As many of you know, my father passed away last summer at the extremely young age of 58. He looked after most of our maple operation and for a while we weren't sure if we could continue. We wanted to but didn't know how we could make it work. We've put a lot of thought into it and with my brother's and my vacation, Mom's assistance and a lot of help from family and friends we believe we can continue the tradition. I know my father would have wanted nothing else. Now we both need to learn how to operate the RO and boil using our 5x16' beast. We've done it before but always under Dad's supervision so this year will be a lot of learning.
To make preparation easier we've replaced some old tubing that used to come down every year with semi-rigid. I'd say 80% of our tubing is now semi so that cuts down the time in the bush before we tap significantly. We've added a few hundred taps more than we had last year and may get the remaining 1000+ taps in our new bush up and running within a few years once we learn the ropes. A new evaporator is definitely required soon since we don't have enough time to cut wood for an operation as large as ours.
We've endured the warm temps this past week but my trigger finger didn't get itchy at all. We may have been able to make a bit of syrup but there's no way we could have tapped and gotten ready in time. Plus, it's not worthwhile for us to tap 4 weeks earlier than usual to maybe get a couple days' run. I'll make lots of syrup in April so in February I'm not worried about missing some. We always get a Jan or Feb thaw and this past week was no different. The forecast calls for it to freeze hard starting this evening and not get above freezing for the next 2 weeks. Looks like tapping the 1st week of March should be about right.
Good luck to everyone and we'll keep you posted on our progress. I'm gonna be a sleep deprived zombie by the end of April!!!