Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[spud]

I just started putting my sugarhouse back together. used it as a lumber mill/storage as I was building my addition/house this summer. got in the woods yesterday afternoon for a few hours... lots of limbs down. I have a few more hours of work there.
Spud, if your steroid injections worked as well as mine did you'll be back to normal soon. I had to do two sessions because I had 2 discs that were totally herniated. it worked well the first time but was still struggling. a week after the second one, I was back to 100%. good luck with it! one hard thing I learned from it was to not keep on doing things with the same muscles every time... like swing the axe with the left hand dominate, then the next with the right! having a bad back is not fun at all!

tcross thanks for the info. I will be going back for round two in 4 weeks. I hope my injections help as much as yours did. I have already had two disks taking out and had a double fusion surgery. The disk above the fusion is almost gone now. If I was a horse they would have shot me by now. Best of luck in the 2017 season.

We have a few people in town making syrup now. One neighbor made 8 barrels yesterday. It looks like those who are tapped in will be getting lots of sap by the end of next week. Unfortunately I will miss out on this warm spell but hope to be up and running by the end of the month when everything goes back into deep freeze. Westfordsugarworks I think your in for a ton of sap in the next ten day. Your numbers last year were very impressive and I look forward to seeing how you do this year. Best of luck to you and all Traders this season.

Spud

[WestfordSugarworks]

Spud, good luck with your back. It must be really hard having all the sugarwoods to manage but having constant pain when trying to get things done. Yeah, looks like we will have a lot of sap. We weren't anticipating so much these last couple days so we didn't get the RO out of it's winter storage, but we should have. I'm really optimistic that our Westford bush will have high numbers and we should do ok in Jericho too, especially if we can get a bunch of trees drilled before Tuesday. Good luck to all!

[smokeyamber]

So from the forecast this week is looking awfully sugaring season here in Central VT, anyone tapping in this early on buckets ? I am debating it, but not sure if the taps I do now will last the entire season into April... Thoughts ? Thinking of tapping some reds as I think they will run sooner ?

So not ready on the arch/shack... but I never am

[GeneralStark]

This year I'm joining the ranks of the early tappers. Started yesterday after spending a bunch of time this fall improving some areas where I had more taps/lateral than is ideal, and after changing out many drops. I had quite a bit of blowdown this year and some other major repairs to do as well. I'm hoping to take advantage of the lack of snow and warm days over the next week to get a bunch tapped. Still have a bunch of drops to replace but I think I can meet my goal of being 100% tapped and ready in the woods by the time we start getting consistent sap.

Not much to do in the sugarhouse to get ready except for a minor ceramic blanket repair in the arch, and rinse the ro. Hoping for no major equipment issues.....

[spud]

General I think you are making a wise choice. I think your going to be making syrup by the end of the week. The 10 forecast in my area has dropped a bit and there may not be a bunch of syrup made in the next 2 weeks but in your area i think it's going to be good. Please keep us posted as to how many gallons you make.

Spud

[GeneralStark]

Sap has been running a little bit on gravity....just rinsing lines at this point. Hoping to hit 400 taps in today and then turning on the vac. pump. Forecast for next week is trending colder so not sure how much syrup will be made but I'll take it.

[GeneralStark]

I went to turn on the vac. pump on Friday evening after getting over 400 taps in last week and the pump was siezed. It has stuck in the past due to mineral scale build up (liquid ring pump with water for cooling), but never this bad. Spoke to a CDL tech and today had a chance to take it apart and get the impeller moving. No big deal and now it is pulling 27" after fixing a few leaks. Sap is running a bit....but nothing too impressive. Not sure what this week will bring but I'll leave the pump on until it freezes up again.

[wsugar]

I went to turn on the vac. pump on Friday evening after getting over 400 taps in last week and the pump was siezed. It has stuck in the past due to mineral scale build up (liquid ring pump with water for cooling), but never this bad. Spoke to a CDL tech and today had a chance to take it apart and get the impeller moving. No big deal and now it is pulling 27" after fixing a few leaks. Sap is running a bit....but nothing too impressive. Not sure what this week will bring but I'll leave the pump on until it freezes up again.

I put glycol in my water cooled pump to store it. That was what Cdl told me to do. Haven't had a problem with it seized up. Maybe this will help

[PARKER MAPLE]

I got a feeling cold weather is coming again, long range looked cold for a few weeks. Hope there wrong like it usually is.

[WestfordSugarworks]

about 1000 taps away from being all done tapping. Will be happy to have a few weeks of cold to fix the long list of things that we've noticed while tapping and just relax for a few days. We've been pretty much flat out. So grateful for people that come to help us. Made 60 gallons on Sunday and the guy we sell our sap to hauled away about 17,000 gals of sap from our big bush. Good luck to all.