[mitchmaine]

i don’t mind plowing down the garden at the end of summer, and i have never minded winter coming, but i always get a little sad about the end of sugaring. we’ll be plowing ground in a couple weeks, and it gives me a little time to hit the woodpile undisturbed, which is fine, but it always bothers me a bit.

you tap trees in three feet of snow, light the fires in the evaporator and smell sweet sugar. Collect at night under a full moon. before you know it, its mud everywhere. the woodpile is gone. the smell in the sugarhouse is sharper, stronger. you are dog dead tired but still, i hate to see it go.

[mitchmaine]

still at it here in maine. weather is good. woodpile disappearing faster than the sap. making a good tasting grade b. weather wants to make sugar for another week. no buds yet. penny, me and the horses showing the wear. best year evah, i can just feel it.

[mitchmaine]

hi peyton,

i think 38″ is the standard for that check, but make yours adjustable. a wider yoke stretches them out and the check has to too.

there are other options. you could also make up a full set of lines by adding a ten foot cross that goes to the outside horse. that way everyone has a line from driver to bit.

or, you could drive the team with lines and put the third horse (outside) on a jockey stick. a solid stick or peice of tube that hooks the bit of the jockey horse to the lower hame ring of their neighbor.

all work well depending on your needs

[mitchmaine]

hi peyton, not sure if this is what you are saying, but the center horse gets both cross lines to her bit. the outside horses get the outside line to the outside of their bits. the checklines go from the top hame ring on each side of the center horse to the inside bits of the outside horses. when you swing either way the center horse puts pressure on the last horse to make the turn with that checkline. in other words, imagine taking your team in harness, unhooking the crosslines and putting the third horse in between them. hooking those crosslines up to the center horses bridle, and hooking checklines from the center horse out to the insides of the two outside horses.

[mitchmaine]

same as you and tom, ed. direct sun made the difference. hardly any wind in the woodlot, but if it could it would stop the sap too. anywhere there was half a bucket of ice i kept the ice thinking there was probably sugar in it, but when it got coffee cup size we chucked it. sweetened the sap up really well. today is our open house, glad yours went well. what elevation are you and tom? we are right on 44 north line. not the best sugaring part of the state but the best we got. good luck this week coming, could be the best year ever.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

glorious day! Ice thawed in pails enough to get about 440 gallons 2.9 sap. Kept the ice for one more pull, then heave it.
Maine Maple Sunday tomorrow. Sap to boil. SWEET!

[mitchmaine]

The other day after collecting sap from our woodlot, I was letting a young woman who had come to “learn” about horses take them around the fields by herself a couple times. There were three of us perched on a bale of straw, and I was trying to answer her tough questions about driving horses. She was really putting me on the spot there. Actually I was realizing again after a long stretch, how much about teaming skills I can’t seem to verbalize. Things you do often , good or poor, are often taken for granted. Something you do over and over without thinking about too much, until someone asks why.
When I do work my horses, I don’t actually talk to them very much. Now and then, when I’m chatty, but as a rule not too much. But as I was chattering away like a magpie, everytime I said “go” or “slow” or “hello” or anything that rhymed with whoa, the horses stopped dead in their tracks. We got to laughing about it and decided to talk later and let her drive, but it gave me a moments incite, a little deeper into what it is that we do. They were listening again. They do it all the time, even when I think they aren’t. everytime something like that happens I get a rush out of it.
Lynn miller repeats that quote(above)by his friend lots of times over the years. I liked it and wrote it down with a crayon on the inside of my grainbox so I see it each time I pop the lid.

[mitchmaine]

hey ed,
we hung all our buckets, or all we expected too, and collected yesterday in the east wind with snow rain and hailstones. that was a first. horses didn’t seem to care. we collected 270 gallons 1.8 sap. boiled it all down in 5 hours. didn’t make a draw, but the front pan tests 56 brix, so i might drainit off and finish it on gas. looks like cold weather here for a day or so. with the rain the snow has a crust that won’t hold you so it’ll be poor going here for a little bit. top it off, i cracked a scoot runner yesterday. hope it lasts the season.

congrats to mark! i have committed my share of sins in this life and fully expect to attone for them come judgement day, but i have yet to shake hands with a politician. just kiddin’, bud. wish i could have been there. mitch

[mitchmaine]

great video, ed. wonderful seeing your arch. weather here is snow rain squalls every day. we tapped 100 thursday, a shy 200 yesterday and finished out the one bush this morning. we have another batch of trees in a hell hole at the back of the woodlot with 100 taps. we will get them tomorrow hopefully. should be 450 total. checked the thursday trees this morning and they are quarter full. yesterdays trees are 1-2″. so no worries. collect tuesday and see what happens. really like your operation ed.

[mitchmaine]

hi bill,

took a stab at finding your plow in the rear section of lynn millers plow book. lots of illustrations of horse drawn plows. the rear wheel and lever seemed unique so i concentrated on that. and lo and behold, john deere made a ranger sulky plow, page 194, that is almost identical to your plow. even the tool box at the seatpost. of course the section in the book doesn’t have all the worlds plows, and i can’t imagine john deere not stamping their name all over the castings, so no guarantees, but i’d look on the mouldboard or points of the plow and see if there is any id there. good hunting, and i’d want to try that plow out myself, looks like a good plow.

[mitchmaine]

hey ed,

the weathermen are promising three days of snow and rain. they haven’t done too god a job this year with their predictions, and they contradict each other often. bless their souls, they are doing the best they can.

we moved a truckload of pulp this morning, and came two buckets shy of cleaning up the yard. the road commissioner let us sneak in this morning before he tags the roadway. so i feel blessed that way.

in the past i have run around with a pail of spiles and a drill and just tapped the trees. we hung the buckets another day when the horses could get into the woodlot. we get a hundred or so taps on two batteries, and with a lunch in between can put in 250 per day. two days of that and we have it just about done. may have to resort to that strategy this spring. when i hang pails too soon, the sap trickles in and freezes and may build up to a point where it splits the buckets, so i don’t like to get out early if i don’t think we can tend them properly.

on a good note, the sugarhouse is spotless. truck me over a couple hundred gallons of five percent and we’ll fire up.

good luck this year, all of you. it’ll be the best year evah.

[mitchmaine]

still trying to beat my way into the woodlot after the last “weekly” blizzard. no taps or buckets yet

[mitchmaine]

hi george,

around here, a pung is a box sled, usually single horse. the front runners turn up high and the shafts pin in on the runners end.
ours was rotting, so i cut the runners ends down and put in a roll and pole for a team.

[mitchmaine]

@highway 39997 wrote:

Mitch,

Glad you got the team out in the woods. I am amazed how the snow had dropped in our region. We are off to pack trails tomorrow and Sunday then wait for warmer weather to gather. Are you using a sap sled or log scoot arrangement?

Does anyone gather with a single horse? I will be boarding Jim Garvins Canadian/Percheron during March and hope to use him with my horse for sap gathering if all works out. Happy sappin’.

hi ed,

we collect with a ben thresher type sap sled. but i rigged it out with a scoot pole with a nose ring so it might as well be a scoot. a good friend of mine collects his sap with a scoot. the sled might be a tad lower and easier to dump into.
we used to collect with a single and a pung. a small precheron mare. great horse (lilly). hang some buckets tomorrow or monday.
i knew this sugarmaker who always would say just as everyone was gearing up “this is going to be the greatest sugar season ever.” his name was ed like you.

[mitchmaine]

Thank you ed,
For this wonderful thread

I’ve been searching around here for some excitement or courage or whatever that thing is that clicks and makes you go nuts and start sugaring. I was having a hard time locating it. After listening to everyones plans, I decided to just take the horses for a loop in the sugarwood. I took a saw and a barn shovel just in case, but never needed it. The team broke through the drifts and the snow was sticky enough to pack and it was perfect. Its about a two mile loop if you go everywhere and we were back in the field in half an hour. Maybe 45 minutes. But it went so good we turned back in and went two more times around. So, we’ve started. And I can feel that urgency all of a sudden.
My neighbor hangs plastic gallon jugs on his road trees, and they are showing a pint or quart per tap, and our woods trees are colder than that so no worries for a moment. And it looks like colder weather this week coming, but I will probably start hanging buckets this weekend. 500 or so, is enough for us to deal with. Have to clean up the sugarhouse and boil some water in the pans, wash out the tanks, but we are pretty much there.
We never used to tap before town meeting in march. A couple years, we never made a drop until march 28th. Now we are tapping the third week of feb. for several years running. Strange weather. Good luck out there and thanks again.

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