Blueberry Hill Sugarworks - up and runnin'

[BlueberryHill]

Finally got it all together and working this weekend in the new digs. Saturday morning I got my 395th tap in, did a collection run, and fired up the evaporator. Took about 8 hours to sweeten it up. More talking than firing, haha. Then yesterday I finished and bottled 4 gallons. Pretty good start. 3/16 lines just keep running. Might have to boil again tonight. Shurflo pump burned out on me Saturday night and I still need to figure something out on that line! It's just trickling now, gravity. Was not impressed with the Shurflo from the start. Probably something I am doing wrong. Anyone in the neighborhood selling a guzzler? :)

[BlueberryHill]

Had enough sap to do a boil yesterday. Drew off and bottled almost 4 more gallons. Still learning fast and on the fly. Not sure about the next couple days. I probably won't be able to boil again until the weekend and I don't know what to make of the weather report for the next 2-3 days. Right now it looks like starting Saturday it's gonna gush for 2 straight weeks!

[maplestudent]

"Right now it looks like starting Saturday it's gonna gush for 2 straight weeks!"


I kind of thought that when I looked at the forecast last week. Man was I wrong.

Good luck!

[Wingo87]

Did your grade come up at all? Boiled yesterday too and made another gallon of Amber again. Puts me at about 4 1/2 gal on the year which is the most I have ever made. I would love to break 10 gal on the season.

[BlueberryHill]

Yeah my syrup is lightening up. Started dark with lots of niter.

I got fed up with the trickle of the shurflo setup and I grabbed a guzzler. Plugged it in last night. Woke up this morning to almost 200 gallons in the tank. Sweet! Went over to the 3/16 setup and that was overflowing from the overnight run. Called the boss and told him he is on his own. Boiling all day today. Drowning in sap and it's still gushing in.

Got 23" right near the guzzler and 17" at the end of the 500' line. Reset a couple loose taps but still have more work to do to get it real tight. Skipping it now to boil or else I'll be running out of storage space soon. Anyone in the neighborhood is welcome to stop in!

[BlueberryHill]

Side note: I need a timer. I have no firing discipline. Hummm... Maybe I should hang up my phone? That might help.

[NHTREEGUY]

A cheap digital kitchen timer solves that problem!

[Maple Ridge]

I have been using a kitchen timer for years. I would like to share a true story about how I came up with a new T-shirt. A couple years age my wife and I were boiling. It was a real nice day and she decided to have a couple Captain Morgan's. I told her not to bother with feeding the evaporator and just sit back and enjoy herself. Well as the day went on, I was busy and the timer would go off. She would look at me and say time to feed the fire. Another Captain later she is leaning on the wood pile, timer would go off and it was HAY time to feed the fire. Another Captain and it was HAY put some wood in. finally I look over and she and her Captain were leaning hard on the wood pile, Timer goes off and I hear, HAY put the F'N wood to Wha. Well after telling her I will put the wood to you if you keep it up, I thought it would make a good T-Shirt.
So working with my T-Shirt guy I had them made that on the back is a evaporator with steam rising, doors open and the phrase Put the wood to wha under it. I get a lot of comments on it and chuckles.

[BlueberryHill]

Shutting her down now. Still 300+ gallons of sap but won't have time to finish her off tonight so I'm gonna try to get some sleep and plan on a weekend-long boil starting Saturday at the roosters crow. Sappy day!

[red maples]

if you got too much sap you know you can always bring it here!!! :)

Yeah I have a nice little digital kitchen timer I got from ace hardware 5 years ago. Get some thing easy to set one or 2 buttons. was maybe $3-4 its tough to go by stack temp if stack temp drops your not firing quick enough. I pretty much fire every 6-7 minutes. it has a little clip on the back that I hang from a nail right in front of the Evap. fire quick and consistent and you get a better, more consistent burn andless mixing and flooding of the pans.

[BlueberryHill]

Thanks Brad. I'm still hoping that I can keep up!! I gotta get down your way when you are boiling. I still have yet to see your setup in action.

[BlueberryHill]

Fixed a few leaks this morning. Now I'm sitting around waiting for sap!

[maplestudent]

Side note: I need a timer. I have no firing discipline. Hummm... Maybe I should hang up my phone? That might help.
You could try a kitchen timer app too see if that helps....though I don't know if it would ring while you are talking on the phone.

[BlueberryHill]

My wife picked me up a dollar store timer. Works great. I fire every 5 minutes and this thing is spitting out a nice steady stream of steam. Way, way better then guessing. Hot Hot Hot.

Sap ended up coming in later this afternoon. Got 200 gallons together and boiled for a few hours. Sap still coming in now. Hoping for full tanks in the morning. Pretty good weekend! Just about 20 gallons done so far this year after today's boil. Had a couple mapletraders stop by as well, which is always cool!

[BlueberryHill]

Made a few gallons tonight. Low pressure system coming in has me excited for more sap. Would like to make a few more gallons tomorrow night before another freeze rolls in.

[Wingo87]

Looks like this could be the last of it the beginning of this week in our area. No freezing temps after tomorrow. I'm glad I tapped early. Hoping for a good last run tho.

[BlueberryHill]

Don't give up yet! Things could change. A lot of nights still look to be coming real close to freezing. There is no reason why another cool off could not come after the warm up to keep the season going. Don't pull your taps too early.

Right now I am just hoping for a good run today so that I can get a good boil going this afternoon/tonight.

[bcarpenter]

The forecast had me nervous too. Looks like it may get too warm. Hard to believe. Glad I tapped early too.
Bill c.


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[BlueberryHill]

I was hoping for lots of sap today. Only got 50 gallons off of 400 taps. Booooooo. Hoping tomorrow is better! Sap drought here. ****.

[wokeupthisam]

Pulled in 25 gals today off 20 taps. Stopped dripping at about 7:30pm when it dropped to 29 degrees. With a good freeze up tonight, looking forward to some good runnin' til Tuesday. We'll see what Ma Nature has in store.

[NHTREEGUY]

Same here. Very slow drip all day. Hoping for a gusher today!

[maplestudent]

I got about 10 gallons from 89 taps yesterday (I'm in Concord)....went through the woods tightening some things up.....some of the tubing was still frozen when temps got highest here around 3pm. Seems I'm almost always colder than the temps that weather apps predict.....I'm hoping that stays true at night this week.

[BlueberryHill]

Sap finally came in good yesterday and overnight too!!! Pretty good boil last night got me caught up and I cracked the 30 gallon mark for finished syrup. Lots of sap in the tanks this AM from overnight so I'll have plenty to boil tonight as well. Having some guzzler issues so I'm gonna start a "help me" thread on that.

[Wingo87]

With that last big run I made 2 3/4 gal which puts my season total at 9 gal. That will be it for me I'm out of wood, time, and energy. If your still at it Jason I have some sap for you from today's run if you would like it.

[BlueberryHill]

Boiled off everything on Sunday. Got just a little bit of sap today. Smelled it and it was slightly questionable so I just dumped it. Looks like a few warm days but then more maple weather starting Friday night. Holding out hope that the trees will go back into tasty-sap-mode. Just cracked 40 gallons of bottled product and was really hoping for more. Got a question! What should I do with the sweet in my pans. Seems like leaving it until Saturday would not be good with the warm temps we'll be getting. I was thinking of draining it and finishing it on propane/keggel. Would rather not waste the time and fuel if I don't have to though. Syrup this weekend was very dark and is getting a confectionary/Molasses taste like I had at the end of last year.

[BlueberryHill]

After a week of basically no sap, I cleaned out all of my tanks on Saturday morning to start fresh. Some has some cloudy and bad tasting sap in them. Got enough good sap on Sat & Sun to make it worth boiling last night. About 110 gallons off of 400 taps. Was all nice, clear, tasty sap. So even though it was not a high-flow weekend, I am optimistic about the next few days. It ain't over yet!!! Surpassed 40 gallons of syrup made. Come on 50!

[BlueberryHill]

Collected 150 gallons of sap last night and boiled it off. Low sugar, 1%. Syrup is getting real dark and the flavor is pretty hefty too. Earlier I was getting dark syrup with a lighter flavor but now the flavor is catching up. Today is looking good here. Hoping for lots of sap.

[BlueberryHill]

Sap keeps coming in here. Was up until 1:00 last night boiling. Was not supposed to freeze overnight, but when I went in the house at 1:00 there was ice on the door step. Woke up this morning and the tanks were half full with sap still coming in. Kinda surprised. Sap is still clear. Syrup is dark and foamy.

I have a Honda WX10 pump and something in the motor broke a couple days back. As I was pumping it stopped very abruptly and when I went to restart it was real hard to pull the cord and made a grinding metal sound. Not good. I finally got around to looking up the purchase date last night. It has a 2 year warranty so guess what.... I bought it in Feb of 2014. 1 month out of warranty. I did the math since I know how much syrup I made each year and how fast it pumps. I figure a maximum of 5 hours of run time on the pump since new. I changed the oil right before this season and I never abused it. I actually babied the thing. Pretty disappointed.

[BlueberryHill]

Out here working through my sap. Collected near 200 gallons today. Not sure if I want to stay up until it's all gone or not. Did notnhitnthe hay until 1:30 last night And not sure if I want to repeat that. Getting close to cracking the 50 gallon mark for the year.

ALERT!!!! Just about an hour ago I heard the wretched peepers out in full force!! Does this deal the deal for me? Or is there still hope for weekend sap???

[BlueberryHill]

Well, I'm terrible at updating this, but figure I'll do an update in case anyone is wondering how things are flowing here in Raymond so far. I have about 200 small swamp maples tapped in on a gast pump and it ran a little today but not enough to mess with. Also tapped 50 yesterday that are on a lunchbox releaser. Those are on a north slope so just got a trickle, but at least it's tapped in and checked off of the list. Using CV2s on everything this year so I hopefully won't get penalized too much for tapping a little early. The plan right now is to get the other 250 remaining taps in (3/16 gravity) next weekend. Once real sap starts coming in, it'll be a hustle to get the new RO plumbed in and get the evaporator cleaned up. Looks like in 5-6 days we might get a stretch of sap days?? Not expecting a whole lot but hopefully enough to get her started for the year. Here we go boys!!

[BlueberryHill]

Got 535 tap in so far. Might try to stretch it to 600 if time allows. Slow trickle today but it's still coming in so I'm hoping to have a nice surprise in the morning. 150 gallons of sap in the storage tank right now. Want to have 300 to get the party started. First boil tomorrow night??

[lords sugaring]

Hey neighbor, I got 50 buckets up here in Candia, ran as little Saturday as I was tapping. Hope to get the rest up before Wednesday, work ran late tonight so couldn't get out there before the cold and dark hit. How much land you working with to get that 600 count ? I've got almost 10 acres here but this will be my first season at this location. Hopefully these trees run better than the ones in Londonderry.

[BlueberryHill]

I only have 8 acres, but I have a friendly neighbor down the road from me with tons of land. Go get those taps in! That's what jackets and flashlights are for, haha.

I only had about 200 gallons of sap last night but decided to go ahead and boil it. Took way longer than expected to clean up the evaporator and get everything hooked up. But the new RO bailed me out big time. Wrapped it all up by 1:00a.m. Got the pans sweetened. Did not want to leave the sap overnight (cold!) and risk dealing with ice headaches & regret.

Getting wicked excited for tomorrow & Thursday!

[lords sugaring]

Nice, I have access to 300 taps down in Londonderry and my buddy on the other side of town has 400 acres. My neighbor has 50 acres behind me too. There's my future expansion lol. I have about enough sap to fill my new pan right now so I guess I'll be dealing with the ice headaches. I'm also way behind the 8ball this season, still gotta build a platform for my 275 gallon head tank and plumb that in and brick my new evaporator. Have all supplies cut and ready to install everything just need the time to do it all. I'm hoping to have everything up and running this weekend for my first boil. Happen to check the weather this past weekend and realized it was time, last time I checked I thought I had till the end of February to get this all done.... Good ole maple season sneaking up on me, from what others have said "It's not maple season unless you're scrambling to get everything done". Very true for me this year !!

[BlueberryHill]

Definitely scrambling here!

[Wingo87]

Definitely scrambling! Im finally all tapped as of tonight, nothing like tapping in the dark with head lamps and flashlights! Lots of squirrel damage I had to fix on my older 3/16’s line, stupid tree rats. Next few days look good!

[BlueberryHill]

Took too long for things to get flowing today here. Sun was hiding too much. Flow got going pretty good right before dark but only hauled in about 100 gallons so no fire today. Gonna empty all the woods tanks tomorrow AM before heading to work cause I'm expecting a good run. Sap tasted sweeter today than it has been so that is good. Will be real disappointed if I don't have a ton of sap to boil tomorrow night. When I stop doing all of these updates then you'll know it's finally flowing down here!

[lords sugaring]

Still waiting on my trees to open up. Might have to wait till Friday night who knows, buckets suck, 75 in for right now have some more to get in probaby hit 100 maybe a few over. I've boarded and got most parts bricked, was more difficult than anticipated. I should have everything done by the weekend, fingers crossed

[BlueberryHill]

Collected 200 gallons after work and boiled it off last night. Woke up this morning to 100 gallons that came in over night. Suspect it's still coming in now. Not a monster run by any means but definitely a good warm up to ease into the season. Crappy hobby releaser hung up twice yesterday. Still can't figure it out and don't really want to dump a grand on a good releaser. Caught in both times before anything got into the pump. Sap on!

[BlueberryHill]

Boiled off almost 500 gallons of sap last night. Bottled up 12 gallons. Washed everything out so it would not get nasty today. Did not get to bed until 2:30. I need to go grab a cup of coffee!