Mark
Where we made syrup long before the trendies made it popular, now its just another commodity.
John Deere 4000, 830, and 420 crawler
1400 taps, 600 gph CDL RO, 4x12 wood-fired Leader, forced air and preheater. 400 gallon Sap-O-Matic vacuum gathering tank, PTO powered. 2500 gallon X truck tank, 17 bulk tanks.
No cage tanks allowed on this farm!
That is great that you are able to get to that level and I am genuinely thrilled when people achieve such great production, but it is not unheard of (that is in no way meant to diminish your success). Key factors...good trees, great vacuum, excellent sanitation. It takes a good deal of effort paying attention to detail and being prepared to find and fix problems as soon as they happen. If I had to guess, you do thin fairly regularly, run high vacuum and are serious about leak checking, and either replace drops regularly with new spouts OR clean/sanitize/new spouts OR use CVs.
Our 15-yr average at UVM PMRC is 0.59 gal/tap. Only had one year from 2004-2018 under 0.5 gal/tap....that was 2012 when we only hit 0.46 gal/tap. Six of those years were in the 0.6-0.8 gal/tap range, and some sections of our bush will do 0.75-1.0 gal/tap fairly regularly. Now for the kicker....we normally have about 20-25% of our taps that do NOT have best management practices in place. This is so we have something "normal practice" to compare to. If we didn't do that, we would certainly be in the 2/3-3/4 gal/tap range each year.
So again...congrats Mark....great job.
Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Ctr
http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc
https://mapleresearch.org
Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu
What is a full crop? What I find as funny is when someone new at this claims he is way down from a full crop. I call it unrealistic expectations when you are double tapping small tees and hitting every tiny soft maple in sight and you think your going to get a half gallon.
Right, but S.S.S said the guy hit .21, which is obviously a major bummer for vacuum, assuming that's what we're talking about. But if .21 is "under 1/4 of a crop", that means he's saying a regular crop would be over .84gpt. I don't think there's anyone counting on that much before they're happy. I know you pretty consistently get great production numbers, but I also don't think we'd hear you on here saying you'd made .6 and we're disappointed.
By the way, I'm sorry I wasn't around that day you called. Been busy, as I'm sure you have too. I was actually looking for a couple barrels of commercial for a friend of mine, but I found them in spring valley. I did see your price on gallons on Craigslist though; I'm tempted to buy a bunch myself!!
-Ryan
Went off the deep end. Might be in over my head...
Thanks! I did not state the obvious to pat myself on the back! I replied to jmayerl as to what "normal" would be for my woods. I often am reluctant to say what I make b/c some think I'm full of @%&*. With that being said, I have a friend that has virtually the same production every year as I. I do sanitize and flush every inch of my tubing (hoping to get done tomorrow.) I use CV's (had some problems this year with the new 3/16" stubbies). I have always believed this to be very, very important to getting good yields. I do not believe in "dry cleaning" as some have coined it. I will not tell what I think of dry cleaning because it will never happen in my woods. Several have stated its a waste of time to flush lines and doesn't do any good. I say and think that it sure doesn't hurt!
I do not OVERTAP!! Many bushes in my area are getting the crap tapped out of them. There are way more bushes getting overtapped than tapped conservatively in my area(the biggest reason why many can't get better yields in my opinion). Our woods is enrolled in the MFL, was cut in 1980 and again in 2011, the next cut is scheduled for 2023.
I do run 25-26" of vacuum and try to keep on top of it the best I can. As you stated, it is a very big challenge to keep on top of it. I am always tempted to tap more, but then I'm sure my per tap would go down b/c I'd be spreading myself to thin. Some of my woods has very good sugar %, some does not, but it averages out to most likely be higher than average.
Another reason worth mentioning for the higher numbers is that I make commercial. I went another 5 days past most others this year, so that added an extra 100 gallons to the total. I have a guy that I have bought from in the past, has large big trees in a pasture and if there isn't 3/4 of a gallon syrup coming out of that group of trees, it would be a down year. And this is on bags! The sugar is always plus 4%, except near the end.
My thoughts exactly!! And there is far too much of it going on in western Wisconsin.
No not at all. I expect a half gallon minimum. More is a bonus and makes me feel like its worth it.
Last edited by markcasper; 05-16-2018 at 10:16 PM.
Mark
Where we made syrup long before the trendies made it popular, now its just another commodity.
John Deere 4000, 830, and 420 crawler
1400 taps, 600 gph CDL RO, 4x12 wood-fired Leader, forced air and preheater. 400 gallon Sap-O-Matic vacuum gathering tank, PTO powered. 2500 gallon X truck tank, 17 bulk tanks.
No cage tanks allowed on this farm!
How does it work out when someone buys crop insurance and they claim they are at 30% of a crop when for their bush they did not really do too bad?
Sounds familiar...as I said, good trees (including thinning), great vacuum, excellent sanitation. Our minimum target at UVM PMRC is 0.5 gal/tap (red-line), our long-term average is 0.59 gal/tap (purple-line). There is no secret formula -- best management practices for high yield production are fairly well known -- and they work.
We had the same issue when we first started reporting 0.5 gal/tap or better each year...people didn't believe it. We've done a lot of research and education on BMPs for high yield sap production, so now it's fairly standard around here for a good number of producers to match or even exceed what we do (again, we do some "not" BMPs for comparison, which drags our average down). It's very good to see that.
UVM PMRC Production 2004-2018.jpg
Last edited by DrTimPerkins; 05-17-2018 at 07:50 AM.
Dr. Tim Perkins
UVM Proctor Maple Research Ctr
http://www.uvm.edu/~pmrc
https://mapleresearch.org
Timothy.Perkins@uvm.edu
Great numbers there Mark.That is our goal to get a half gallon per tap,just made it this year.Could have been better but our one woods we had about 175 trees on a north slope that didn't run much,trees just to cold.They would start late in the afternoon then within a hour they would quit again.Checked them lines allot until we figured the trees were just to cold.
Sap Hauler
-1996 Ford F250
-2003 Yamaha Grizzly 660
2016 Year:About 925 Taps on 3/16
2015 Year:About 775 Taps
2014 Year:About 270 Taps
2013 Year:About 265 Taps
2012 Year:About 200 Taps
2011 Year:About 200 Taps
2010 Year:About 65 Taps