2020 Tapping Season

[Cjadamec]

I'm very tempted to follow your lead on getting my taps in for this weekend. The past two years I've tapped around now and have had good results. This weekend and all of next week look like a nice run in my corner of the state.

[Kubota]

I tapped my 30 - 3/16 tubing taps yesterday! Will wait until (Hopefully) Mid Feb for my 40 buckets. Amazing stretch of weather coming for the next 10-14 days in south-central CT.

[Cjadamec]

I got one of my 3/16 runs patched up and tapped this afternoon. Some of the trees were running before I could get the drill bit out of the tree. By the time it got dark there was a steady drip going into my collection drum.

One more run of tubing to go tomorrow and then to finish off insulating and bricking the evaporator. First boil is right around the corner.

[merryall]

9gph with a mason 2/3 is very optimistic and 45 taps becomes a burden unless you have loads of free time

We probably all are guilty of saying “it’s just a few more taps” but when it becomes a chore to boil all day and night, it sort of defeats the purpose.

[Cjadamec]

Finished getting all my taps in today 79 this year. Three runs of 3/16 tubing so far everything is running great today. The pressure is on to finish up the evaporator now.

[Ghost]

25 taps on 3/16, with the warm temps I expected more of run, but only collected 30 gal of sap?!

[Sugar Bear]

25 taps on 3/16, with the warm temps I expected more of run, but only collected 30 gal of sap?!

I think it was too warm in most of CT, Hartford included, on Friday night to generate a great run on Saturday. I don't think you will have a great run today either. But let be know how you do today if you can.

Temps need to drop to around 28 or lower at night and then warm up during the day. Especially with the "green grass" we have this winter. (i.e. the ground is not even frozen )

I did not tap over the weekend for that reason, and I figure no sense in putting such warm air in new tap holes so early in the season.

May tap tomorrow morning but getting everything ready at least.

Even so, I do not believe the sap will run noticeably as well in late January with a given set of "ideal" sap running conditions as it will in say early/mid March with the exact same set of "ideal" sap running conditions.

I have no fancy institutionally documented research to back it up, just what I believe to be the way the old trees have been engineered by old man time.

Of course the space shuttle was institutionally documented with a few trillion tons of research and it blew up twice in 135 attempts.

So I don't take for granted anything I hear, read or am told, or even see with my own eyes for that matter. I do work with it however.

So cheers to those who are tapping on and seeing what the sugar gods has to offer.

[Cjadamec]

As of this morning I've got 60 gallons of sap out of my 79 taps since Saturday morning. Not the best run ever but a decent start. I'm chasing some air leaks on the tubing I finished up yesterday so that probably hurt my numbers a bit but with last night's rain I wasn't going out there to check for leaks.

[Cjadamec]

Evaporator is back together and I made my first sap collection run the for the year. 100 gallons of sap for the weekend and all the tubing is still running.

Got the pan filled up and ready for a boil. Going to put a fire to it tomorrow.

MVIMG_20200126_155304.jpg

[Woodsrover]

Set two runs yesterday before the rain. Did the rest today. I'm guessing about 300 taps this year on 10 runs? All but the last two lines were running when I was cleaning up tonight. Looks like we'll be boiling this Saturday!

BTW, but you already know, the weather looks great for the next week and a half.