Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[smokeyamber]

Tapped in last night, temps in the 40's in Central Vt. Every tree was dripping FAST. Now I need to get storage online... evap put back together .. cut more wood... oh, well LET the FUN begin !

[doocat]

Spud, Our releasers were in sheds, not heated, but inside. Not sure if they were outside in the very cold air if it would stiffen up. Worked great for us.

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Got my first run yesterday only 150 gallons at 1.2%. Didn't get a lot but had enough sap to check for air leaks. 3/16ths is surprisingly easy to check for leaks on.

[WestfordSugarworks]

Wow. A real accomplishment with that many. Interested to know how you split up the labor. How many helpers? What roles does everyone have? Do you work in teams?

Thanks. Sorry to respond so late.

This year there was my friend, my dad, and myself who helped tap, along with my aunt and uncle who volunteer to help us out and do a couple thousand or so every season. We are lucky to have free help from family and friends who enjoy being out in the woods. My dad, my friend, and I all work independently, all working one mainline at a time. Maybe have one person work the taps closer to the main and one work the farther away taps from the main on mainlines with longer laterals. But for the most part we work independent, I think that helps to reduce the chance of missed drops. My friend and I averaged around 500 taps or so each in an 8 hour work day which is what I try to shoot for.

My aunt and uncle work together, usually one puts on the spout and one drills. I'm not a fan of this approach for a number of reasons, but they enjoy helping us out and like to be close by when they are working, plus they are volunteering so what can I say.

I find tapping while within hearing distance of another tapper is helpful to keep your energy and speed up. It's also good to be able to listen to the sound of the other workers drilling, gauge their speed and quality of the job they are doing if possible. Look over once and a while to see that they aren't missing any trees. It's really difficult to manage employees in my opinion, to be assertive and respectful when telling someone what they need to do differently and also remember to remind them of what they are doing well to keep spirits up.


But I'm not fan of paying employees (or myself or dad) to put spouts on first, then having another paid employee come back and drill and tap in. I figure it takes me like 5 seconds to detach the dropline from the pin and grab a spout and wiggle it onto the drop. Same with our other paid tappers this year, it goes pretty quick when putting a spout on. A significant amount of time is spent walking between trees when tapping (luckily we didn't have much snow this tapping season), so in my opinion it makes little sense to pay people to put on spouts without tapping at the same time. Wasted money in the form of time spent traveling between trees. Furthermore, when it warms up any frozen liquid in the bacteria-contaminated dropline immediately drains and sits in the spout. So better for us to have each person do every aspect of tapping on their own.

Lastly, my dad and I do all of the walking of lines by ourselves. I go to UVM so am out in the woods between classes as much as possible, and he walks after work and on weekends if he doesn't have to be in the sugarhouse running the RO. Historically i've done most of the walking as he simply doesn't have time. We have been lucky to be able to walk lines a lot early in the season and then have high vacuum hold without too much more maintenance for the rest of the season. we don't have bad animal damage so that's a godsend. We've probably walked lines for about 40 hours so far this season and now vacuum is up above 27" in both bushes and we are in good shape for this week.

Finally I feel like it's not a race against time anymore, for the first time since we started the new install this fall. All tapped in, lines tight, hard work has paid off and now we just hope for no more leaks, good weather, functioning equipment. I don't know if anyone else feels this way but when we work so hard to get our operations in good shape I think we should take a break and be proud of our accomplishments. It's easy to always look at the next thing that needs to be done, but I find it important to stop and just be happy to have accomplished so much thus far this season.

Good luck to everyone, should be a good seven days ahead of us.

[woodchuck]

We got the season back on track today. My son and a friend came over and we tapped our vacuum line trees. We got into a good rhythm of replacing spouts, drilling holes hammering taps. I had repaired chewed drops, breaks, and pinched manifolds last weekend. My wife and her friend took care of the buckets. Great day to be outside!
Tomorrow I will plumb up the new Ariblo and hopefully pull, at least some cleansing sap.
Look like a wild week ahead!
Best of luck to everyone!

[blissville maples]

Get ready!! Going to be an extremely busy few days for everyone. We had 60s in January, maybe 70 wensday, 80s in March again? This could be not good, freezing nights seem to perish with the arrival of warm spells this year.....

[spud]

Sap is running 200 GPH into my sugar house. There was too much wind today to allow the sap to really run hard. I was able to find and fix a few leaks in the woods today. The big leak was an end cap and clamp that came off one of my mainlines. I am now running 28 Inches of vacuum. Should see 1+ GPT each day for the next few days. I welcome the rain so all this snow will melt.

Spud

[blissville maples]

Sap is running 200 GPH into my sugar house. There was too much wind today to allow the sap to really run hard. I was able to find and fix a few leaks in the woods today. The big leak was an end cap and clamp that came off one of my mainlines. I am now running 28 Inches of vacuum. Should see 1+ GPT each day for the next few days. I welcome the rain so all this snow will melt.

Spud

Spud- how many taps on the 200 gph?

[tcross]

i was unpleasantly surprised to wake up and see no sap coming in. I got about a hair less than 1/2 gallon per tap here from 11 a.m through the evening. hopefully it picks up today!

[DrTimPerkins]

About half full tanks overnight in Underhill. Warmed up to about 38 deg F yesterday afternoon, but dropped to 35 by 5:30pm before rising slowly overnight. Lots of wind here too, which must have broken something...vacuum dropped to 13" Hg overnight. Trees are starting to "wake up", but sluggishly. Not unusual for this time of year. Will fire up the RO and concentrate what came in, but hold it in the bulk tank over overnight, then RO again tomorrow morning and probably first boil of the season tomorrow.