Tapping trees

Donald Lehman · Mar 4, 2016

Got approximately 400 tapped today. Didn't put any covers on. We will have my DIL and granddaughter do that tomorrow. Jeff and Marc will continue tapping tomorrow and the grandson and I will get all of the gathering tubs and such out and set up. Will be our first year using tubing. We will do a small area to get our feet wet and then add pipeline where it can be used as time goes on. Looks like we are going to have somewhere in the neighborhood 900 taps this year. Once I get the rest of the roads built we can do a few more. Seems nice not to be crawling through two feet or more of snow this year! We are using the pickups to cart buckets around the woods this year. Some different than plowing snow for four days to get into the woods like last year. Only got up to 29-30 degrees today but some of the trees started to dip a bit where the sun hit them this afternoon. Was nice to get into the woods. Took our pug with me today and her and Jeff's dog had a high old time rolling in the snow and cavorting around.

Tim in New York · Mar 4, 2016

Where are you at Don? Seems a bit late - most guys have been boiling around here (upstate NY) for a couple of weeks, I think.

What size evaporator do you have?

Tim

Bret4207 · Mar 4, 2016

(quoted from post at 20:54:52 03/04/16) Where are you at Don? Seems a bit late - most guys have been boiling around here (upstate NY) for a couple of weeks, I think.

What size evaporator do you have?

Tim

Nobody has even really started hanging buckets up in this part of Northern NY. Hasn't been much above zero in the daytime in 2 weeks. Where are you at? "Upstate" covers everything north of Yonkers to some people.

TimV · Mar 4, 2016

Guess they're doing the folk's woods tomorrow--I was by there yesterday and there's still more snow than I'd like to drive a pickup through, though their little Kubota 4x4 should get through fine. Cousin on the home farm dropped the folks off a quart of new stuff from his uncle's woods--they're also slowly putting up more tubing. They tapped last weekend and got one good run last week before it turned cold. Going to be interesting--if it gets as warm as they're saying next week (high of 60 possible) that could start the trees budding, which would really put a crimp in the season before it even nicely starts.

Bill in IL · Mar 4, 2016

Your just starting tapping and I am thinking I will be done by Monday the way the weather forecast looks.

Jeff M NY · Mar 4, 2016

We tapped the third week of January and boiled the first time on the second of February. Six weeks ahead of last year. We have had some pretty good runs, but if it warms up the way they say, could pretty much be it. Still some here that haven't tapped yet or just recently have.

Donald Lehman · Mar 5, 2016

I'm in the Lowville/New Bremen area. The fellows who use pipeline got a fair run a week ago, but it has been generally too cold for the trees to run any sap to amount to anything yet. If the weather comes off as the weather guessers are predicting we should have our first good run this week. I don't own an evaporator at this point. A high school buddy of mine does and he boils our syrup for us as he does for a couple of other local landowners. Somewhere down the road we may boil our own, but at this juncture in time, the current arrangement works well for us.

Hogleg · Mar 6, 2016

I shut mine down yesterday, Bill. No sap in the buckets for 2 - 3 days. Funny, this was the earliest I have ever got taps out and only got about 25gals of sap. One neighbor said he thinks the sap started flowing in late December but was not paying attention and missed it also. You cannot go by dates on the calendar. I need to figure out how to predict based on average temp or something.

Oh well...

John

Tapping trees

Donald Lehman

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Tim in New York

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Bret4207

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TimV

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Bill in IL

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Jeff M NY

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Donald Lehman

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Hogleg

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