First post of the season. 95% sure we're tapping this weekend unless next week's forecast completely goes to crap. Hope to have the woods tapped in two days and have Monday for vac. leak check. Who knows what this season will bring...it's cold. Last year was cold too, but we at least made some syrup in February.

Woods. No big changes in the woods. Just some fine tuning. Put a groundwater well in for a vac. pump water source...12" dia. perf. pipe 3' deep in an 18" dia. hole filled with crushed stone. We'll see how well it works. I still have the brook that I pulled from last year if needed. Adding a few taps here and there. Extended a mainline 300' to grab a few more taps and to shorten some long lats. Adding on some trees that are coming of age. No real damage this year, which is nice. Did some thinning for future expansion...about 2 acres of almost all black birch. Will keep on working further back in the woods next year...think this next section will yield ~200 taps, but all flowing the wrong way from the mainline. I was really hoping to expand this year, but painted my house instead...got it all done Hopefully next year. It looks like we'll have at least as many taps coming to the sugarhouse as we did last year, which is good. I was hoping to put out a few hundred buckets, but can't find anyone to collect them...I want the sap, but I don't have the time to collect them

Sugarhouse. Really no changes there. Adding a low level alarm to the flue pan if I can get the parts together in time. Last year, there were too many near empties with my sap float f'ing up. Hard plumbing an air line to operate the diaphragm pump. Adding some level floats to upper level tanks. Probably more stuff as I start making syrup again and wish I'd made some more improvements.

Best of luck to everyone and may the sap run sweet and hard!