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.

Free Stuff is Awesome When It's Really Free

Wednesday we didn’t have any sap, but the weather looked really good for Thursday so we waited to collect and got 245 gallons in the morning. The temperature was around 50, so the trees were running pretty well when we finished up around noon.

After that we decided to drive to Pittsboro and see what kind of shape the storage tank was in that the neighbors had offered us. We knew it was a large poly tank and that it was “laying out near the woods” but that was about it. We figured they would not have gone to a lot of effort to put it very far away from the shop, so we didn’t take much with us except some straps to hold it down and a tow strap in case we needed to roll it around.

When we got near the shop where the tank was supposed to be it didn’t appear that there were any woods very near by, and Michael remarked that he had been there, but he didn’t remember any woods, either. When we pulled around to the back we could see that the woods were actually a couple of hundred yards away across a cornfield, and that the tank was indeed lying there. As Michael said later, it looked about the size of a roll of toilet paper. From long experience getting “free” stuff for sugaring we know that free stuff usually costs us something in sweat, skinned knuckles or slogging through mud, if not cash. At that point we weren’t too excited about getting the tank across the field, but decided to at least take a look.

As we walked across the field we debated if we could drive on it or not, eventually deciding that it was too soft. Unfortunately the stubble in the field was pretty tall, so that made walking harder, adding to the difficulty level of getting the tank back to the truck. As we got closer we could see that there was no lid, so we weren’t too optimistic about how clean the interior might be, or our prospects of getting it clean enough to use. When I got close to the tank Michael was a bit behind with the boys. I bent down to look inside, and about that time he asked if anything was living inside of it. As a matter of fact I could see a cat inside, hiding behind a milk jug. Fortunately it was alive, or I would have turned around and left right then.

We decided the inside wasn’t really that dirty, and that we could probably get it clean. Fortunately it wasn’t that heavy, and we were able to roll it out of the field without too much trouble. On the way back we talked about what might be the best way to clean it. Since it’s seven feet tall someone would have to get into it to reach everything.

When we got back we boiled for a while, at the same time working on a plug for the tank outlet. There was a threaded port installed in it, but no valve or shutoff so we installed a 2” pipe with a cap, along with cutting a cover out of galvanized metal. Later if we need to add a valve to the outlet we can still use it.

More new stuff

Our "new" sink, installed and ready to go. A few leaks, but much nicer to use than our old one.

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.

OK, so it's been since last season that I posted anything, and even then I didn't keep up. Hopefully I can do a better job this year. This is a pre-sesason post, I guess. This is the time of year we start thinking about getting things ready for next season, and time for the Indiana Maple Syrup Association annual meeting. There are usually a couple of speakers there and several vendors so you can check out equipment and other sugaring stuff up close instead of just looking in a catalog or online.

Last year ended up being really great, we made over 40 gallons of syrup which was about 7 gallons more than we had ever made. We ran out of containers and had to use every mason jar we had around from when we first started.

Since the cost of LP has gone up so much we're going back to wood...that means we need to invest in some firebricks and doors for the evaporator, but the total cost should be less than the cost of gas was last year. Hopefully we can keep making about the same amount of syrup.

Unlike past years we have decided not to increase the number of taps we're using...we'll see what happens.

Not A Great Day

Due to Tucker being in the regional spelling bee we didn't arrive until around noon. Unfortunately the first thing I saw was Michael cleaning the pans up by the garage. I knew that was bad news, because that's usually only necessary when the front pan has gotten too hot and burned the syrup.

It turned out that was exactly what happened. Due to the cold temperatures most of the liquid in the evaporator was frozen. Michael had been expecting some visitors at 8:30, so when they arrived at 8:00 he started it up. The pans thaw fairly quickly, and the front had been pretty close to syrup when we shut down. Unfortunately the pipe that runs between the pans did not thaw, so when the liquid in the front pan was hot enough to be syrup and the automatic drawoff opened the valve there was no liquid to take its place.

The pan that was in front sagged quite a bit & was discolored, so it got really hot. Fortunately he was able to get them cleaned up & we got things started back up. Unfortunately that means the loss of probably five gallons of syrup.

The lesson learned is not to start the evaporator until everything is thawed after a cold spell. We are also going to try leaving the pilot light on during some cold weather coming up to keep it at least somwhat warm.

Another lesson learned for the day was not to install flourescent lights near the evaporator without removing the tubes. We were putting one up & the tube fell out right on the front float box & of course shattered everywhere. We were able to make a plug out of plastic wrap and a dish towel to plug the hole & remove the box. After we got it cleaned up we got it back together & cleaned up.

Not a great day with the loss of the syrup and no additional sap collected, but hopefully the weather will improve this week. Tomorrow is supposed to be really warm, then temperatures below freezing until late in the week.

2008 Season - First Batch of the Year

Today started with building a "sap sucker". This consists of the bottom of a plastic barrel cut off about 12" high, a bilge pump, sump pump switch and a (new) toilet float. The idea is that since it is sometimes hard to pour a full bucket of sap into a relatively small opening in the tank you pour the bucket into the sap sucker and the bilge pump does the work.

Overall it works really well. There are times it would be nice to have a little faster pump, but we can't complain since it only cost $5 for the pump and less than $20 for the whole thing. Maybe later we can find a larger pump clearance.

After finishing the sap sucker I headed out to collect with Tucker and Austin while Michael and Bob stayed to watch the evaporator. We went around on the property and hadn't done that many on the neighbors when we realized the tank was almost full. So we headed back to dump the first load of the day.

Austin wanted to stay at the house so Tucker and I went for the next load. Due to the mud we had decided to re-route part of our access to the adjacent property so we spent a few minutes cutting small trees out of the fence row. That made the access a lot better since we don't have to drive in the field. We had 15 or 20 trees still to do when Michael called to ask if I was ready for lunch. I turned around to look at the tank and see how much room we had just in time to notice it was almost full. Just as I told him that the last bucket was pumped in and it started running over. We decided that meant it was a good time to take a lunch break.

After lunch we had about two gallons ready to finish...our first syrup of the year.

I went back to get the last few by myself, and was driving along the edge of the woods when I noticed movement. It was a deer making her way through fairly quickly, so I stopped to see what she would do. She stopped about 30' away for a minute, looking to see what I was going to do, before she continued on her way.

That load ended up around 70 gallons so I headed back in. It was getting a little windy, and I noticed that some of the bags we had emptied the last trip already had a couple of inches of sap in them. The forecast was for cold temperatures so I was a little worried about sap freezing in the bags. We had that happen a couple of years ago when they were almost full and it took several days for the bags to thaw enough that we could empty them.

After dumping that load into a tank I went inside to see how the boiling had gone while I was in the woods. Bob had worked on the control valve we added to the automatic drawoff to slow the rate syrup is released, and had it set up where the drawoff would open and a trickle of syrup would come out fairly regularly, instead of large batches coming out in a hurry. Not knowing how to set up the drawoff we had assumed it was supposed to dump a bunch of syrup at once, but we also noticed it took a long time to make another batch, or it let out so much that the temperature in the front pan got way too hot. As usual when all else fails we called the manufacturer; he told us to set it up with the extra control valve and slow the rate down. This seems like it has helped a lot, there is a lot less time between batches and the temperature is much more regulated.

I also noticed a ratchet strap stretched between a rafter and one corner of the steam hood. It turned out the hood had collapsed on that side. It was bent when we got it so it always sagged a little, but evidently it gave out completely and had to be held up. Maybe it was the extra weight of the new curtains, I don't know, but it needs some extra support.

For the day we made about 6 gallons. I don't know exactly because we put 5 gallons in jugs, but we had another batch of at least a gallon in a pot that we're going to package later. The best part was the color, not quite fancy grade, but very close. A nice light medium, anyway. And there was a nice sunset at the end of the day.

With the forecast for colder temperatures it's hard to say if we'll have anything to boil next Wednesday, but I'll probably go back down to package the other batch and do some other stuff that needs done...a day sugaring beats going to work even if I'm not exactly making syrup.