But, I am already excited for my second year. I went up through my mountainside yesterday and was trying to get an idea of how and what I would do this year. Late November early December depending on the weather, I am going to tap a few walnut trees again and make some syrup. I started to last year, but the sugar content was not good enough - at least I thought (.5%), but regardless this year, I will make some.

I have three large maples trees that are close to my house, the sun exposure is excellent, and they produced 95% of the same I boiled last year (around 75-80 gallons).

Up my mountainside, where gravity lines would work well due to the slope, the tree's there did quite poor. There are some monster maples up there, but I barely got anything out of them. Most of them I had two taps in, and I tried to strategically place the taps where the best sunlight exposure would be (but given they are on a mountainside, there isn't great sun exposure). I taped 15 trees up there and barely got anything. I keep wondering if I did something wrong (maybe I didn't put the tap high enough, or maybe I just really had an unlucky position on the tap, etc). I want to get more sap this year, and I have lost one of the maple trees near my house due to it splitting in half (it was in poor shape when we purchased our property), so now I want those trees to produce more than ever.

I am thinking about trying to run gravity lines from the very top of my mountainside to a much more manageable access spot. When I get off work, towards winter time, it is difficult to check those lines before it is pitch dark. I have seen a few videos and done a little bit of reading on how this is done. Does anyone have any resources that would be beneficial for someone pretty green? I only used food-grade buckets last year beside the trees.

Appreciate any thoughts, or advise!
-Gabriel