Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[TapTapTap]

First boil today. Yup, you read that right. Today with high wind and near zero temperatures this morning. Frozen up? Oh yea. But nothing a little heat couldn't fix - plus a couple of replacement fittings. I had Dave on site today, our heavy construction company's water break foreman. Darn good thing we weren't called for an emergency water break. He was busy at my sugarhouse!

All in all, it was a good exercise to get the rookie team tuned up. Only had just over 1,000 gallons of raw sap so I concentrated it lightly to about 6% to make it last a couple hours. No syrup today but the pan is sweetened and ready to put out on the next boil.

Ken

[tcross]

i get my pump to run around 27-28". it does get warm... but i can spray some water, or put a bit of snow on it and it doesn't hiss back at me... so i'm assuming it's not "to hot". it's a big pump. i also put a 20" box fan on it later in the season when it warms up a bit. the thing has been used by me for 8 years, and by the former owner for 10-12 years. i think keeping good, fresh oil in rigs like that is very important. back when these pumps were made, was the era when they made things right and not cheap!

[tapdrinker]

Tim,
Thanks for this post:
Collected about 7,250 gal of sap over the weekend (about 1.3 gpt) before it froze up again yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately not real sweet, 1.45 Brix, but will likely come up when things get rocking. An "early" season run...slow accumulation. Trees need to thaw out a bit more and have a good recharge cycle and snow needs to melt back from the tree base some.

Looking like no sap weather until early-mid next week.

was getting nervous I'd miss a lot of the season.

[blissville maples]

I will 100% back that! Grab onto some of those older dairy pumps and you'll know they aren't cheap!! That's a fact they use very high carbon steel and made things to last.

Deffinantly a different system than a delaval vp! They don't run over 20" very well.

[drewlamb]

IMG_3041.jpg
What's wrong with this picture? Ran across this one in the woods today checking lines and thought you would appreciate. Clearly too tired for proper tapping!

[Crowsap]

Double taps are on wrong tree? It looks like the single tapped tree is larger diameter?

[wiam]

Neither one looks big enough for 2 taps

[drewlamb]

Double taps are on wrong tree? It looks like the single tapped tree is larger diameter?

Yup. Also found a dangling drop line we missed during tapping.

[blissville maples]

Yep, prime example of someone who is unconscious! Precisely why I do everything myself. It's pretty clear that the larger tree should have had the second tap as it looks close to a 20-inch tree, versus the other looking to be 16" or so.

I guess you'll have that on those big jobs!!

Hey at least it's better than my neighbor who would put Four Taps on both of those trees! I'll have to stop and take a picture of his tree someday it's a complete joke and probably a great way to kill your Sugarbush especially when you don't untap every year and leave 3 to 5 unclosed entry holes for disease and bugs

Anybody else getting bored! I guess I'll Go kick the snowbank again today!

[TapTapTap]

Anybody else getting bored! I guess I'll Go kick the snowbank again today!

Yup. So much to do once temperatures come back up but can't do anything right now. Could go check the woods for problems but I'll still need to do it again when I turn the vacuum back on
Ken