the tap hole drying up a bit even though great sugaring weather is still to come in April. So a person with 1000 taps might be getting 750+ gallons per sap run (in April) but had they tapped in mid Feb the same run may have giving 1500+ gallons. I plan to tap a few weeks earlier this year with CV2s spouts and I am excited to see if my sap runs in April match what they were last season. About 50-85% of all my sap comes in the month of April so I don't want to jeopardize that. I enjoy charting all my production each year in an effort to learn how to be a better sugar maker. Dr Tim's results will help all of us in the future and I am alway waiting for him and PMRC to publish something new. It would be great if the study used both large and small trees.
Spud
I tapped about 65% of my taps last year on Jan 8th & 9th and got whole 400 gallons of sap from 400+ taps. The other 35% were tapped after first of February and I would have had a much better production if I had waited and tapped all of them after first of February. All of my taps last year had new clear leader seasonal spouts and new drop lines. The 65% were still running a little bit late in the season, but not nearly as much as the 35%. I know the big guys have to start tapping early to finish, but if you don't have to, I would wait as long as you can. Our season here is usually over around March 21st on average, but I have made syrup into April a couple of times and seen it end by the middle of March. It is hard to make any syrup here before the first of February here. Even with the temps look good in January, the sun is not high enough in the sky like it is later in the season, so the sap won't hardly run and usually too much frost in the ground.
Brandon
CDL dealer for All of West Virginia & Virginia
3x10 CDL Deluxe oil fired
Kubota M7040 4x4 Tractor w/ 1153 Loader hauling sap
2,400+ taps on 3/16 CDL natural vacuum on 9 properties
24x56 sugarhouse
CDL 1,000 2 post RO
WEBSITE: http://danielsmaple.com
I think deciding when to tap definitely depends on the number pf taps and the year and persons available time to get the job done. If I remember right Theron did pretty good last season tapping early January and still getting sap in late April maybe even May 1. My opinion would be that although taps tapped early might start to run less later on in the season more than likely all of the taps would run during the season peak which for us in PA would be mid March to mid April most seasons.
Of course you must also consider that with more taps say 11,000 smaller runs can still be pretty large compared to say 1,500. I experienced this last season I actually had a pretty good run after I had emptied and cleaned the evaporator had I had maybe 500 gallons more I would have fired back up as the price of B and C grade is still worth the effort. It would be the same for say a less than par early run having more taps would make an early run worth it.
Having said that our weather here currently is like a yo yo today was maybe 30' and VERY windy tomorrow is a high of 52' then a high of 25' for the rest of the week.
Jared