Anyone doing maple syrup in southern CT

[lakeview maple]

Scott , that is so awesome, Be careful tho you don't set the floor on fire. It is great to see others get excited about making syrup like I do. Hope you have a great season, Allen

[scottdevine]

hahahhaah...yes, that was a concern, i was also able to get a lot of scrap duct work off of a construction site, and tore it all down to make the steam hood, and also cut it into sheets and lined the floor under the barrel evaporator, and up the wall behind the smoke stack. I did a complete test run this weekend, and singed the roof slightly, so some modifications need to be done this week, and a little more metal will go on the walls. It got really warm in there during the 20 minute test, so this weekend (regardless of snow), will be test #2. Here are photos of some of my "handy" work...don't care how it looks, i am an "indoorsman" having a blast with this outside work! Working on flashing the steam stacks this week and widening and better insulating the smoke exhaust.

IMG_9616.jpgIMG_9626.jpgIMG_9657.jpgIMG_9661.jpgIMG_9698.jpg

[jamesd14]

That is really nice. Anyone put any taps in yet. I have the itch the weather seams perfect just not sure.

[jamesd14]

Put in 22 taps yesterday afternoon in ledyard and got 18 gallons sap yesterday and 24 gallons today, I will have evaporator up and running tomorrow, only got stove pipe to install, once I have boiling I will do about 18 more taps. Most of my 1 gallon sap jugs were overflowing tonight because I was gone all day today, my sap bags had almost 2 gallons in each. The few red maples I tapped only had about 1/4 gallon in each jug. Sugar maples were going crazy.