it's cheap home setting here and today's the day I'm gonna tap my trees it's been
warm the last couple days I don't think it started flowing though very much it's
been overcast and I find it needs a good sunny day to get it going so I don't
think I miss much so I'm gonna get out there and do it before I miss a whole
lot more
okay so we're tapping trees today so I got to get going through here pretty
quick because it is warming up a lot so when you drill your holes you make sure
your here's the old hole from last year you make sure you're well away from it
and you drill on a slight upward angle
and that's about all you have to do so what I use this is one of those wood
bits and I cut the end of it so it goes in my cordless drill I have to run back
and forth quite a few times
switching batteries in and everything but it works really really handy it
works good
okay we gotta keep going and you want to have it on a slight slope down just so
the SAP can come out good and it doesn't sit in it drains clean you drill it in
and pull it out and make sure the holes nice and clean
and then you go down the line
see I chopped about 150 I honestly haven't went around and counted every
single one but I'd say it's about that with the buckets I do and the pipeline
so you basically want to drill on the south east side
that's it gets the most Sun so when the Sun beats on it it'll the SAP really
starts to run at least on that side of the tree so you want to basically tap
southeast unless you have like quite a bit of cover on one side on that side
you try to pick the sunniest side that's where you're gonna get the most SAP
so after I tap the trees I'm going to go back and I'm going to make sure the
lines are have a nice slope to my main line because you have any dips it'll
collect there and then it'll a sag down more and it just won't run properly
all kinds of stuff that falls on these lines I've had chew marks I don't know
what the world was chewing on it like big chew marks like a dog or something
then you have squirrels chewing on them so you have to go around make sure all
the lines are good sub reefs have a big sag over there my big line something
must have fell down
oh my goodness is still charged yeah oh
wait a few more minutes
here's a little tour of the maple operation at cheap homesteading one line
comes right from the back of the property and the other one runs way up
towards the front there and all my smaller lines run into it and they go
into a cube on this side and then I found that it was much easier if I put a
cute left a cube down in the middle of the far side I don't know what it was
but it was either suction in the line or whatever not enough venting so that's
where I'm at so now I'm gonna tap the rest of the trees up here and then I'm
gonna have to go around and tie up all the lines make sure they're all flowing
downhill SAP runs better Daniella I'd really like to change most of our
sweeteners to honey and maple syrup but both were very expensive so I got into
beekeeping and the honey thing I can see making some money so that's a good
income for the homestead but the maple syrup here's a lot of work for the
amount you get but if you want to change any amount of maple syrup in your diet
for other sugars and that you pretty well have to make it yourself because
this stuff is like gold so it's a bit of work but yeah it's a little bit
satisfying when you actually have the finished product oh you know a few tips
if you if you want to do a pipeline your easiest thing is just to put it
into a bucket honestly like put a couple taps in a
line and throw it in the bucket who works by far the best the problem is
when you have big long runs like I do hilar the hard way
so if you have about ten trees on a run and you don't put a vent on the other
end of it the farthest point it doesn't run down properly it causes some sort of
suction and I think the biggest issue is a lot of these pipeline operations have
vacuum I don't have a queue so I had to put a vent on either end so I ended up
pulling a tap the end of each one but I think I'm
gonna just try to make a vent so I'm gonna come around but bets at the end of
each run so I can add that extra tap that you want so we will keep on going
okay so I got most of these lines hooked up I got the ones over there and there
are tapped I have to tap the rest down the line and we got to tap the ones that
are down here
I have taps on the end of my main lines so I can hook up lines to blow air
through and that line runs down right to that cube
okay now I've done tapping these I haven't tied up everything properly yet
we're gonna go tap the buckets and smiles and get moving on that so let's
go
I don't think I'm going down there again with Laurie
No