Over the last five years we’ve always battled ice on the west side of our Robinson Road property. Without a pump house and vacuum pump to keep everything warm, the mechanical releaser would inevitably freeze. The resulting ice always caused issues on the 2000 taps it serviced. This year we ran 2200′ of service wire to power a new electric releaser and space heater, all contained in an insulated box. We also ran electric to the sap lift 500′ away for another space heater/insulated box combo. So far everything has stayed comfortably above freezing and we’ve avoided all of the issues that plagued us in the past.

The freeze up this past week allowed us to finish tapping and finish a few repairs. The weekly weather report shows the season kicking into gear soon, we’re ready for more sap!

The season is underway and we’re collecting sap! 60% of our holes are drilled and the rest should be in next week. We’ve begun leak checking and have almost finished our first pass on each line, where we find missed taps, broken spiles, and large squirrel chews. This usually gets our vacuum from the low teens to the low 20s. After the second pass we’ll try to have everything in the mid 20s as we find smaller leaks. This year we’ve invested in Datacer monitoring systems on three of our four properties. As the season progresses we’ll post more about the various features. First and most important is the vacuum levels at the end of each mainline. The sensors show the vacuum level (absolute and relative to the pumphouse), temperature, and time since last update. As you can see most of the lines at our home sugar bush are in good shape. Something must be wrong on the west side of Robinson road though, it’s averaging 4″ less vacuum than the east side! These systems will help pinpoint leaks so we can tackle them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Today we drilled the first holes for the 2022 season! We’re a couple weeks later than usual, but with all of the cold weather in January we didn’t miss much sap, and the later tapping should actually result in better late season runs. It shouldn’t take as long to finish this year as every single dropline/tap has been replaced ahead of time along with most of the line repair. Stay tuned, we’ll post again when it warms up and we get our first run!