Open drop lines

[BreezyHill]

Joe
Something to think about. My releaser and manifold is all glass. So I can see the flow of the separate sections of the bush very well through out the day. For the last two seasons my coldest parts of the bush have been poor producers, at best. I have checked the vac and it is good and they are all washed the same.

What I find to be the issue is the weather. The extreme cold winter, right up to the start of the season, and between the first thru third runs was below 0 or at least single digits. The runs that were the best were the second days of two day runs. The coldest locations were even running when we threw in the towel with day time temps of 65-70 and the sap was turning in the collection tanks. But the lines that were then producing were the cold areas.
When we pulled the next day the only taps running were the colder areas and the warm areas were done.

I have more trees to retube in those cold areas and I have not ranked that high on the priority list due to their past poor performance. If this is a more mild winter than the last two. I will be installing tubing and mains to collect that area; since they historically have been top production areas. What kicked a$$ last season, has never been tapped, due to it is in a bowl and the rim of the bowl was not a great producer historically. This past season the rim sides were such good producer I will be pulling some of the taps onto a new main to reduce the volume of sap in the lines and a new manifold design at the wet/dry line.

I will be changing some drops this season that are of a poor quality tubing, that I had issues with this past season so I expect a slight increase in those areas, of which are two of the cold areas. Time will tell.

Farming of any kind is always a gamble. Keep good records, write everything down, and what works you repeat. Things that fail, you try and explain why they failed to learn from the error. I like to go with what works the best, but keep the rest in my bag of tricks....to draw on when other things fail.



Ben

[PATheron]

I think that if you pull the taps and let them hang with the taps still on them that that would be the best way. The reason I think this is that the mud dobbers like to fill up the little hole in the tap. If you are going to cut the taps off and throw them away who cares if they do that. Your drops would still air out. The only thing that wouldn't work too good like that for the airing out would be if you use the checkvalves. Then I guess you would have to cut them off because the check valve wouldn't let it air out.

[JoeJ]

So today I went through another 403 taps doing repairs. I replaced 57 drops (really 60, but 2 were fisher chews and 1 deer) with varying degrees of mold. That represents a 14 % replacement rate. However, today I discovered after about 60 drop line inspections, that 99% of the drops that had mold in them were leaning over forming a possible water trap. If the tee and drop line was upright, there was no mold. The
same thing held true for the rest of the 400 drops. The problem is 95% with the black straight through tees and hardly ever with the plugged tees at the end of the lateral. If the tee is an inch or so from the tree, the drop line flops over. If the lateral line is tight against a tree, and the tee touches the middle of the tree, the tensions hold the drop upright and thus no mold. I use CDL blue plugged tees and CDL black tees that have the spouts stub on them with a cinch circle similar to clear straight spouts. When you push the drop onto the tee to plug it off, the drop lines do not come off easily. It forms a very good seal. Thus the question, where is the moisture in the drop lines coming from? Condensation? As I pull the taps, I am vacuuming out any left over sap in the drops and rechecking the drops after all the taps have been pulled on one lateral to make sure no liquid has shot back up the line. So I think that in 2016 when the taps are pulled, I am going to leave the 2,100 drops in the newer woods hang open and plug the 1,000 drops at the sugar house onto the tees, but make sure that all the drops are upright.

Joe

[JoeJ]

Dr Tim and Ben,
First of all Dr Tim, thanks for the analysis and the two charts in the earlier post. The whole drop in production is perplexing to me,but as Ben suggested, there has got to be more weather related effect on the production in the North Woods and overall. Especially since I did put new drops on the 1,000 taps at my sugar house for 2105. So I checked my records may came up with another chart. These numbers are from the NW woods. I added in 2013, because as you said DR Tim, everyone had a good year and it adds in some comparison numbers

year.....Number of runs.......Runs over 1 gpt........Days with 1/2 gpt or less.....Days with no sap

2013.............23....................14......... .....................0............................ ...0
2014.............19.....................5......... ......................5........................... ....8
2015.............17.....................5......... ......................5........................... ....3

The main woods gets sunlight as soon as it peeks over the mountains. The NW woods, with the very steep hill, gets the sun several hours later.

I guess that I will just hope for a season with weather similar to 2013 or maybe 2009.

Joe

[spud]

Joe I think the weather has some to do with the difference in production. I also know that in my woods the trees that face South/East out perform my West facing trees every year. As soon as the sun comes over Jay Peak to the East it only take an hour or so for my sap to start running. By noon I can be running 1000 GPH but my West facing woods is just starting to take off. The problem though is by about 5-6pm EVERYTHING freezes up in my woods. The South/East trees ran 3 more hours then the West trees each day. The West facing trees run maybe 4-5 days longer at the end of the season but the sap quality by that time is poor making me much less money. I know I bashed the CV2 spouts last year but it was only the ones with the pin holes in them. I was more upset with the dealer that sold defect spouts to me. These defect spouts should have been thrown out a year before I bought them. I am taking a season off from using the CV2 spout just to make sure all the bad ones will be gone by next year. Other then the pin hole issue I think the CV2 spout is the best spout on the market hands down. I did break a few more of these spout pounding them in but I think that was all my fault. As far as the balls sticking I never had a problem. The CV2 spouts grip the tap hole very good and never needed to be reseated during the season. The research behind the CV2 spouts is non bias from PMRC. They have proven that this spout out preforms all other spouts on the market. I feel I lost a bunch of sap last year due to the pin holes and my wife does not want me buying more this year. I feel I am going to loose production this coming season due to this decision but I cannot convince her. I do plan to replace 6000 drops next summer and then wait till the third year before using the CV2 spouts again. I am going to use the white Max Flow spouts this season in hopes they grip the taphole better then the clear smart spouts. This seems to be the spout of choice by many producers. I would highly recommend all sugar makers to use the CV2 spouts from year three to when they replace their drops.

Spud