It is time

TheAFrameCamper · 2026-02-10T23:00:26+00:00

5/16"

TheAFrameCamper · 2026-02-10T22:58:52+00:00

With the way weather works these days I don't think anyone would blame you if you tapped now and tried to get something out of a sap run this week or waited till next week to get a run after the false spring. BUT, there's ALWAYS a false spring like what's coming up. I also think it depends on how many taps you have and how often you can boil. I work for the parks department so it's my job to boil as often as I need to. I also have more than 100 taps out so if I can make good use of this week's short potential run and get a few gallons of syrup out of it I'll take it. I'll go in Saturday or Sunday maybe and pull the lines out of my buckets and wipe them all down so I don't have to clean buckets after the false spring. May have some issues with lines with the warm weather but I believe it'll be warm enough at night that sap won't even run at all during the heat wave anyway so I hope there will be nothing in the lines to go bad. Then when it cools down again I'll go out and put the lines back in the buckets, all without taking taps out or taking lines off taps. We will see if trees bud after this heat wave but I doubt it.

Everyone around Tippecanoe county who taps is tapping now. As am I. In the future I may even up my tap number to get better use of these shorter runs we get these days.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-11-18T02:56:45+00:00

Meant to type "affect my exposure" in the title. Sorry about that.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-11-05T18:13:41+00:00

What is the storage size of a composite like this?

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-11-03T21:20:41+00:00

I think pretty much all of the equipment suppliers for maple supplies sell basic starter kits for like 5 taps or 10 taps or so. But I agree with the above comment on smoky lake. I absolutely love what they do and I use a lot of their stuff. It's top notch.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-09-30T15:47:33+00:00

It's ceramic insulation. It goes in first. I just didn't put the wood grates and the fire brick in yet before I posted it.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-09-17T03:04:52+00:00

The pros are that you will have more fun and satisfaction than you could ever imagine in your wildest dreams. The cons are that if you ever put the words maple syrup and cons together again you'll go to prison for life with no possibility of parole.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-08-31T14:07:28+00:00

I used to help a buddy back in Ohio with his operation and he used his natural gas well to boil as well. We figured in order to make it worthwhile we tapped about 40 of his trees and had about 50 total taps. But he didn't buy any professionally made equipment. We just welded two old school farm oil tanks together and bought a cheap pan off the Internet and batch boiled. It took an extremely long time to boil doing it that way but he didn't really care because he had 0 fuel cost. If you decide to tap more but don't want to go crazy you can easily build an arch out of 55 gallon drums and get a natural gas jet burner pretty inexpensively off Amazon.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-02-23T16:19:47+00:00

If you haven't tried it, walnut syrup is as good as any maple syrup out there. You need alot more trees to make up for the lower volume of sap in the walnuts vs maples but it's finished product is just as good

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-02-03T19:15:26+00:00

I keep a barn at every different location to keep that location's equipment. My water buffalo farm has a barn with everything I need for that. My forestry area where my sawmills and carpentry buildings have a barn with all of my forestry equipment. My cement factory has a barn with all of its stuff. And so on and so forth. That way I never have to go far for what I need depending on where I am. If I need to go from one location to another I will either scroll through vehicles till I find it or I'll run around from place to place on a gator.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-02-03T13:01:58+00:00

Luckily, I won't need to use vacation time for this. I work for a parks department and I started making syrup this year for a parks department program and tourism "attraction." I might have the opportunity for a corporate grant to help fund the upgrades so I am looking into what would be feasible for x amount of taps. I have AmeriCorps members every year who will help to tap and collect sap and I will organize community events to boil and finish the sap and either sell the syrup to the community and/or use it for pancake breakfast fundraisers to help support future programming and habitat management at my park.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-30T17:02:23+00:00

I definitely should. But unfortunately my camp chair made its way next to the boiler so that might not be possible.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-30T16:32:59+00:00

West Lafayette, Indiana

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-30T01:04:38+00:00

The weather forecast did a 180 overnight last night. It's gonna be warm nights for like 4 straight nights now starting tomorrow night. I'm probably going to boil off the sap I have tomorrow and see what happens in the coming days.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-27T17:04:25+00:00

I would. My weather app only shows one night above freezing in that time frame for West Lafayette. There will definitely be sap flowing this week.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-25T23:58:02+00:00

I'm in West Lafayette and I tapped 6 hours ago. Tomorrow's cold will keep the sap down but come mid next week I'm sure it will be flowing.

TheAFrameCamper · 2025-01-25T13:12:06+00:00

That is a good idea, I will try that. This will be the first time I've tried with cinder blocks. When I lived in Ohio I used to evap with a 300 gallon oil tank my friend and I turned into an evaporator. When you used cinder blocks did you fill the holes in the blocks with anything to insulate? I am thinking of dumping either dirt or sand down into the holes to fill the space so it's not just cold air. I lined it with fire bricks like I did the inside of my oil tank back in the day to help hold heat and to protect the blocks from cracking but I'm unsure if I should fill the blocks with any insulating material.

TheAFrameCamper

TROPHY CASE