2025 Season

[Brian]

Well,I am going to start tapping this saturday. I got the drills out and batterys charged, tapping bits marked and tubing on them. The spouts are bagged up and the tapping hammers are ready. I have to gas up the sleds and I should be ready for saturday. I have 4 people coming to help, I have never had so much help. That means if each one puts in 500, that woods should be done saturday because there is about 2500 up there give or take a few. I might start on friday to give a little push. I got the heat on in the ro room and new membranes to put in the ro, I have a dairy plate cooler this year that I am going to try. I am going to put it on the out go of the concentrate. I hope it will drop the concentrate temp down 10-15 deg's on the warm days, we will see what happens.

[Mooneybc]

Good luck tapping! A few producers in my neck of the woods are starting this weekend as well.

[Ultimatetreehugger]

Hey Brian, can you post the link to the new software for Smartrek?

I appreciate ya!

[Brian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J65Q...E2%80%93Leader. This should help you out and get you started. It takes a little time to get things done or at least it did for me.

[BAP]

Well,I am going to start tapping this saturday. I got the drills out and batterys charged, tapping bits marked and tubing on them. The spouts are bagged up and the tapping hammers are ready. I have to gas up the sleds and I should be ready for saturday. I have 4 people coming to help, I have never had so much help. That means if each one puts in 500, that woods should be done saturday because there is about 2500 up there give or take a few. I might start on friday to give a little push. I got the heat on in the ro room and new membranes to put in the ro, I have a dairy plate cooler this year that I am going to try. I am going to put it on the out go of the concentrate. I hope it will drop the concentrate temp down 10-15 deg's on the warm days, we will see what happens.

Make sure you keep the plate cooler flushed well when you are done for the day. When we had one on the farm for cooling milk many many years ago, we used to have problems with it not cleaning well over time. It became a source for bacteria growth. Of course, milk fat is different than sap sugar as far as accumulating. We eventually went to tube coolers.

[Brian]

Thanks BAP, I grew up farming so well aware of that, good point all the same thank-you Because that could cause A big problem. BAP, I Ro 2 passes first 7-8% next pass at 21-23% so if I run the concentrate through 2x do you think it will drop 10 deg a pass. The water is 1in natural flow out of the spring 38 degf the flow out from the ro 3/4 stream. The first pass out of the ro is around 4-6 gallons a min depending on sugar. the second pass it is around 10 gallons per min. The plate cooler came from an eight cows milking parlor with a raise platform. The parlor milks 8 cows at once and is a 61 plate cooler. I can't wait to see what happens. I know the math is vague but the water runs out the over flow anyway so free energy-free cooling hoping for 10-12 deg drop. If this works good I will put plate coolers in my pump shacks before the sap goes in to the tank. The 2 bigger woods have water cooled vac pump anyway.
Any one doing this already? I will post what I find.

[Brian]

I got one woods tapped this weekend and got a start on another woods.That woods had about 2444 taps. I hope to finish get the other woods tapped on the back of mollys pond done this coming weekend. I got a good start and the snow wasn't deep pluse I had 4 people helping. We will see what next week brings.

[Brian]

I got about 1800 the last 3 days, almost done tapping. I hope to finish up next weekend only a few hundred left to go.

[Brian]

I still have a few hundred left to tap. The snow is getting deeper and the weather is not looking good for a while. The long range weather looks like march before the season get here.