First good boil

[dschultz]

Started at 5:15 pm,first draw was 6:45pm finished at 11:30pm with 30 gallons of syrup.It was a good sweet first boil.

[elm creek guy]

You made 30 gallons of syrup in 6 hours? What am I doing wrong?

[Todd Miske]

What size evaporator do you have? We have made a total of 40 so far this season over 7 different days of cooking about 10-12 hours of cooking each day.

[maple connection]

I also had my first boil. 5 hours of boiling just over 3 gallons of syrup. Today is a day to do some modifing to get the production rate up. It was nice looking syrup. We need it to freeze at night!!!!

[Meridian Maples]

Kevin,
Your gonna have to pick up the pace a little over there in Marathon!! We made 55 gallons on Wed. night in a little over 3 hours. We put another post on our RO this year, that is nice to go from 2% to 12%...
How's collecting over by Bill's going with the snow the way it is? The snow really got bad to walk in the last couple of days, even with snow shoes. Been fixing leaks and boy is it a bear walking around!!

[driske]

Going to light things up here around 10AM. Wanted to get going yesterday, but I wasn't as ready as I thought. ( Where do the sugar house gremlins hide those little items during the off months?)
Running vacuum round the clock ,but there sure isn't much sap to show for it.
Well, time to hit the sugar house and conquer the first boil jitters.:)

[dschultz]

I have a 4 x 14 intens-o-fire.I average 325 gallons an hour through it,but there are time's when everything is right and going good it will do 400 an hour

[Meridian Maples]

How do you like your intenso fire? We've been contemplating getting one for next year, but I've heard people say they've had problems with theirs?

[dschultz]

Meridian maples,
The first year I had it I couldn't get it to boil more than 150 gallons a hr on it,so I called Garth he told me things to try nothing,this went on for a couple days still nothing.Then he came here from Vermont,come to find out the grate draft lever where he told me on the phone which notch it should be on needed to go one more then it worked good,and besides getting used to a new rig. Now that I'm on my 5th year with it I wouldn't give it up for anything.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Found a way to steal internet so Im up and on the AIR. Been up in Door County for a week and have about 900 taped. Got everything up and running and the rig is good to go. Have 75 in the drums a few cases out the door as favors for repairs and help. Last few days it hasent ben below 40 at night so things have slowed down. Its sitting at 27 and dropping so life should get better. The Auto Draw has saved me a set of pans already. Cant wait till No. 3 gets up here to run the rig and let me get to running the sap hauler and reinventing the wheel:o GOOD LUCK TO ALL.