Hop Kiln Road 2019

[Hop Kiln Road]

Another Love Song

I keep a close watch on these taps of mine
I keep my tanks wide open all the time
I dig the snow for the limbs that bind
Because maple runs, I walk the line

I find it very, very easy to be true
I find myself alone when each boil's through
Yes, I'll admit that I've fallen for you
Because you're mine, I walk the line

Running all night until day is light
Dripping on my mind both day and night
And happiness I've known proves me right
Because maple runs, I walk the line

Your golden flow keeps me on your side
Gives me cause for the love I can't hide
When the sap flows higher than the tide
Because you're mine, I walk the line

I keep a close watch on these taps of mine
I keep my tanks wide open all the time
I dig the snow for the limbs that bind
Because maple runs, I walk the line

[Russell Lampron]

Okay now I've got that Johnny Cash song in my head. Thanks Bruce!

It's good to hear from you buddy. I hope that you have a good season to make up for last year.

[BAP]

Nice poem Bruce. Hope you have a great season.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Too cold to drill too much but I got two orchards dialed in and all the tanks set too. Couldn't help but note a couple of Traders ain't setting their chocks before they tapped in on this lateral. M always chocks me though she probably oughta let my stone roll around a bit more to shed all this dang moss then I might be able to puzzle out all this auspicious Vermont talk about early tapping cause the sap and labor is free or fancy and expensive gear gets a lot more sap with less sugar in case the bulk price goes down business.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Got 270 of 700 tapped in 3 days so I'm going to beat the weather. Spent 2018 parked and chocked after having a couple defective parts replaced with aftermarket gear. Luckily plucky Dr. Voyeur decided to peek in under the hood for a look see when he did! Stopped me for 90 minutes - an existential am I me experience - while he got in a tangle so now I've got more mileage than the odometer reads! Wait until ole DMV tries to explain that on my title. A couple days later when I got back in touch, Dr. V asked me about all that old bondo he had to cut through. Oh my goodness, yeah...1971...Pamplona...break my heart Margarita Femenino...ouch... He nodded. Gored while in gear. Explain why only the bovine parts would fit now.

[SmellsLikeSyrupNH]

LOL love reading the stories!!
Have a great season.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Good time in the wind yesterday, now 415 of 700 taps. Okay get the Traders back up to speed. Lost Ace, and I was just getting him broken in right too, to Miss Evangeline's niece, ahem, Thirsty. I hope her name is actually Theresa but I have never met her mother to find out. Anyway, he sent me a pic in January - while I was freezing my pinkies moving the Wordsworth tank - two of them on a real Nice hot beach wearing those gilets jaunes thingees and not much else. But M had contacted my buddy Chatworth in the Knights of St John over to Valletta, one of my favorite spots, while I was still chocked and he dispatched young Sir K. Nice kid and he carries a lot of weight in the Order too. We tubed the new (to me) Legere orchard with 3/16 and .225s in January. Three lines of 20 taps with 600' tails across a cutover neighboring property dropping 100' right to a town hammerhead for an easy pickup. Found the remnants of the old sugarhouse on a bluff high above the Merrimack. Average tree diameter 18". And yes, I know, it could be 120 taps but I put in 60 with anything over 36" did get a 2nd tap. Must have been a real sight 100 years ago.

[Hop Kiln Road]

505 of 700. Wordsworth Brook is a beautiful little stream draw with tall sugars, but, running away from the road. Tubed it in 3/16 and .225's three years ago and it produces 20gpt no problem. At the top, ran the tube through the town culvert and picked up the fence line along the opposite side of the road. Have tried two different systems to pump the sap up to the road, 450' with a 60' rise. Both worked; neither were satisfactory. Well Sir K grabs his battle axe and starts flaying his way downstream toward the pond behind Miss Evangeline's sister's stables. Clears a 1100' swath but with a <2% grade. Wired a 3/4 pipe. I'm very doubtful. But cheery Sir K says not to worry cause for Plan B he has some sort of sure-to-flow plan. Yeah, youngsters, always think they're going to tilt the earth.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Okay, we were down behind the stables trying to uncoil frozen pipe, pretty breezy off the pond too, and so to stay warm I was pestering young Sir K why he was so confident he could get his low slope sure-to-flow Plan B to work. Well he stops his steed in the middle of the woods and takes out - wait, hold on, I know it's cold and somebody forgot to put the blanket against the threshold, but I want my Vermont friends to stop rocking right here, take a deep breath and slice off their next slab of aged cheddar before they read this cause I don't want to be responsible if them Memphremagog ICE people can't take their thumb prints - Sir K takes this little tiny dinky phone out of his hip pocket, no party line, no operator, no dialing, no quarters, no nothing - and calls up Maple Trader, The Forum, like us right now! Cept from the middle of nowhere, well, not exactly, knew I was down over the bank where Miss Evangeline's sister pushes all the lipizzaner manure with her Korean tractor. But still. Dang. Don't that bust up a couple of them cracker barrels.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Felicity Where Art Thou?

Tapped out in carharrts and gaiters,
Sugary boys all fidgety as idle waiters

While deep snows pile higher and higher
Awaiting Nature’s cherished sweet flyer.

Woodsheds stowed full in neat ranks
Where even the wee wash their big tanks,

And buckets and buckets, and buckets galore,
Hung with Saint Nickolas pray and then more:

Tubing spidered in webs snug so tight
By old and young a snowshoe all night,

To the dark hillsides' whine with a sucker's hiss,
Headlamps twinkle and search fittings amiss.

Long they shoe and frozen evenings they toil,
Before torching the stick wood for a roaring boil

Til old timers doze with rhythmic wheezings
To the hum of new fangled electric squeezings.

Each steam dream hopes tis Felicity they snag,
Even lest risk one scorches a sisterly hag.

Woe, many nary draw a frosted glimpse hoary,
Let alone the sought sweet kiss of their quarry.

For south from the border she so quietly wings,
The brightest light orb she so quickly brings.

Blink, aye, cause only a moment she tarries,
For it must be with all sweet flighty fairies.

And tis due north she so nymphfully scurries
While foolish forecasters still call cold flurries.

So sulks many a brave and hearty stoker forlorn
Fancy's hasty flight to the sound of her mother’s horn.

[cropseyvillemark]

It's great to have you back in the game.

[Hop Kiln Road]

A...B...C...Do I have some breaking news out of K-Bec but I gotta get it translated and organized first. Meanwhile 615 of 700 tapped with one more steep orchard to go before the serious sugar snows start. Doing a real good clean job of it too. Was a little daunted when I started rolling and thought I might have to look into this new fangled 4 handed Tokyo tapping that's all the rage with the big guys. Not sure how it works, but it sure sounds wicked fast. Even asked M about it, she's on that social media stuff a lot, but she just gave me that look so I'll just have to check into it later. Anyway since the weather held off and I can see the last tank just 85 skinny 3/16 taps down the hill when I let the hens into the spa in the mornings, I think I've got it made! Golden. Home Free. Course now Red Roof has got me thinking maybe I oughta test my RO.

[Russell Lampron]

Testing that RO is a good idea. I got the parts to turn mine into double the squeezer that it used to be today and I can't wait to try it out.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Gosh just can't keep up with Red Roof and his alchemy business. Guess he has added a 2nd tower to his castle, like, overnight. Okay. Finished tapping and Sir K and I extended the wire behind the stables out to the road and will pull the pipe today. 1300' total. Low pitch but better than pumping uphill. Here's a 5/16 check valve on the left and a .225 thin wall on the right. And a .225 closure on a 12" tree after 9 months on the left and after 21 months lower and to the right. Hard to see. But the tree has been thinned and fertilized and growing more than an inch in 3 years.

1957619577

[Hop Kiln Road]

One of my bucket correspondents just reported You Know Who dumped off a huge email hack from Those Guys 2.0, apparently from a federation's server. Talk about boundaries and walls out the windows. Let me try a quick synopsis. Chinese are closing their C Ag wallets cause of their 5G lady being held in a Vancouver palace. Alberta is slowing oil production cause of plugged pipes. (WCS $35US/bbl; WTI $56US/bbl) The AG ratted out the Premier. C National GNP just fell off the dogsled. Total C Household Debt arrived at the space station. (C 170% of Disposable Income; US 75% of Disposable Income) And that funny bird that can't walk will spend more time underwater than floating. So there has been a secret, massive build up of legit and illegit maple production. Good news for American importers.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Everything is frozen tight. Been wondering why folks to Maine are making sooo much maple these days? Well this dude up to Rangley way back in the 1950s built a bunch of big guns and shot orgone all over the place till the USDA food police stopped him. Yup, USDAFP, who'd ever guess, there's a scary picture of one the Maple News, got their own special uniform, handcuffs and everything. Anyway they hauled him right off to prison, blew up his guns and even burned all his books as soon as they figured out the orgone had crossed state lines. Pretty powerful stuff that orgone cause now folks to Maine got maple syrup coming out their ears. No wonder the USDAFP wants to nose around the all sugarhouses...with fancy orgone leak detectors. Gotta stop the stuff before lemons start growing in D.C.

[bprifle01]

Too late. DC is already full of lemons!

[Hop Kiln Road]

Very happy with the overall bark quality while tapping this year. Some orchards have been thinned and fertilized for 12 years now with notable results. Even the most damaged orchard, severely over and cluster tapped, is now starting to respond and I can't wait to see if the yield climbs. BTW, application and 8 oz of 10-10-10 cost about $.16 per tree and can be done while rinsing lines. The soils here were completely depleted by 200+ years of one poor practice after another. The irony is global champion American agricultural practice involves breeding superiority; cows, chickens, pigs, corn, soybeans, wheat, everything but the New England forests where for hundreds of years, think breeding cycles, we harvested or destroyed (road salt) the best stock and left the worse to seed. Like the Brits trying to preserve the empire.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Decided since nothing is happening on the steam front till mid next week, thought it might be a dandy good time to do our taxes. It usually it ends up a tussle through the summer with an exchange of polite letters with patient ladies in Wheeling or Kansas City or Cincinnati. Not sure why these gals have to move every year and change phones and post offices. Well Traders, I can't believe what they're done and a little confused what they hope to accomplish. Perhaps it was just too many cooks? And I'm not going to bore you going down the list, but, the only person who will being filing a mere postcard is simple business Stormy, if she got a 1099 from whomever, which she should have but nobody in Congress has raised the point; me, I am using exactly as many pages as last year. But my modest taxes went down so I don't see how the Gerald R. Ford's elevators are ever going to go up.

[Hop Kiln Road]

The new 1% mainline wire snapped. Course, thought I had finally gotten it perfectly adjusted. Broke right at a double side tie 7' up a red maple. Only wet area in the 1250' so I'm thinking the wind might be rocking the tree? And, cause the sap hasn't run I was still tweaking the side ties so I lost a lot of the elevations. Didn't have the parts and tools. Tired, so parking at the stables was the quickest access. Pretty sure we met Thirsty's mom. Introduced herself as Lady Running Deer or Dear or Deere. Who knows. Never seen so much silver and turquoise. And her attire looked as if it had snapped a side tie but her mega tractor has an enclosed cab. Still, I am a little concerned about Sir K's vows.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Ah the start of the sap runs. Tree wells tight with fresh sugar snow. Good frozen ground. 33F overnight and sun up glittered ice in the trees. Vacuumed the sugarhouse and pressured washed the evaporator during the storm. Safe to load the membranes. Forecast is finally 10 days of perfect sap weather. Happy sugaring everyone!

[Hop Kiln Road]

Maple News Online reports:

“It was good to come and see a modern plant here,” the secretary said of the sugarhouse, which sits on a ledge at the base of Georgia Mountain. “I was blown away that Vermont produces half the syrup the U.S. consumes. I’m happy to be here during maple tapping season.”

- US Sec of Ag Sonny Perdue tapping the 1st tree in Vermont before returning to Washington to work on the new Farm Bill.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Plenty of sap but not even flows from the orchards yet. Some spots are still pretty cold. 2.7% sugar but there is probably an ice factor.

Blew out the concentrate pressure gauge when I started the RO. H2O says it "probably froze." Huh? Interestingly unit operates but leaks a gallon in 300, which will have to do until the replacement arrives. Would have had steam yesterday otherwise. Usual start up dripping valves and fittings which needed cleaning and retightening.

[Hop Kiln Road]

I've got the RO humming and a (food grade) bucket right under the pressure gauge squirt. H2O says a new one is on the way. Boiled 14% to sweeten the pan and made 2 gallons in 3 hours. Quickest sweetening I can remember. My woodshed is a wind tunnel and last season's wood is so dry it ignites outside the evaporator doors. You know what they say in Vermont: upping your concentrate levels is the same as getting a bigger evaporator for free! If I go high brix I can just finish it in the canner - or on the kitchen stove if I get chocked - and not even need an evaporator.

Oh, but first Ag in the Classroom came up and we made videos of how to use hydrometers, refractometers and various grading kits for the Tucker Mountain Challenge. I think there are 15 schools competing this year and another one with a beautiful new sugarhouse.

[Russell Lampron]

I sweetened my evaporator and drew off about a gallon of syrup in an hour and 6 minutes Tuesday night which is the fastest that I have done it. I was boiling 12% because I can get that with my souped up RO machine in a single pass.

[Hop Kiln Road]

500 gal of 2.7% yesterday from 700 taps so the trees are still unfreezing. Ice in all the tanks.

[Russell Lampron]

My trees aren't producing that well yet but I am getting something which is a plus. The ice in my tank has finally melted.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Wind put a hold on things. Once I got the filter press hoses right, bottled 10 cases of glass and got Sir K broken in on those plastic safety caps. Got some help positioning the second permeate tank, last part of the operation to reassemble! I store 600 gal for a 200 RO but its rigged so I can run a pressure washer off the permeate. Every sugarhouse should have a pressure washer! Still waiting for my H2O gauge. Beautiful weather ahead so don't slack off Parker.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Walked all the lines Sunday morning. Found almost 10% of the taps out of service, fallen limbs mostly. One 25 tap 3/16 line was severed by a bear, cut it and then bit off a 3' section and played with it before waddling off. Perfect timing. About 2PM, 33F and pretty breezy up here, everything let loose. Sap was streaking across the 3/16 speed bump in the driveway. My 1" pump lines freeze up in this weather so I won't be able to pump until later this morning, but I bet we had our first little run of the season.

Oh, and the PO wouldn't deliver my H2O gauge Saturday because of "loose dog." But they were able to deliver a bunch of junk mail and unsolicited political postcard crap. Same USPS equipment doesn't have any problem delivering here Sunday mornings for Amazon.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Getting about .5 gpt in the afternoons. Air temps moving very quickly between the nice sun and the snow/ice pack but trees are primed and pushing hard. No problem keeping the concentrate cool after 6PM.

[Russell Lampron]

After 6pm or more like 7:30ish my concentrate gets really warm for some reason.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Same weather pattern and another .5 gpt. A lot of ice in the tanks. Ground completely frozen. So far I've been able to bottle 12's as fast as the system produces syrup, but, doubt I have the stamina to keep it up because I can hear a rumbling in the distance, could just be the wind and standing by the field tanks there is a trembling beneath my feet. I think there is something coming.....

Got my new RO pressure gauge installed. Get this. After the PO wouldn't deliver, they farmed it out to a subcontractor. The postage for the small package was $7. Guess they are too busy with all the mass mailings from the 237 presidential primary candidates.

[Russell Lampron]

I'm not getting .5 gpt but am getting something. It's 16* here this morning and I suspect it will be another ho hum run today. I need a large quantity of sap for the weekend and after that I'd like a large enough quantity to see how sweet I can actually get my concentrate to with my souped up RO. These 1 hour boils are fun but I'd like to boil a longer too.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Long heavy flow yesterday. Into the evening. Won't know the stats until I pump this AM. Tuesday's .5 gpt+ sap averaged 2.7% with two orchards over 3.5%. Bottle cappers grim and turning over.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Oh my goodness, over a gpt of 2.7% which two passed to 12% and boiled smoothly with the grade shooting up 30 points. Canner heating element crapped but was a surprisingly easy fix. Pump line cracked at the barb, easy fix. Got extra permeate to power spray all over the palace. Don't think this morning's pump will be quite as good. Still plenty of frost in the ground and the forecast looks okay. Have to walk the lines between Saturday's wind and Sunday's run. Maybe I'll try Uber.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Gorgeous Sap. Sweet and easy to handle. Grade up to 70%. And another first. Pumping parked on the side of the road when suddenly pickup and pump trailer is efficiently pinned in by the Fire Chief's huge SUV and a police cruiser! Apparently the chief mistook me for "a landscaper dumping liquid waste into a wetland."

[Russell Lampron]

My grade is hanging in there at Amber too. It kept getting lighter as the day went on and I was afraid it would go up to Golden but it's still Amber. "Dumping liquid waste into a wetland"! It must have been fun talking your way out of that one.

[Parker]

The overlords in Bow are something, really on top of it...i remember the first time i tried logging on a sunday in Bow...2 squad cars where at my landing 15 minutes after i fired up and they were pretty excited when they got there..when i was leaving i got caught up in a bike race..what a place

[Hop Kiln Road]

Well, Red Roof, believe it or not, being 7:30 AM it took me a couple of seconds to gather my thoughts. Meanwhile, to the F-C's credit, his training quickly deduced that while the clear, odorous liquid was being pumped into the trailer tank despite there being no visible contents id plaque for the trailer. However the cop sensed the gig was up and said, "who call this in?" The F-C said, "I did. But I think its okay." In retrospect, with 8 tanks alongside town roads and sap coming out my ears, I got a pretty good idea exactly what's being pumped where.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Didn't boil this weekend, made sugar on snow instead, so have a super clean system, good gradient and a TON of beautiful sap. Red Roof, I'm at 58 gal plus a concentrate spill. (Investigation concluded operator fired up the RO with a drain valve open.) My grade dipped at first this season then went way up. The dip was plugging the filter press quickly too but then cleaned up. Still heavy frost in the ground and ice in some tanks. Oh, and the syrup tasting was a hit again. Still had some Salisbury Sugarworks Very Dark from 2(?) years ago. Still had its takers.

[Russell Lampron]

Didn't boil this weekend, made sugar on snow instead, so have a super clean system, good gradient and a TON of beautiful sap. Red Roof, I'm at 58 gal plus a concentrate spill. (Investigation concluded operator fired up the RO with a drain valve open.) My grade dipped at first this season then went way up. The dip was plugging the filter press quickly too but then cleaned up. Still heavy frost in the ground and ice in some tanks. Oh, and the syrup tasting was a hit again. Still had some Salisbury Sugarworks Very Dark from 2(?) years ago. Still had its takers.

Did you have any of my syrup left for the taste test? I thought I was going to lose my grade this morning when I graded the syrup that I made yesterday. Hanna said "73" phew that was close, almost went down to Golden.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Sunday was a gpt of 2.6 but just a tinge cloudy from the 50F. Going to grade this morning after I collect but I could see it dropped some coming off. Frost is going to start coming out of the ground here this weekend but for now everything is frozen real tight. Yeah I used all the Red Roof Golden as samples at the various teachers' workshops the Farm Bureau puts on to promote the Tucker Mountain Challenge. Gotta get some more but dealing a fatigue factor so save me some Russ.

[Russell Lampron]

Sunday was a gpt of 2.6 but just a tinge cloudy from the 50F. Going to grade this morning after I collect but I could see it dropped some coming off. Frost is going to start coming out of the ground here this weekend but for now everything is frozen real tight. Yeah I used all the Red Roof Golden as samples at the various teachers' workshops the Farm Bureau puts on to promote the Tucker Mountain Challenge. Gotta get some more but dealing a fatigue factor so save me some Russ.

Let me know how much you want and I'll jug some up for you. I've decided to only jug up Golden on an order only basis. It doesn't sell when I put it on the shelves in the sugar house. When people come in looking for Dark they'll buy Amber but not Golden no matter how good I tell them it tastes.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Think I can hit my 15 year average on saps flows sometime next week and perhaps sooner on syrup with the high sugar this year. Grades are staying steady in the upper 60's. But so far real finicky flows and no real runs. Hauled some syrup up to the house yesterday, end of March in the low 40's, and didn't make a tractor track.

[Russell Lampron]

The ice on my haul road is still holding strong. By late March we're usually having to pick our way through ice ruts and water holes. There's plenty of mud down by the sugar house though.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Sap flows increasing with sugar dropping to 2.5%. Grade dropped to 60% with the boil showing signs of mid season, had to reverse a couple of times. Frost is holding firm. Speaking of mid season, this Salisbury Very Dark business of lying in the rafters counting the stars in the universe sounds like a blooming midlife crisis! Hope we don't have to organize an intervention right in the middle of peak flow.

[Russell Lampron]

Hey Bruce, I graded the syrup that I made the other night and it tested 74% on my Hanna tester. It looks like Golden with the temporary kit. I was wondering if you would like to test it with your Hanna to see if both of our testers agree.

I agree that there's something strange going on in Salisbury. I wouldn't be dreaming in the rafters when there's concentrate to boil here in Loudon.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Grade dropped to 57% and the sap flow was only .8 gpt and it was perfect weather above ground! With things warming up a bit I took the time to use a Jim Fadden trick. Crawl inside your evaporator with a pressure washer, often, he used to advise. Now Traders its late in the season so lets use some common sense here and have an exit strategy. Jim was smaller than me and his evaporator quite a bit roomier than mine. So make sure your steam hood has doors on either side in case you can't back out. After that lackluster Maple Weekend the last thing the industry needs is a rescue like that soccer team in Thailand.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Got my 82 yo neighbor to help tilt the tanks and pump them dry. One still had too much ice to move. Everything still above 2.5%. Raw boiled 30 gal and the other 30 gal today to keep the bacteria in check although the sap looks really good, just warm. Grade on the little bit that came out of the boil went back up to 60. Thanks, Jim. Power washed the floors with extra permeate. Quick and easy and impresses the tourists. Never make much syrup in April, but even with another stretch of freezes coming up it looks like a slow grind at best up to average crop.

[Hop Kiln Road]

23F this morning. Definitely in the Goldilocks period. Cold and windy and was only flowing slowly yesterday and a little murky but should have enough this morning to restart. Everything clean and ready to go. Crowbar in the ground test only penetrates 7" and now snow overnight? Haven't seen the root sap let go.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Sugar 2.3%; Grade 54%; volumes inching toward average season.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Still nice sap. Sugar staying at 2.3% but grade dropped to 52. Just went over 125 gal so probably won't hit average this year. Planning on pulling the taps after Friday nights freeze as I don't think its worth gumming up the systems for a little dark syrup. Been following the Tucker Mtn Challenge on SLACK. 800 kids involved this year and I expect 12 to 15 entries which will be judged at the Statehouse on April 30th.

[Hop Kiln Road]

23F this morning so there should be some sap today. Decided to leave yesterday's right in the field tanks. Tonight's low is 33F and warm air rises this time of year so its always a little warmer than the forecast. Going to pull the taps this weekend and organize my fertilizing crew. Preliminary results looks like the orchards that have been thinned and fertilized the longest did the best, again. Also waiting to see the results of my buddy who has 1000 taps using the Star .177 thin walls.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Looks like .19 gpt of syrup on one of my lightest seasonal sap flows. No sustained runs and nights and mornings just a little too cold. Sugar, grade and flavor above average with 85% of the syrup 58%+. Best sap/sugar performers were the two orchards thinned and fertilized the longest. The poorest orchard was partial thinned 2 years ago and produced the highest sap yield this year. The two bottom performers this year were the new too flat drain lines. Thinking about shurflow pumps at the upper ends and pumping straight up 4 to 6 feet to get a 2%+ slope so the drain pipes don't freeze solid every night like this year. Might also wait until the feeling goes away.