A Busy Day

We had our annual open house day on the 18th.

After boiling everything we had on the 15th and getting a few gallons of syrup we were hopeful that they next few days would bring good weather and plenty of sap for the open house. That old saying about being careful what you wish for held true as we got 640 gallons of sap over the next two days.

At our usual 30 gallons-per-hour rate of boiling we were looking at 21 hours of boiling. We started at 6:30 and things went pretty well all day long. The weather was really nice with sun, little wind and a high around the mid-40's so we had a good turnout - around 80 people in all. There were times the barn was really jammed with people and you could hardly turn around in there.

We probably would have had a few more attend, but I neglected to put the complete address into the Facebook event information - Coatesville was left out - so several people wandered around in Boone County before giving up and going home. Next year I will have to double-check that.

I took Rod & Debbie Noggle out to the southeast woods to check things out, and Debbie mentioned that they should be collecting since a lot of the bags were full. Sensing that she was volunteering Doug put them to work and they soon came back to the barn with a full tank of sap.

Later in the day Austin took Tom and Nate Wire over in the mule, while I walked over with Dave Myers and his daughters, Kevin & Missy Krulick and their kids. Everyone in the group helped out and we were able to collect the rest of the southeast woods. While the group was walking back Austin and Nate took the mule to the northeast woods and finished filling the tank. With an additional 265 gallons collected on Saturday that extended our boiling almost another 10 hours.

Since we are expecting our wood supply to be tight we decided to cut up a tree we could see across the field that had already fallen down. Michael and I had it cut up fairly quickly, but found it was not as dry as we had hoped, so we hauled it back to be added to the supply for next year. We did find another tree in the south fence row that was pretty good, so we cut that up and brought it into the barn just before dark. It was not as dry as we would have hoped, but by adding it in with our drier wood we were able to stretch our supply a bit.

In the evening we continued to boil, and then had dinner in the sugarhouse so we could keep things running.



Tucker volunteered to stay overnight and help out so we we had a crew of three for the night.

Sort of...


Throughout the day we had several times when the drawoff opened, then ran anywhere from 10-20 minutes. We hoped this would continue, but we started to have long stretches where the sap boiled about five degrees below syrup temperature, then finally open and run for a while. Overall it went well and we made syrup through the night.

Tucker attempted to get some sleep in the loft but it was so cold outside that the condensation falling into the loft from the roof made it too wet. He decided he could sleep in one of the chairs and somehow managed to stay asleep even when he leaned to the side and his head was almost below his waist.

We were able to stay on our 30 gallons-per-hour pace through the night and finish up around noon. We were too tired to finish the last batch, but we had managed to get the drawoff temperature adjusted to where the syrup coming off didn't need any additional finishing so we were able to bottle it right away.

Well, this is a bit disappointing. After starting of last week with a bang, the weather really hasn't cooperated.

After the all-night boil on February 1 & 2 we were hoping for a lot more sap to boil on the 4th. Unfortunately we only got about 200 gallons, so we were done earlier than we had hoped. Between the two days we have made 10 gallons of syrup, all of it a nice light equal to the Fancy on our grading kit. Some people who bought the really dark syrup we made last year and loved it because of the stronger flavor may be disappointed this year, but it is a pretty color. We have been using the UV filter since we started this year, that may be helping a bit.

Overall not much exciting happened while we boiled...Bob had a minor spill of a half a pint or so right in front of the evaporator while changing drawoff filters that made the flor nice & sticky, but we got that pretty well cleaned up.

We did boil over the back pan for the first time. We threw a tiny bit of butter in to knock down the boil and that worked instantly, but the level is not any higher than normal so we are not sure what is causing that.

But so far this week has been a bust. It was supposed to be sunny and 35 by midday, but it is currently only 31 and cloudy, so it's doubtful we will get any sap today. With colder temperatures forecast for Friday through the weekend we may not make any syrup at all until next week.

OK, we're starting up another season.

We bought all new taps this year, they are aluminum so we have to be careful putting them in so we don't smash them, but they should last a long time.

Michael & Bob put out 167 taps on Monday, January 30 and we collected 500 gallons yesterday. Four trips with the tank completely full from the south woods, and one last one to collect the rest.

We finished putting together the evaporator and started the fire around 2. The wood we put in the barn apparently didn't dry out very well, and the fire didn't really get going until around 3. Unfortunately that took getting the splitter out and re-splitting the wood into smaller pieces, it looks like we'll have to replace the wood in the barn with some we split earlier that should be drier.

I left around 9, Michael said he would keep the fire going for "a while". Before I got home he had texted to say he had syrup coming off. I guess the definition of a "while" is relative, here's the email I got at 4:30 AM:

Currently 30 gal left. Fire dying, coals 205 DEG. Around 2 I gave up on wet wood and filled red wagon with stuff out under tarp. Started burning fast, but still not quick to draw off. Better for sure though.

Pulled trailer in and have a heaping load of wet ready to go back to fence for next year. Close to one normal load after that, then we can bring in older stuff. As I got further in stack the wood got wetter. No way a lot of that would have burned.

Around 4.5 gallons on finisher (not finished) and black pot 4" from top. Real sandy, and really light it appears. We may want to filter twice between finish and canner, especially if it turns up light.

Put two batches in finisher. Didn't check combined, but first one was 1% thick. That's when I dropped temp to 219.8.

Temp now is 206. I may open doors; bed is calling! :-) I'll probably keep feed on but close syrup pan float soon...

Michael

So now we at least have plenty of storage for the next round.

So I apparently didn't post anything last season...

Our first day of 2011 was February 11. The weather has been a bit strange with a whole lot of snow, then suddenly melting.

Michael tumbled all of the taps to clean them up, overall it worked pretty well. Some of the really corroded ones were not great, but we’re looking at new stainless ones designed to work with bags.

We only had one cordless drill, so Dad & Michael went to the woods to tap while Tab & I worked on the shop. First we had to chip ice from in front of both doors to even get them open. That took a while, but we got them open, then used John to push away as much snow and ice as possible so it would not run into the barn when it melted.

The tapping crew came back before too long needing a new battery. The new one hadn’t been on the charger long enough, so they were out of business. We decided to put the generator in Francis and drag cords through the woods to finish up. We finished up in another hour or so, and all things considered it didn’t go too badly. We decided to expand in the south woods instead of tapping the north, so at the end of the day we had 142 taps in. Michael tapped at Conti’s the next day, bringing the total to 147. Maybe we need to be on the lookout for a gas-powered drill for next year.

So far Michael is not impressed with the new plastic bag holders. From what he says it’s difficult to get the holder off the spout without pulling the spout out of the tree. Then it’s hard to get the tube back in the bag while putting it back on the spout. I think he’s ready to throw them all away. I haven't had to deal with them yet.

There are still a few trees we could tap in the south woods, but they are a little remote from the others. If we add our normal number to the 147 we have now we would have 11 more in the north woods and 15 on Young’s, a total of 173.

43 Hours Is a Long Time to Stay Awake

So we boiled all night Friday, all day Saturday and fed the fire until about 9:15, then we were down t0 about 50 gallons of sap so we started letting it cool off.

Sometime during the night - or morning, depending on how you look at it, I guess - we had nothing better to do so we added a buzzer activated by the automatic drawoff. If we fell asleep or were outside we would know the syrup was ready and to check the valve. When Michael first plugged it in it was set for around 100 dB...WAY too loud. We cranked it down far enough that it was not too annoying and put it on a timer so it only goes off for about one second.

We lost track of how many gallons of syrup we got, we'll have to figure it out later. All we know is we're about out of quart jugs, and if the weather cooperates later in the week we may need more.

I left around 9:30 PM, Michael and Bob stayed out until about 11, by then everything was pretty much cooled off.

As usual, we'll have to see what the weather does and find out later this week if we can make any more.

First batch of the "day"

Hopefully the first of many...not too bad for basically starting over with almost-new sap in the front pans, I guess.

The All-Nighter

We knew we were going to have a lot of sap today, but I don't think we would have guessed this much. It's a good thing we got the new tank yesterday.

Michael & Bob cleaned it out, collected twice & cleaned out the front pans to be ready to go after our near-disaster on Thursday.

When I got here just after 9 Michael had the mule stuck in the woods; we were able to get it out without too much trouble & started the fire about 10:15. No biggie, only about 710 gallons to go.