Right now. Have I started tapping yet, well no, but I am walking all the lines in preparation to start tapping within the next 2 weeks.
November and December were devoted to shipping Christmas 🎄 orders 📦, but as soon as that was done, I went back to the woods.
We have had some major winds the last few months, especially 2 weeks ago. I have already found several blowed down trees and tons of branches.
Sometimes, all I have to do is pick the limbs up off the lines. Sometimes, it’s easier to cut the line, remove it from under the fallen limbs or trees, and reattach the line. The tubing is very resilient and will normally go back to how it should be. If the lines are stretched too much, we can cut the line, remove a section to tighten it up, and reattach itself.
These repairs are not hard, but they can be time consuming. It’s not as bad right now because we are in the middle of a warm stretch, so there’s no snow in the woods. I figure for every 10 minutes I spend now I can save myself 3 times that much if I had to dig the lines out of the snow before repairing them.
I will start tapping within about a week or so though. I’ll need about 20 days to tap about 5000 trees. My real job demands much of my time, so somedays I only get a few hours in the woods. Sometimes I get lucky and the kids come home to help.
Once we’re tapped, we just have to wait for those cold nights and warm days of early spring!
