Black Bird has been very busy installing a sap collection grid in our 2500 acre sugar bush located next to our facility in the beautiful Harmony River Valley.
We started the installation of the sugar bush in late summer of 2018. The site was broken up into two phases with the intention of completing phase one in mid 2019 and tackling phase two in late 2019 and 2020. In 2018 and the start of 2019 we completed much of phase one. Our crew and our contractors are busy putting the finishing touches on phase one and we expect phase one to be completed by August.
Phase two is well underway with the majority of the trail construction and the flagging of the 1" main lines already complete. The next steps for phase two is for the brushing crew to start cleaning up the sugar bush in preparation for the installation of 1" and 5/16" lines.
Below is a picture of some of our 3" main lines that will collect all the sap from the 1" and 2" lines and bring the sap to the facility.
All of our buried pipe is fused together with this machine shown below. We fuse our 3" pipe in our main yard into 1,000 foot lengths and drag them out to our trenches and put them in place. The 1,000 foot lengths are fused together in the field and then we hook up the standpipes to them. We then air test the pipes and check for leaks before burying them.
Stay tuned for more updates on the progress of our sugar bush.