February journal

[Dennis H.]

You guys better be ready the dam is about to burst!!!

[Farmboy]

Finished tapping the tubing today. Sap ran I got around 50 gallons from about 100 taps. I started bricking my evaporator too. I should finish that tommorow. My pans are getting welded saturday. I will probably test boil Saturday night and sweeten the pans Sunday if I have enough sap.

[Brokermike]

Sap is running hard i n southern VT all night. 20" of vac and it is pouring in. A little light on sugar, around 2%, maybe a tad under

[Yellzee]

Finally got my new mainline strung and mostly pulled tight. I dont' know how you big guys do this as the 750 feet I ran took forever and my hands are killing me from fighting with wireties.
off to cuba this week so hopefully it gets and stays cold here.... then on to lats and tapping first week of March.

I'm thinking I'll be up to aroudn 140 new taps roughly counting trees where I've strung this new mainline.. giving the tress from the past few years a year off.

[Dennis H.]

With the outside temps almost 70 and then firing the evap for about 4 hours it sure got hot in the sugarshack!

Today the trees are not running at all. Last night the temps only got back down to 38 and with winds as high as 40mph it just isn't happening today. Now tonight is a different story.

[maple flats]

I now know one way that is not advised when working mainline. I have tension on my lines and went to install a wet dry manifold where one of my branch lines tees into the main. I had my grandson (16 and a football player) helping me. I use a mainline tool to pull the tubing onto the fitting. Well, I clamped the 1" dry line with the tool and decided I wanted to tighten it even more. I did not properly have the tool preset and only had about 2" of tightening left. I cut out about 3" of tubing and went to pull the line onto the fitting. If you haven't done the math, I did not make it and ran out of travel. So I pulled full force in one direction while my grandson pulled in the other on the tubing and with the tool opened to it's max. I was going to release one clamp and pull the tubing the necessary 2 more inches and reclamp. Can anyone say stupid? When We both pulled as hard as we could I released the clamp and that is when all h#ll let loose. The tubing flew apart, my grandson lost his grip and lost his end and I managed to hold the tool. I had him grab a piece of 1/4" nylon rope we had and while I held the tool I instructed him how to attach rope to his end of the the pipe with a timber hitch and several pipe hitches. Then I had him run the rope back to the tool and pass it around the gusset brace to the clamp. Then he pulled as tight as he could and I was able to relax. When I did I realized I had cut a DEEP GASH IN ONE FINGER TIP and it was bleading rather steady. I got blood all over the surrounding snow so it looked like a war had gone on. We were about 200 yds from my truck and while I released some of the sideties on the tubing my grandson ran (in snowshoes) to get my first aid kit and a glove to cover my hand after applying a bandaid over the tip and another around the finger to hold the first one in place. By this time the bleading had stopped but I didn't want to yank it open again. Then we worked without thinking and without sucess. We released some more side ties but still could not get the tubing together. The next day, while my grandson was in school I did it fairly easy. I went to the nearest end and put on a come along, then I the tubing and anchor wire and the tubing was let loose about 3 '. Next I went to the scene from the night before, clamped the tubing as it should have been in the first place and then I pulled tight again with the comealong. I had to pull before assembling to make the manifold line up with the tee in the wet line. This time the assembly went well.
After I got to realize how stupid I had been. When I ran the dry line I strung it as tight as I could pull, then I hooked the winch to the anchor tree and pulled as hard as I dared. After it rested a couple days I tightened again. I repeated the 3 or 4 times and then attached the anchor wire around the anchor tree and crimped the wire from tree to the chinese finger type pull I use. After this I attached several side ties further tightening the tubing. Now my grandson and I were going to pull it by hand to choke up on the tubing, NOT!!! Warning, do not try this, I can vouch for it's stupidity.

[maple flats]

Now I need to finish my system before next Thursday. The forecast calls for below freezing temps until Thurs. I need to finish some plumbing on my vac tank to the pump, build and install a moisture trap with rackett ball inside to prevent sap flow to the pump, do a few sap ladders (3) and tap about 550 taps. I would be out there now but we are having blizzard conditions and windchills well below 0, with white outs most of the time. I do have off until 2/28, so I should get it done ok. I also need to do some work in the sugarhouse which I will do this PM and need to wash the tanks. When this weather breaks I'll be working long hours for sure. I likely missed 2 days of sap already and don't want to miss any more. This is so much earlier than my usual good sap flow days. In the past, without vac I never had more than a trickle before about March 5-10. I'm hoping vac this season will give me good flow at 36 degrees which they forecast on Thursday.

[3rdgen.maple]

Wow Flats rough day. I learned the hard way myself a few weeks ago and felt pretty stupid but hey its how we learn sometimes. I was cutting in a 6 star ladder to the upper mainline that is about 9 feet in the air. Its all tied in to the mainline wire and for some reason never crossed my mind to release the tension on the mainline. Cut through it and it sprung back about a foot and that was all she wrote. Could not get it stretched back as it was pinched in all the ties. Had to release it all and untie it and start all over. The dumb things we do lol. Like go to every weather website until we find one report that make us a little happier lol.

[ejmaple]

how true that is about the weather searches sorry to here about the main line, looks like you'll have some time to repair.

[danno]

Mapleflats - make sure you check your mainline connections. I was over tightening mainlines this past week and wound up pulling them off the fittings further down the line- and this was with two clamps on each side of each fitting. Pulled connections is a tough way to lose sap. I really prefer the grey poly pipe connectors over the blue maple mainline connectors. The blue have smaller barbs which causes them to be pulled off easier, but I have not found the Y connecter in grey.