Maple sugaring 2021

[mike_belben]

Golly chris thats some serious amps. Sounds like you guys need a sap powered pelton wheel perpetual motion machine to run it all. 

Mike when are you going to start making some moonshine 😂

I have some experience there as well.   ;)

[celliott]

Golly chris thats some serious amps. Sounds like you guys need a sap powered pelton wheel perpetual motion machine to run it all.

Mike when are you going to start making some moonshine 😂

I have some experience there as well.   ;)

Honestly, the vacuum pumps are nothing compared to how the RO's make the meter spin lol those take ALOT of juice. And we're adding a third!
We talked about it last year, we were running 100hp worth of vacuum pumps. Pretty crazy. Power bill is big, yeah, but when you're making 300+ gallons of syrup per hour, it pays off.

[mike_belben]

Thats hard to even wrap my head around. 




So is there a limit beyond what is practical as to how high you can tap a tree and run gravity feed tubing?  can tubes and livestock coexist in the same pen?  Any harm in tapping 8ft up?

[celliott]

You can tap as high as you can get. Theoretically sugar content is lower higher up. Practically, will you notice? Probably not.
We get a lot of snow. I'm 6'2", I routinely tap as high as I can reach. On 4' of snow, that's sometimes 12ft or higher. One year we had to cut extensions for our 36" spout pullers. Some were 16' up!
I would not recommend keeping tubing and livestock in the same area. They will chew it or pull it down. Guaranteed.

[mike_belben]

Well.. Can they exist in the same pen if the tubing passes well above the height they can reach is how i meant it. 

[celliott]

Probably. And maybe above is clean enough, but for us, tubing inevitably is on the ground. You build a spiderweb in the woods, and branches/limbs/trees fall and it goes on the ground. It's a never ending aspect of maintenance on a tubing system.
Your backyard situation could be different.

[mike_belben]

I can picture that.. Must get frusterating.  Are the tubes self supporting or on cable guides or fence posts or...?  Do they tend to stretch, unplug or tear apart?



Im gonna be thinning this place forever as i need whatever piece of wood.. until its a pasture with shade trees.  Syrup just shifts the balance of which ones i keep long term. 

[mudfarmer]

The 3/16" and 5/16" tubing will stay on the trees by itself, friction. Gotta keep it tight to prevent sags. The bigger mainlines these guys hang they use high tensile fence wire, posts where needed etc.

Some of the different small tubing has stretch issues I guess but not most unless you really reef on it. It tears apart when a squirrel chews it all up and then a tree falls on it ;D Look up a two-handed tubing tool, it's just some vice grips welded on pipe handles like most other tools you build yourself but someone sells for lots of money. The fittings are a tight press fit and have never had one pull apart that was seated properly.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Mike don't say you weren't warned.
BTW what does syrup sell for now?
Retail and wholesale.
Chris how many employees on your operation and how long do you operate the RO machines on a given day.
I realize it probably depends on sap yield.

[celliott]

We have 12 woods crew employees. We figure roughly a man per 10,000 taps, and a few guys for other jobs. There's a few others as the original sugarhouse operations has a retail syrup store and is an equipment dealership. All told probably 15-17 people are employed here!
The RO's run till they're dirty or the sap is all processed. Time is highly variable, depending on sugar content, volume, etc. but we can drain a 13,000 gallon sap tank in less than an hour.

The tubing is pulled tight and strategically placed around other trees and branches. It sometimes will get stretched out but a good quality tubing will mostly spring back.
Our mainlines are supported on 12.5 gauge high tensile fence wire. Attached with wire ties (bag ties) every 18". Our bigger pipe (2", sometimes 3") we run on 1/4" galvanized braided cable. 3" and 4" and big pump lines we run on 3/8" braided cable which is very rugged. Lots of posts in between and side ties to take out more tension. Posts help take sags out and maintain a steady even grade (we usually run a minimum of 2% slope but can do 1%) our big cable we anchor into boulders or ledge, that's kind of an innovation of ours out of necessity. As tight as we get the big cable, no tree anchor would hold up. So we drill holes in rock and epoxy in steel bolts.

Crew did 4800 again today. Just shy of 49,000 tapped. We will be over 1/2 way tomorrow by the end of the day. Very good progress for us, we're ahead of schedule actually. Little snow helps tremendously.

[Corley5]

  We finished stringing laterals today 8)  Used the six 500' rolls of tubing I picked up yesterday and 1/2 a roll of different stuff that we use for making drop lines.  Should have bought 7 rolls ;D ;D  The Lapierre tubing is nice to work with.  I've got some other things that need attention in the AM but I may get to cutting in some drops tomorrow.  We're way ahead too.  The last couple seasons we were finishing up as the season was getting under way.  Not sure what our total taps for this year will be but we should be around 1,800.
  Our 3/4" mains hang on 12.5 high tensile with galvanized wire twist ties.  The 1 1/4" wet dry hangs on doubled 12.5.  Gripples are used at the ends for tension and attaching as well as attaching and tensioning the side tie wires.  Side tie wire is 14 gage galvanized soft.  It's a completely suspended system.  The only posts we have are where the wet dry runs between the woodlots.  It's hung on old power poles.  I have to put a gate in that portion to allow access to the back hay field and gravel pit.  That's coming up shortly ;D  Drops, wet/dry manifolds built and installed, end caps on the 3/4 line and we're about ready to tap.  I'd like to have that done by Valentines Day. 



 

 

 

 

 

[Corley5]

  Bulk prices early last summer were $2.00 a pound.  Quarts are $15-20 or more and gallon jugs are $50-60.  Bulk syrup in our region is hard to come by at the moment.  The majority of ours goes into 55 gallon drums.  We sold to Anderson's in Wisconsin last season.  We had to get the FDA registration too.  We were already state inspected but needed the Federal one to sell in bulk across state lines.  

[Stephen1]

We sell our syrup only by the liter, $25C, 4 liters  are about a 1 US gallon, so $100C. 
Do you guys run the vacuum full time? 
We have as  mudfarmer calls it  ' Sapsucker pump' it is a diaphram pump run off a small electric motor, a simple system with a check valve before and after the pump. We do about 300 taps.  
 Chris that is huge amount of increase in sap, 28" of vacuum will give you almost %400 over buckets. 

[celliott]

Yes we run the vacuum 24/7. The trees can retain residual vacuum in the wood and when you shut the pump off, sap is pulled back into the taphole. Once that sap has hit tubing, it's "dirty" and will contaminate the taphole, and start the healing process. A big part of our job is to trick the tree into not realizing it has a wound, and keeping the taphole running and viable.
That huge increase in sap over buckets is why it's cost effective to have so much money tied up in high tech gear. Buckets are low production but low investment. High labor involvement too. A high vacuum tubing system is high production, high investment cost, and low labor involvement (per tap) we just end up doing way more taps per man than a bucket operation ever could.

[SwampDonkey]

Corley, looks like you can still walk around pretty decent, no deep snow yet. Not bad here yet either. Cousins here don't do much until February, small operation, but been around 30 years. They have a RO machine to, I'm guessing they got set up funding back then. That's not cheap equipment.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Thanks to Chris and Corley for answering my questions.
Had a fleeting thought back in the 90s to start a small operation , when I bought my current 65 acre woodlot, but felt that growing veneer quality Sugar maple was a lot easier.

[Corley5]

  We're half of our normal average snowfall right now.  No snow shoes required  8) 8)
  My woods has been managed for low volume high value timber harvests.  Specifically sugar maple 🍁.  I'm working around crop trees that are ripe for harvest right now.  The last timber was taken out about ten years ago.  The trees that would make it the next time around in 10-15 years are getting drilled 

[mudfarmer]

 We're half of our normal average snowfall right now.  No snow shoes required  8) 8)
 My woods has been managed for low volume high value timber harvests.  Specifically sugar maple 🍁.  I'm working around crop trees that are ripe for harvest right now.  The last timber was taken out about ten years ago.  The trees that would make it the next time around in 10-15 years are getting drilled  

Do you also get funny looks when people ask "why didn't you tap that nice tree right there?" and you tell them because it is too nice? ;D

[celliott]

No trees left behind here lol
The property we lease doesn't have a lot of veneer quality maple, some good sawtimber, but mostly lower grade or small sawlogs. They all make good sap. We've drilled holes in some real nice ones that's for sure.

4100 today, 7 man crew. I drilled 777, highest of the year for me. Nice tap density where I was working, 80+ taps per acre on some of the mainlines.
We're 53,000 tapped, that's halfway for the eden woods! 
No snow in the forecast, we still aren't wearing snowshoes, next week should be big too. Probably can finish our A system, which is the biggest at 44,000 taps. 

[mike_belben]

How are you keeping count of your daily and cumulative taps? 


And how is sugar bush leased?  By the acre or by a gallon royalty or a combination of factors?  

[celliott]

We use baseball pitch counters. The lease is payed per tap, which is by far the most common method.
Rates vary in Vermont from .40 cents to over $3 in competitive areas, but most common is $1 per tap.
Our property as a whole averages out to 50 taps per acre. So our landowner is making about 70 bucks per acre, every year, and still will have trees to cut down the road. Or lease for tapping forever. Takes a long time to grow a nice big sawlog. Not long for it to go away forever.

[mike_belben]

Brilliant.  Does the per tap cost have any influence on the tapping procedures or sizes or number?   Would you guys run it all the same if it was the companies own ground?

[maple flats]

At times I envy you with so many taps and all of the best equipment, but then reality hits hard. I worked very hard back when I had over 1300 taps, but at that time I had 3 part timers helping, college students. When they graduated I hired 2 brothers, still in high school, but after a season of having to retrain them daily I finally decided to cut back.
Before I was diagnosed with cancer in Jan 2018, I could work out in temps of zero or a little below and I kept warm dressed in layers. After my cancer surgery (which so far tests show it was successful) I was put on a blood thinner. The required 8 weeks post surgery of doing essentially nothing ruined my ability to work 6-8 hrs a day. I now seem to be doing well if I get 3 hrs in before I need to take a rather long rest. Now, even at 25F I get cold. But
I will continue. I will be starting my line repairs and changing taps, tees and all 3/16 fittings next Tuesday. Everything flows right to the sugarhouse, however I'll again only have about 400 taps. If tapping gets done and it looks like I might have 3+ more days before sap flow, I might add up to about 100 more taps. Once that does get done it will just about max my woods.
I do have a neighbor who's father planted 3 rows of maples back about 40 yrs ago, they run just over the property line from my bush. The father died about 5-6 yrs ago. As I look at those maples (a mix of sugars and reds) about 2/3 look tapable, the rest will in 3-5 years. I will likely ask and try to lease them for next year. I don't have a total count, but my guess is there are between 75-100 trees, maybe even 125. They are where I could pull all of that sap to my sugarhouse too. Those trees are planted 20' spacing in 3 rows making them rather easy to do. The landowner now, is the daughter of the man who planted the trees, she is retired and never uses that portion of the property. She is not married and has no one to pass it on to as far as I know.
For our counts, I started about 6-8 seasons ago to put tags on each lateral at the saddle with the tap count on that lateral. Then as we check for leaks we tally the counts. The tags I use are yellow plastic and they have a 3" or so tail with an enlarged spear point at the end. That point goes around the lateral or the loop to the saddle and goes thru a small hole in the tag, thus it is a hang tag. A permanent marker lasts 3-4 years on it, then we write over the old as required. Also, I get rough guesses on tap total by keeping a tap count. I count any loose taps before we start and write it down, along with the number of bags of 100 and record that. After tapping we tally any remaining taps, the difference is my rough count. Then we tally the tags in the next few days for our final count.

[Corley5]

A buck a tap is going rate here with a ten year lease with a right of first refusal.  Tubing systems generally have 10 year service life although 15 year tubing is out there now.  There's quite an investment in a tubing system.  Most landowners are timber oriented around here and don't want their trees drilled full of holes.  Michigan's long standing timber culture has always ruled unlike the sugar culture in the NE.

[Corley5]

  I make bundles of twenty five drop lines with cable ties.  Four bundles fit in a five bucket.  When a main line's laterals are all done I add up how many buckets I used and subtract what's left in the last bucket
  Got my wet/dry gate ready to hang tomorrow.  Figure I'd better get it done while I can still drive the truck there.  No snow until maybe next Thursday 8)