Maple Stuff..

Well we are past the first of the year now......with the recent warm weather I notice my Maple in the yard was dripping on the drive way already..Little to early yet to even consider tapping it. Does remind me though that tapping might not be to far off weather stays like it is.. With the recent rain the river here is going back up again. Was out trying to fish on Friday and river was acting like a March river not January..Crazy!
I've still got a stash of jars of syrup from last spring. I know I made more last spring than usually did before. But apparently I didn't use as much this last summer as years past???
I guess it is time however to start thinking more about what I want to try to do this spring.
Anyone else lining up sorting their maple tapping gear??

Mac

My boss already tapped some last week .

We checked our one woods with 150 trees we put a gravity line in last year and cleared out the windfalls in 3 woods. We will put out our tubs and buckets in late February and the last two years we started tapping the last days of February. I am hoping it won't be much earlier at all as we run into a lot of hard freezing nights when tapping starts earlier. At least that is our experience. I am almost all sold out with a few pints left. Will start taking some orders next month.

Bryce

I was in the woods on Saturday cleaning up some trees that fell. Still need to modify my arch for the new pan we bought. I tapped Feb 7 last year. Its getting close.

Now its getting cold again

I have a gravity line in with 14 taps and a vacuum line at the house with 7 taps. I may be boiling this weekend. That vacuum set up I have REALLY works great.About 1.24 gallon of sap per tap per day. It's running on house current to 12 volt, but will be changed over to battery/solar next year.We usually do not tap until around Valentine's day in these parts but I had a itch to scratch and weather looked promising. Will have to see how the taps hold up in the long run. The vacuum should be fine, not so sure on the gravity line.It does not have as much slope as I would have liked.

What kind of vacuum pump are you using?

probably get a good run late week with 20's today and 60's saturday.

I have a 12 volt 3 GPM RV 4 chamber diaphragm water pump connected to a temp controller and a recirculation line with a needle valve. The pump kicks off at 29.4 degrees and when the outside air temp reaches 34.4 degrees there is a 2 min delay before the pump kicks back on. I'm currently pulling between 21 and 24 inches of vacuum. It's only been running for 4 days and I have over 30 gallons of sap from 7 taps. It's crazy to watch.

Whole thing fits in a large cooler so it's protected from the elements and semi freeze proof.

I have been looking at those Shurflo setups. Maybe next year!

The wind was bad here yesterday and it only got to 34F for a high.. My yard tree didn't drip on the driveway a drop. On Monday it made couple spots where sap comes out of broken branches. This morning it 6F -10F with wind chill only suppose to be 20F. So I doubt that tree will drip any today.. Tomorrow the weather man says going to be 40F again. My guess the tree will drip? Most the trees I usually tap are on my other property 60 miles north. They never run as early or sweet or as hard as this one city tree. There is a foot of snow on the ground at my north property and only a skiff here..
Hard to know what to do with weather, I'm not worrying about tapping trees. Trying to catch some fish and weathers got that goofed up too.
I see a few of them vacuum set ups in woods around here. I just play with a couple dozen trees in my yard so don't mess with something that fancy.

Mac