Hop Kiln Road 2021

[Hop Kiln Road]

The Point of the Spear

Been having a real bad problem with my hearing aids and couldn't hear M too good lately. Haven't been sleeping neither cause the inside of my skull sounds like ole Miss McClain on her chalkboard and that thought alone is a nightmare. Whole issue has been sloping me off the edge cause new fangled hearing aids cost more than a used pickup. Don't get me started. Anyway, got real, real bad at supper last night. Couldn't sit still. Figured one of them must have broken off but when M finally found HER eyebrow tweezers on MY fly tying bench - gawd another issue - to fish it out of my ear canal...my goodness if it weren't a pair of them young fireflies looking for someplace private, like in total rut! M said Treat it's a sign to tap and I could hear her loud and clear!

[Hop Kiln Road]

Yup, getting the bugs out of my systems too. Retubed my last orchard with 3/16 when the going was pretty good in January. Orchard has great slope. I think parts of it have been tapped for 200 years. Took 8,000' and had to reposition some mainline. I'm thinking of running mainline across the top of the ridge so I can Zappit load all the laterals downhill. Put on some .172 DSD Stars, used them a couple years ago when there was a shortage of .225s, but the 11/64 bits snap pretty easy. The orchard was seriously damaged by a previous operator. He abandoned the woods saying the trees no longer produced any sap. I took it over 5 years later and found with the extend of cluster tapping it was easy to conclude he certainly wasn't drilling much white wood. But with thinning, fertilization and conservative tapping the sap yields and SC are rising but still 25% below the other orchards. Noticeable improvement in bark quality, some improvement in tap closure and crown growth, and there is going to be some nice ingrowth.

[Hop Kiln Road]

12F here this morning. Not going to hit 32 until afternoon and then it will run hard for a couple of hours but only float the ice and probably won't be able to pump it. Then a stretch of good weather with the root sap next week, which, according to my records, would be right on schedule: peaks flows have typically been between March 20 -22 here. Get a chance to test my new keg system.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Nope, more frost than I thought. Hit 36F yesterday afternoon and the lines barely dripped. 26F this morning and forecast above 32F at 10 AM, high of 52F with no freeze overnight. That should restart it.

[Russell Lampron]

It's 18 here this morning with a high of 50 in the forecast. The sun is coming up and there's no clouds in the sky. It's supposed to be 28 by 9:00 which is where I turn the vacuum on when it's nice and sunny. The high here was only 34 and I didn't even get 50 gallons of sap yesterday.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Couple observations. My season was astonishingly average when compared to the last 15, except the number of days the sap actually ran was quite low. 15 year average 17.5 days; 2021 14 days. And that was just the weather. My run/day/gallons/tap was actually quite strong at .79 with a 15 year average of .62

Start my post season woods protocol. I cut off the .225s when I pull them and fertilize the tree at the same time. A new .225 is 15 cents and 8 oz of fertilizer was only 10 cents last year. Then all the lines get loaded from the tops with zappit for a week and then flushed, dried and capped. I've installed some additional line so I can pump/load from the tops down, so it goes rather quickly.
no problems with plugged tees and some of the systems are 5 years old now. I put the new .225s on in Dec/Jan when I inspect/repair the lines.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Hit my 15 year gpt average yesterday. Still ice in one field tank and sap is slightly cloudy, frost in the ground and the tanks are clean, but the forecast is not hopefully. Yesterday's boil was in the mid 40's with nice flavor. Probably end the season around 175 gal. Couple of notes: took 3 or 4 washes to get the membranes back to normal. RO usually runs at 225 lbs and will 2 pass 1000 gal, but it took awhile to reach this level this season. Syrup was usually clean. Got 20 gal+ out of the press when typically it would be 8 - 10 gal. The new 20 gal canner and keg system was timely. Made 28 gal last Saturday, a record, with no back up in the sugarhouse.

[red maples]

Hey Good to see someone else getting their thread going!!! Sorry to hear about your hearing hope that gets straightened!!! I see people all the time ruining trees tapping the same area every year small trees and over tapping trees its one thing if its a cull tree(although I have been tapping a few cull trees for several years). Sad really. but it takes time to fix the woods when someone ruins them. kinda like many things these days. Anyway, good luck this year.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Got 500 in and both shurflos up and running with low vacuum. Hope to get the rest in this PM if the wind dies down. Trees are pretty cold so not much sap. Pretty interesting 30 day forecast.

[Russell Lampron]

Hey Bruce it's good to see that you're getting some taps in. I got all of mine in on Tuesday and Wednesday. I spent the day today chasing vacuum leaks. I found and fixed the big ones and got some of the small ones fixed too. Good luck this season.