Tapping Maple Trees And Off Grid Homesteading
We have a warm spell of weather the past two weeks so I am tapping maple trees early this year. I am also restoring lead acid batteries for use on the off grid homestead in our greenhouse during the winter months.
First thing in the morning I had to sweep off the solar panels. It had snowed heavily and I needed to clean off the panels in order to get any power into the off grid tiny home.
Sweeping fresh snow off the solar panels
It was still early by the time I got to the greenhouse with my maple tree tapping equipment. I brough in everything I need for tapping trees. The water jugs, tubing, taps and tools.
I am cutting lengths of tubing off a 500 foot roll that I have. The tubing is about 3 to 4 feet in length for each tree. Then I drill a hole in the lid of a one gallon water jug to fit the tubing. I also put a tiny hole in the lid to allow air to escape as the jug fills up with tree sap. This lets out the pressure so the sap can continue to flow with no problem. I am mass processing these today.
After I have a mess of parts prepared I next put a tap (spile) on one end of a piece of tubing. Then I push the other end into a water jug lid. Next I attach the lid to the jug and set it aside. When I have a pile of these I can go out into the woods to tap trees.
Setting up maple tree taps and jugs
When I go out all I need is my drill, the prepared taps and jugs and the rubber mallet. I simply drill a hole in the tree. Press the tap in and hammer it into place. The jug falls straight to the ground and waits for the sap to fill it up.
This year I am prepared like never before for the maple harvest. Chris is getting the sugar shack ready for use while I work out on the trees.
Back in the greenhouse I am also restoring badly sulfated lead acid batteries. These batteries were so bad that they show little to no voltage on a volt meter. They cannot be charged with conventional battery chargers. The Bedini motor can restore these lead acid batteries for me with no problem. I can then put the batteries back into service at the off grid homestead.
Chris has also been cutting fire wood to get ready for boiling maple sap. The stove boiler will take about 3 foot lengths of wood so we do not have to cut as short for this job like we do for the tiny house wood stove.
Two spools of magnet wire arrived in the mail today. I have credit on Amazon because I place ads on my websites so I can use the credit to make purchases that I need. The next step in the large Quanta Magnetics Q3 charge accelerator is to work on the toroid coil section. I needed some 16 gauge magnet wire for this job. I am excited to get this machine running and tuned properly for best power production.
Later I went around to check all the maple trees that I had tapped and see what sort of output I got. Some trees produced a fair amount of sap for this early in the season while others did very little. I have to watch the trees and see which taps produce and which ones do not. I may have to redrill some of them for best performance.
You can watch today's video here: Off Grid Homesteading ~ Tapping Maple Trees ~ Restoring Batteries
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About the Author
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Troy Reid |
