Goodness. I'll try to not let that go to my head.
Yes, vacuum helps a lot, especially when you don't get a freeze at night. The pump is still humming away now. I can tell you that the sap was running well when I was tapping last Mon/Tues. And on Wednesday before I got the vacuum hooked up it was pouring in through the line. Sugar was up to 2.5% yesterday, which is on the high side for me. I'm now at about 6 gal. sap/tap for the season and would like to triple that before we're done. Certainly a promising start and I'll be glad to have a couple days off this weekend.