H Shumate

Back in late Jan/early Feb. we were thinking of tapping for sap, doing some reading and the temps were going above freezeing so we did one tree and were getting sap, so we did a few more. after I figured out an evaporating program that was productive we ended up with about 22 taps. things were going great. we have enough for our two families and gave a tiny (very tiny) bit away.

Temps are up and buds are starting and I will probably remove the taps today. I would like to prepare for next year. in the woods there are many maples. I want to identify each and identify what kind of maple they are. many are to small to tap. so I was figuring on transplanting some. I have had some luck moving some maples as high as 10-12 feet with a small backhoe, but would like to move bigger how big is too big?. I do have a excavator with a 1or maybe 1 1/2 yard bucket

How close do I dare dig (remove a tree) next to a tree I plan to tap

should I thin around the bigger maples? How far?

I have a few maples (I call fence row trees) that have a large trunk (maybe 2 foot DIA.) and it splits into many smaller (8-12"). as many as 7 or 8. should I prune these down to one? when would be the correct time of year to prune maples?

I wish I would have found this site earlier. I like the idea of the Hugelkultur. By the time it dries up enough for me to start this I am afraid it will be to late and my time to build it will be limited also. But, planning for next year will give me more time to read more here before setting one up.

This year I am going to stick with the conventional garden. I was at a local green house which is probably a bad place to ask for help if you are trying to improve your garden and keep it as organic as possible. but I have a spot which I have planted for a few years which gives me good results, but it is falling off and the area around it isn't giving good results. s the soil seem to pack just from the rain. we have three horses and 10 years of manure minus what I have put on the garden.

Is aged horse manure a good thing to use? How much is to much?

green house people recommended to till in Gypsum pellets and pine bark mulch

Is the gypsum OK?

Is Pine bark mulch good? I'm afraid of what pesticides may be in it and if it will remove nitrogen plus I have searched the net for tilling pine bark mulch into the garden bed and found nothing

Was out and about today and locating supplies. When I asked about Vermiculite or Perlite they refered me to the garden center. Is this the same stuff or is the insulation stuff differant?

HI. I've been lurking around here for a while and like the site so I registered.

It is a long story how I found this site but, to keep it short. My daughter and I are trying to better the food we eat. She and my son in-law like animals. And they started with chickens/eggs which lead us to non GMO seeds and while waiting for planting season Maple syrup got brought into the scheme, since we had enough maple trees to provide enough sap for two families. We started down that road. With the maple syrup comes a lot of boiling (evaporating) which ended up here. And after many hours here my brain seems to be going 100MPH in two different directions. I have heated my house for over 30 years mainly with wood. First few years was a wood stove which was a wood hog. I switched to a Sotz double barrel system which was a lot more efficient. I would like to add here (for the people concerned about how long a barrel will last) my main burn barrel is about almost 30 years old and still in good shape. top barrel failed at weld points from mods I did to get more heat from it

I had an extra barrel kit so I built a single barrel with a hole cut in the top so I could slide a 12X20 pan in above the fire which makes a pretty good evaporater. Anybody who has made Maple syrup knows there is a lot of time to do a little experimenting. I have learned a lot more about making a good fire in the past few weeks than in the 30+ years I have been heating my home with wood.

Weather was nice the other day so I fired up the evaporator I built and went out to my Pac rat pile and drug up a bunch of stuff to build a trial rocket heater. Now even though I would like to build something to make my evaporating more efficient I am looking more to replace my currant home heating system with one of these.

OK, so here comes the questions

First, the book I have found links to from this site......I believe is $18 dollars new and a lot more used. Is the older one better?

Second, I have a walk out basement which has a porch from the main floor off to the side of the walk out basement patio which I had made a storage area under when I built the house. I would like to make my fire feed area there and run the horizontal tunnel thru the wall and have the barrel and mass part of the heater in the basement. So the question is how long can you make the horizontal burn tunnel and what are the draw backs with going longer.

Third, which is a second option is to put every thing including the mass under the porch and putting a second set of vent tubing thru the mass to extract the heat from the mass. If I do this can I inclose the barrel part of the heater in the mass Providing I have access for clean-outs?

Forth, I do have a conventional chimney but have read here that sometime basement units don't work (draw) properly. Since exhaust temps are low can I use a horizontal vent system or is the carbon-monoxide going to be a problem?

Sorry if I'm re-asking questions that have already been asked. I have been reading on this site for all of my free time (and time I should be doing something else) the past couple of days and have gotten a lot of answers, but not for these few. so if these have been asked can you point me to the threads

Thanks

Harold