2007 Off and running

[royalmaple]

Well not really running, but dripping anyway.

Drilled 40 at the house today on one branch of the vacuum and she is pulling some sap. All the trees I drilled except maybe 3 were wet. Sap is dancing in the sap ladder. I got one big smile.

Now I got to get more of these suckers online.

Vacuum pump is just a pumping, buuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrr, what a nice sound. Come on baby flow!!!

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

Go for the Gusto !!!!

[TapME]

It's that time of year and every one is antzy? I know my boy is and Im having troble holding him back.
Hey royalmaple I use to drive through Groveville to go to work when I lived in Saco. How's that pinemaple doing? Are you thining it with nippin?
I here that sat is going to be 40 plus.

[royalmaple]

Jeremy-

Your back.... I still got to get up your way to check you out. Stop by sometime if you are down my way.

I know the weather is gonna be crap, but I just wanted to do a little testing anyway. The trees around my house are pretty much rats, I just wanted to see the sap ladders and vacuum pumps running. I had a big smile all day.

I am not too far from groveville at all, about 3 miles from the 4a/202 intersection.

[royalmaple]

I got about 150 total tapped and all on vacuum at the house now. Pretty neat to watch the three sap ladders working. Even though it was nice today, sap was just weeping. What a difference that vacuum makes.

Most of the trees out back were still quite cold and dry, but the ones up front in the sun were leaking a bit. Just about ready to go shut the pump off. At least I got pretty much what I want done around here, now I can focus on the real set up down the road.

[TapME]

sounds like you are adicted to sugaring as i am. If I get a chance we will try to check tour system out. New info is always good to have. last fall we started on Rusty's sugar house, maybe we can get some done while we are boing. Sat and Sun look tobe good. hope Sam got her fill of sap, I know Rusty can't get enough.

[sap extractor]

40 taps last weekend, then the BIG FREEZE...ready to scramble this weekend

[royalmaple]

Going to be hitting it hard this weekend. I got the vacuum pump down in the bush yesterday, now just have to plumb it to the releaser and the stock tank. Run a quick dry line out, cut in some manifolds and cut in my drops as I go and drill, drill, drill.

Hope to hear the releaser dump while I am out there today. Just might happen if they thaw out before the end of the day.

Got a fluke call from a buddy that wanted to know if I needed a hand today, yup meet you there at 8, won't refuse help this time of year, or anytime for that matter. Should be swamped in sap here soon enough.

FYI: Anyone hooking up an electric releaser, I did several trial and errors and finally got a pump that works well, and tested up to 19". It is a 1hp stainless steel housing pump from lowes, not a bad price either at 147.00. I'll have to take some pictures of the vacuum at the sugarhouse to show how I did some customizing to the plumbing. At least anything here ends up in the bulk tanks on its own. No Matt involved.

Good luck to everyone this upcoming week. Hopefully we don't have time to pop in, but only for a minute.

[Revi]

Got everything hooked up again, and we're waiting to see what happens. We had a nice run today. Every tree we tapped was running. Now if we can just melt that giant ice cube, maybe we can start boiling. I'm thinking it'll take a couple of days just to melt it. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow, but it doesn't seem to be too much below freezing right now. I wonder if it'll run?

[royalmaple]

Had a good work day yesterday. I got the vacuum pump tied into the releaser, set up the tank, connected the mainline to the releaser and got everything ready to run the dry line. Tapped right around 125 right at the pump. Started drilling them at 2, and tapped all the laterals that were already connected to manifolds. Then drilled out about 25-30 more manifolds to connect today and get more taps in.

I was cutting in the drops and tapping and I was averaging about 50/hr.

Snow is packing down. It is about knee deep and that crust was gone so thank god.

I had a couple that I drilled and I thought they were sugars, drip, drip, drip drip. ......drip , drip , drip

They will be getting some nice warm sun today, it was pretty much overcast all day yesterday with just spotty sun.

I may shoot a small video clip of the set up incase anyone is interested and you can watch it on your computer. I think it will be neat to see the sap coming in and dumping. At least for the guys that have not seen vacuum