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AGRICULTURE HANDBOOK 134, U.S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



PN-4725 



Figure 29. — Plastic sap bag: The amount of sap is easily 

 seen and accumulations of sap, even from short runs 

 over a long period of time, tend to remain sterile 

 because ultraviolet rays of daylight are transmitted 

 through the plastic. The bag has its own plastic cover. 

 Since the spout is completely covered, it is free from 

 contamination. 



Summary 



(1) Any commercially available spout is satis- 

 factory. 



(2) Use only clean, sterile spouts. 



(3) Drive the spout into the taphole with a firm 

 enough blow to seat it securely, but do not 

 drive it so far as to split the bark and wood. 



PN-4726 



Figure SO. — Emptying the plastic bag by rotating it on 

 the sap spout makes it a one-handed operation. 



(4) Use a 2- X 2-inch rubber runoff rainguard on 

 the spout. 



(5) Carry clean, sterile spouts wetted with a 

 dilute, hypochlorite solution into the sugar 

 grove. 



(6) Do not use buckets coated with lead paint or 

 with temeplate. 



(7) Use containers large enough to hold a nor- 

 mal day's run of sap. 



(8) Use only clean sap buckets or bags. 



(9) Use covers on all sap buckets or bags. 



COLLECTING THE SAP 



Collecting (gathering) sap by hand (fig. 31) is 

 the most expensive and laborious of all maple 

 sirupmaking operations and accounts for one- 

 third or more of the cost of sirup production. 



When buckets or sap bags are used, much 

 time can be saved if the trees to be serviced on 

 both sides of a roadway bear a mark to distin- 

 guish them from the trees to be serviced from 

 an adjacent roadway. This prevents servicing 

 the same tree from both roadways. Different 

 colored paints can be used to mark the trees. 



Another timesaver requires punching a sec- 

 ond hole in the sap bucket opposite the original 

 hole, and painting a stripe from that hole to the 

 bottom of the bucket. The buckets are hung 

 first from one hole (for example, with the stripe 

 away from the tree and plainly visible); after 

 they are emptied, they are hung from the 

 opposite hole. This makes it easy for the sap 

 collector to tell whether a bucket has been 

 emptied and keeps him from skipping full buck- 

 ets as well as wasting time revisiting empty 



