December Journal

[HobbitMannor]

A lot of changes/upgrades have been made to the tubing system-still just going with gravity but lets hope it is an improvement over last year! Time is ticking away so fast and the season will be upon us before we know it.....

[ennismaple]

We got our 2500 CV's from Leader this week and will start on replacing 1400 5/16" spiles with stubbies this weekend. If we have time we'll replace more but replacing that many will take upwards to 4 man days and we've got many other things to complete before the season.

[Brian Ryther]

Working hard every day. New Taps. Fixing old taps. Half way through re piping the sugar house. All sap will only touch SS now once at the sugar house. All tanks and pipe will be SS. The hope is that everything will be easily cleaned therefore better / lighter / syrup. I hope to produce a larger percentage of table grade syrup before dropping into the commercial range. And the SS looks cool.

[Sugarmaker]

Brian,
Looking at your photos, which by the way are very good shots, of your woods and work on the arch. That last shot is of a oil burner that you are going to use as a blower for the AOF system correct? Did this work out OK for you? I plugged in one of my old (I mean old) burners and it didn't seem to have enough air flow to put out a match?

Regards,
Chris

[Sugarmaker]

Sorry guys I fibbed, weather man said we were getting another three on top of what we had, but the lake effect storm hit the Buffalo area instead of Erie. So I hunted almost all day and did not see a tail. Granted I did not cover as much ground as I used to, and hunting by yourself its tough to sneak up on one. After hunting whitetails for 45 years I must say that this doe killing, antler restricting, kids can kill anything, a hunting day for everyone and every weapon thing, is not providing for much catching just a lot of hunting

Its official the deer herd in PA is under control!

Also I am not seeing massive ammounts of large racks. A few but not many! We are not seeing as many hunters out either I think the kids and youth mentoring is good for future hunters but Im not seeing them out there.

I thinks its time to dial back to a two day doe season and make the 4 points per one side restriction for everyone. Then in a few years you could get a larger rack and fill the frezzer too.
My two cents! I'll be back out there Saturday
Regards,
Chris

[collinsmapleman2012]

been puttin up lines at school between the monsoon and the inch of snow... where we are we dont get much until everybody else does... hoping the ground freezes too before we get snow because i would like to get more wood done. putttin up lines are slow, someone let the wire go instead of getting a spooler so it undid itself and is in a tangle on a stick... gotta wind it through itself again and again and again and again...

[Brian Ryther]

Brian,
Looking at your photos, which by the way are very good shots, of your woods and work on the arch. That last shot is of a oil burner that you are going to use as a blower for the AOF system correct? Did this work out OK for you? I plugged in one of my old (I mean old) burners and it didn't seem to have enough air flow to put out a match?

Regards,
Chris

I built my arch 4 years ago. One year before I was aware of AOF. I use the two 6" oil burner fans to feed the fire under the grates. They produce an awesome amount of air that consumes wood like it is going out of style. It is not an efficient arch but it burns hotter than hell. I can keep the stack in the 900 degree range, 17' from the front of the arch. It will consume 300+ gph of sap. I do have intentions of re building the arch to be AOF but it is rather low on the list. I have a ton of wood and a over sized RO.

[Parker]

Been over setting up mainline for Brother Bob..Had a mainline spinner built,,works very well (still needs a couple of upgrades)...Yesterday we got up and tight 4000' of wire and 4000' of one inch mainline.(conductor lines)..they are going to tie it off over the weekend then back there monday for the lateral mainlines,,,he is hopeing for 700-900 taps on that bush this year....cant get over how nice it is to pull mainline off that spinner,,no twists when you unroll it!!! Make 1000' rolls very nice to work with!

[Jim Brown]

Parker ;we bought a spinner from Tractor supply($29.00 i might mention) and like you guys we put a 2000ft roll of 200,000 ftlbs high tensel wire on it and man was it great to not be fighting the roll We also put a 500ft roll of 3/4 line on top of the wire and rolled that off the same way! Amazing what $30.00 will buy a person!With the spinner one person can almost put in main line wire by themselves but not quite!

Jim

[whalems]

Going to work on rebuilding the arch today. Need to get moving on this project or it will be back to boiling on the "old stove" again!