New Stuff

This is our newly reinstalled smoke stack. The only really new part is the bright shiny elbow. But, it's back in place to work with the evaporator set up for wood.

















And this is our framework for holding our new sap filter. It's a bit hard to see with all the steam, but Michael said to make sure & point out that we didn't NEED to drill that many holes to get it right, that board was a leftover from another project that we recycled. Instead of using an old prefilter for filtering sap like we have in the past.

I picked up a real sap filter at the Indiana Maple Syrup Association meeting December. It should clean up a lot easier, and it will filter a lot more before clogging up. It's hanging down in the tank where you can't see it.

The straps hold the tank to a frame that elevates it to feed the evaporator and the bungee cords hold the rest of it to the tank so it doesn't fall off when we move the hose. That runs to a pump that is connected to our two open storage tanks.

Ups & Downs

This was one of those days that started well, went downhill and ended up pretty good.

For starters Michael had collected 165 gallons of sap on Tuesday, so that was enough to keep us busy for quite a while. It also helped when the front pans started boiling about half an hour after Dad got the fire started. That's a lot longer than it used to take with the gas burner, but less time than it took for our first try with this rig and wood.

Then the downhill part: About an hour or so later we had the first batch come off, but the temperature went way up to 230 degrees and we were afraid we had burned it. At the least it was going to be way beyond syrup, or too dense. After another batch came off the same way we decided to lower the set point temperature of the drawoff from 221.1 to 220 and see if that kept the temperature from going so high. We figured it would be better to have to finish it a little longer than take a chance on burning it or having to thin it while finishing.

So we set the temperature to 220, and it was much better, we were even able to keep it fairly consistent and have batches come off over long periods of time.

Early in the afternoon we went out to collect and after two trips we had 225 gallons. We over-filled the tank and had to leave four full buckets out in the woods while we came back to empty. Most of the bags were around 3/4 full which is much better than having them completely full...they get a little hard to handle without soaking yourself.

After that it was pretty uneventful, we just kept things boiling and ended up with around 7 gallons or so. I had to leave early so Dad stayed and kept boiling; I talked to him around 8:3o and he was just removing the hot coals from the firebox so he could go home. That gave us a total boiling time of around 13 hours.


Fire at the end of the day

Our FBI Network

We joke all the time about our "FBI" (Friends, Brothers and In-Laws) Network and how handy it is to know different people when we need stuff - especially since we usually need it cheap. This season it has really come in handy, so we need to give credit where it's due.


A big thanks to Pat Keller for getting us connected with his dad at Keller Heating, AC & Sheet Metal in Lebanon - he was able to get us a new 12" elbow for our smoke stack. You can't just run out to Lowe's and buy those.


A while back we got (free) a three-bay stainless sink from a client of mine who was tearing it out. We decided last weekend to put it in so we would have more cleaning space but the neck was broken off of the faucet. We contacted Glenn Brummer at O'Kelly's Restuarant Equipment on Lafayette Road in Indy, (dad of my roommate from Purdue). He got us a new neck, now we just need to do the plumbing.


Here's hoping for lots of sap for Wednesday...

Indy Star Article

Hopefully it won't be as bad as this makes it sound:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009902160307

Finally started

It's Valentine's Day and we just now really got started. But we have plenty of light now.

After all the rain earlier in the week we couldn't get into the woods to collect so between Friday and Saturday we got about 265 gallons. Fortunately it the warm temperatures didn't spoil the sap.

After building a bracket for our new sap filter, getting all the tanks in place and assembling the evaporator we boiled off all but about 70 gallons of the sap. The first boil never yields a lot, so we probably only got about a quart, but it should pick up on Wednesday.

Switching back to wood the temperature is a lot less consistent than with the gas so it's like learning to do it all over again. We also noticed that there is a lot more heat coming off the firebox than with the gas burner. We had stacked some wood against the side all morning, then later in the day the stack almost caught fire; it was hot enough to have embers, but not flaming yet. It's not like the fire department hasn't been out before, but we'd prefer not to have them come again.

The weather looks really good for this week except for rain Wednesday so hopefully we'll get a lot of sap this week.

Not such a good day for Michael...

Tomorrow's forecast includes: Anyone with outdoor interests will be affected by high winds. Yeah, that's us.

Michael describes his experiences today...
Well, that just about matches my day. I'm warming us up a late lunch. If the kitchen stays par for the day, the microwave will explode!

Got the tank and gathering rig in Francis. Then I took John down the west edge of the field to knock down thistles for a more solid path. (In case you're wondering; Francis is a Kawasaki Mule and John is a John Deere tractor) While pushing a small tree that fell from the woods, it popped over the blade and sheared a hydraulic fitting on the up/down cylinder flush. Of course, it couldn't have hit the sideways one that is already out of commission. I took the blade off and drug it back behind John, squirting fluid up on me with every other bounce. Removed the cylinder and nearly broke an "easy" out. Tried to drill it out. I don't know. I see threads, and I could go a little bigger, but I don't want to screw it up. Easy out still doesn't work even with hardly any meat left of fitting. So I switched the sideways cylinder so at least I could get back to pushing. This time, to take it easy on John; I threw the chainsaw on my knee and took it with me. Got to the tree, pulled on the saw; and the recoil rope broke...

So I decided it was time to just take Francis and the boys for a ride to see what's in the woods. (hoping that all the bags are right about half full. Enough to maybe keep them down in the wind, but not enough to have to collect.) Most of the bags are half to 3/4 full, with a handful over the top. They are running slow, a drop every 3 or 4 seconds. At this point, I don't really care if they run over. I'm afraid to use any more equipment! We're about to eat lunch. The microwave seems to still be intact, so the afternoon may be looking up...

Oh yeah, EVERYTHING in the barn is soaked! Even stuff INSIDE toolboxes! What a day...

Tapping

Yesterday we put out about 110 taps. We didn't get an exact count at the end, but it was pretty close to that. It was really windy when we started and the bags were blowing around quite a bit but the trees were running so hard the sap filling them started to hold them down before too long.

Bob & Julie Assembling Bag Holders

Usually it's just Michael and me tapping, but this year we had my family plus my dad, so we always had two drills going plus a couple of people assembling the bag holders and it went pretty fast. I did have to do a little clearing where branches had fallen in the way of getting to the trees, but nothing too large. Hopefully mud doesn't become a big problem again this year, but it's already really wet and rain is in the forecast.

We're going to skip tapping a few trees near the barn for a couple of groups we're expecting so they can see what tapping is about. On the 28th we have a Father-Son group scheduled to come out from Edna Martin Christian Center in Indy. It's a community center in an inner-city area so this will probably be a new experience for most of them; we're really looking forward to it. The other is a family that purchased a "Maple Syrup Day" that we donated to a benefit auction. Hopefully we can find a day with nice weather for them to come out and they can all get in on tapping and boiling.

Julie Hanging Some Bags

But, that's all down the road a bit. Unfortunately we still have some work to do to be ready. The biggest issue is some sugar sand left in the pans from last year that's going to be really hard to get out...hopefully we can take care of that on Wednesday. We're going to have to start boiling no later than then.


Doug Adjusting A Tree Tag


Austin Being Austin

The 2009 Season is Starting

I haven't updated this since last season, hopefully I'll do a better job this year & we can use it to track how the season goes.

We have been busy the last couple of Saturdays and last Wednesday getting ready for the season, and this Saturday (Feb. 7) we'll be tapping our trees.

The only big change for this year is installing new doors on the front of the arch to convert it back to wood. After the initial investment that should save us several hundred dollars this season. This also involved the re-installation of our 12" smoke stack. We discovered that one of the elbows had rusted out while stored outside so we have a new one on order.

Wednesday we had to talk the gas company into delivering us 100 gallons of LP instead of their normal 200 minimum. Michael was able to talk direcrlt to the driver & get him to come out, so we gave him some syrup as a thank-you. With gas at 2.29 a gallon we weren't too excited about paying for 100 gallons we don't think we're going to need.

Hopefully I'll get time to get some pictures today to add showing the new doors, if not I'm sure I'll have time on Wednesday.