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.