Bruce L
03-24-2018, 08:00 PM
Our last boil was a week ago Wednesday ,before the big cold snap,didn't have enough containers with us to bottle all the syrup as we hadn't expected much sap that night. Turned out my wife pumped about 1100 gallons up to me ,starting at 6:45 p.m,finishing three hours later,both ready for bed,so I told her we will just cold pack into a pail in the morning. Next few days super cold,so took the pail down,opened the valve and walked away. That was 9:45 in the morning,went back couple of times during the day,not very full yet,finally shutting it off around 7:00 p.m . Opened valve again next day,finally filled by supper time,but still more syrup. Placed a 1 gallon jug under the spigot in the morning,time I got home from bus run at 4:00 p.m the syrup had run maybe a cupful over,so bottle was too sticky to handle. Next boil was this past Thursday night,I told her we would need to take some syrup out of that bottle so there would be room to expand,again surprised by amount of sap,expecting only 300 gallons turned into 700, couple hours later ,mule was parked in heated garage with syrup in the back,off to bed. Got up in morning to find syrup dripping out of the back of the mule,bottom blown out of that bottle ,all remaining bottles in the boxes had to be washed off as the bottoms were sticky with syrup . Lesson learned for this year