Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[goeduck]

Getting started on filling up the second bay of firewood for the maple syrup evaporator. I estimate it'll be drying until the 2025 season.

Oh man, you must have maple syrup running in your veins. That is A LOT of syrup wood.

 

[Duds13]

Oh man, you must have maple syrup running in your veins. That is A LOT of syrup wood.

HAHA Yeah it is definitely a lot of wood, and a PITA to split it to that size. Syrup is just a hobby for us, we average about 20 gallons a season but it is a lot of fun and when late February / early March rolls around I am ready to get out of the house and do something productive!

 

[Gordon Gould]

Getting started on filling up the second bay of firewood for the maple syrup evaporator. I estimate it'll be drying until the 2025 season.

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That's quite a charge of wood !! Looks good too. It's good to be ahead.

gg

 

[Duds13]

That's quite a charge of wood !! Looks good too. It's good to be ahead.

gg

Thank you! mostly poplar in there as well as maple branches that come down over time. The evaporator isn't picky!

 

[Jstpssng]

Thank you! mostly poplar in there as well as maple branches that come down over time. The evaporator isn't picky!

That must take a while to work up. Did you make a custom wedge for your splitter? Please don't tell me that you do all of that by hand!

 

[Duds13]

That must take a while to work up. Did you make a custom wedge for your splitter? Please don't tell me that you do all of that by hand!

Yeah it is definitely time consuming! Just yesterday I was thinking about a different wedge for the splitter that would make the process a little more efficient. Even a 4 way wedge would be much better. As much as I enjoy splitting by hand, it was not done by hand!! hahaha

 

[two_bit_score]

HAHA Yeah it is definitely a lot of wood, and a PITA to split it to that size. Syrup is just a hobby for us, we average about 20 gallons a season but it is a lot of fun and when late February / early March rolls around I am ready to get out of the house and do something productive!

We would enjoy seeing some pictures of your syrup making operation in process!

 

[Duds13]

We would enjoy seeing some pictures of your syrup making operation in process!

 

[two_bit_score]

Thanks!!! @Duds13!!

Fantastic hobby!

 

[cqaigy2]

I have vague memories of an uncle making syrup. Pretty young guessing 4 or 5 years old, maybe even younger. I recall being outside, snow all around and a long open shed with a long pan of boiling liquid, kinda a soft boil, wood burning at one end. Smelled wonderful and periodically someone would take a large spoon and dip it into the pan, and take some of the liquid and dribble it onto the snow. Us kids would run over and scoop the snow and stick in our mouths, tasted delicious!

 

[Gordon Gould]

Great pics Duds13 - Looks like a first class hobby operation. Very nice.

gg

 

[Duds13]

Great pics Duds13 - Looks like a first class hobby operation. Very nice.

gg

Thanks so much! I'll be honest, everything was built and on the property when we bought it 5 years ago. Thankfully the original owners are still close by and taught us everything we needed to know. Never in a million years did I think I'd be making maple syrup, but it sure is fun!

 

[Thomas]

Nice setup Duds13.

 

[Jstpssng]

Nice setup. Is that line up the wall a feed from an outside tank?

 

[Duds13]

Nice setup. Is that line up the wall a feed from an outside tank?

Nice eye! Yes, we have a "sap house" that holds two 65 gallon tanks, and that gauge on the wall will give us an idea of how much is left in whatever tank we are pulling sap from when we are boiling. This is a photo of the sap house. If you notice the two tanks are tilting forward - they are spring loaded so when they get down to roughly 10 gallons of sap they will tilt forward to keep the remaining sap toward the front and flowing into the pan. We store all of our buckets, lids and collection tank here in the off-season.

 

[eyi]

Very very nice. How many taps ? I guess a couple hundreds?

Trees looks like very healthy, red or sugar ?

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[Duds13]

Very very nice. How many taps ? I guess a couple hundreds?

Trees looks like very healthy, red or sugar ?

Thank you! We typically put out about 95 taps. Trees are a combination of sugar and maple. The one photo of the tree with the buckets and the can of beer is out best sugar maple, we call it the "money tree"

 

[panampefa]

Wind storm blow-over -
~ 125 yo Ponderosa Pine root ball blown over in a recent storm. The measurement across the cut off trunk was > 28" - Wish I had rear ballasts at the time!!

 

[groundcover]

Bit of early mud season here. Chance to work up some wood though.

 

[Gordon Gould]

I haven't been out in the woods since the big Christmas time storm. All that rain and the 40 degree week that followed took out all our snow and left everything pretty soft and sloppy. But it was 24 this morning and things stiffened up enough that I could do some trail clean-up. Nothing drastic just a half dozen fir. Three were big enough to get a stud-wood log or two from like this one - a log in the snag and a small one in the piece across the trail.

The others were too small or too rotten so I just cut them into lengths I could maneuver, stacked them into the grapple, and dumped them off to the side.

It wasn't much but it felt good to be out there.

gg