Comments on: The Forest Tapped; Maple Syrup to Come

By: Don

Don — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:42:23 +0000

On the other side of the valley we will start tappping our Mud Pond bush Thursday. Depending on moose damage this can take two tappers a few days. 500 taps feed 3000 feet of mainline along a 400 foot elevation change. Our home orchard is on the West side of Meetinghouse Hill and runs late and sweet. Purchased sap is delivered from an East facing bucket orchard near the Connecticut River. This is early and sweet. Finally our Barker Road orchard is tapped last. It faces East and is shadowed by Tug Mountain after noon.
Sugarhouse is ready, everything clean and shiny. We use a 3.5 foot by 12 foot raised flue Small Brothers Special with air tight front, airblast grates and oversized blower. Syrup is drawn 1 degree light and finished on a 2 by 6 gas rig. We run the finished syrup through a seven inch press then a clean felt. Last season every batch was Grade A Light. Half our syrup is made in April. Happy sugaring…

By: glenn

glenn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:11:54 +0000

I tapped last wednesday and thursday and got a modest run.Enough to clean the shmeg out of the mainlines.It was nice to tap the trees when they’re not frozen.I think I ended up with about 20 gallons of sap in the stock tank.It ran a bit on saturday but has been too cold since.It looks like thursday and friday could offer up some sap.
We have a bobcat cruising around our sugarbush as well.I’ve seen tracks but no siting yet.I hope he does his part to keep down the red squirrel population down.Man, they do a number on our taps,lines and fittings.

By: Tig Tillinghast

Tig Tillinghast — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:39:17 +0000

You guys getting sap down there yet? We’re expecting it Thursday. We had just about the same sort of arrangement last year. Lots of boiling. Had a great time. Good luck! -tig

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:34:19 +0000

We have a small sugaring operation on the other side of the river in southwest New Hampshire. This season began with a new sugarhouse!It was time. The old shack was too small and we needed to expand. We have about 550-575 taps mostly on 3 mainlines to the sugarhouse. We still do some roadside buckets for that high sugar content. We find big ol yard trees outperform the woods trees in terms of sugar%.
We run a 2×6 wood fired raised flue,no blower,no vacuum,no RO. . . . just alot of time boiling.
We keep our lines up all year and had a great deal of damage from the ice storm. Every tubing line was under snow when I ventured up the hill for the normal preseason repairs.
I hope the sap runs well for you up there1