Hello Treestand. Really appreciate you reaching out and offer your help.
I feel very similarly about people who hand load as I do about people who can read and play music.....they have all of this knowledge in their heads and skills that makes me envious. But I am eager to learn.
Think I...
I don't have a cab. In the summer I like the fresh air and hearing the implements like Swampcat. But man, in the middle of February when I am running my 7' snowblower in a driving snow and it's 3 degrees F I sure wish I had a cab.
I have dozens of places like this on my swampy fir/spruce plateau. I have been putting down "corduroy" roads for the past 20 years. But I have endless acreage of small diameter trees to do this...all spruce and fir. Works great. My oldest patches of corduroy are a little over 20 years now...
Ah...I see. So 8 gallons of sap per hour. So 100 gallons would take about 12 hours to process into 50 gallons. That's much better.
Yes, my 2x4 evaporator will do about 12 gph. So 100 gallons of sap would take about 8 hours. With RO that 100 gallons becomes 50 gallons and that would be...
How good of a friend? Like has been already mentioned...a lot can go wrong. I entered into a very small and minor agreement with my BIL on some land I purchased last year and it already got weird. My BIL got his trousers all bunched up about something. In the end it was an easy escape for me...
I've been thinking about building a small RO unit but I'm not sure if it would benefit me at my size. Not sure if I fully understand the math.
You say yours will do 4 gallons an hour. If I had 100 gallons of sap (which is typical) it would take me 25 hours just to reduce it to 50 gallons via...
Mine is a little 2x4 by a guy named Bill Mason. He's a welder up in Maine and makes them on the side. Great product and as you said, supporting a local guy.
8 gallons is a good year! I didn't tap either back in Feb. when we had that mild spell. I knew it wouldn't last, and didn't feel like tapping early and sweetening the pan just to have to drain it and start all over a month later.
Nice set up Peeps. Divided pans are nice because if you have enough sap you get the benefit of continuous flow of your sap and can pretty much replicate what the pros do. If you don't have great sap flow you can still use it to batch boil like you're doing now.
First boil of the season here in NW Mass. today. Normally I don't even tap until March 7th or so...but crazy weather this winter. Tapped last weekend. Had full buckets by Wednesday but work got in the way. Then a cold front came through on Thursday and this morning I am boiling 90 3 gallon...
Completely agree. I always got a kick out of the "How to Make a Buck Bed" Youtubers...always with the nicely prepared log on the ground underneath the overhanging tree branch...all the leaves nicely raked away. All that was missing was an alarm clock and a glass of warm milk.
Thanks for...
I'm not really a rifle shooter at all Jerry. Massachusetts is a shotgun only state for deer. I've got a few Remington pumps in .30-06 for tracking in VT and Maine, but for what I'm doing a few boxes lasts me 10 years or more. Wish I was a more active rifle shooter.