Grassy Meadows Maple Syrup Tapped - 2008

[lharris1]

We tapped during the two warm day Monday & Tuesday. We put in about 270 on 1/28 and another 100 on 1/29. That is about 30 more than last year, 120 more than two years ago and nearly 200 more than our first year. We are about maxed out for our evaporator I guess. Although Claude mentioned that we have not had to evaporate 24 hours in row yet.

Sunny side taps ran good the two days and all ran some, but very slow. We probably have 100 gal at sugar house and another 100 in the field. We are waiting for the next run to start boiling which should be this weekend.

[lharris1]

We had a little sap run Friday and now have 220 gal in storage. Saturday should be the first good run and we will probably boil Saturday.

[Jim Brown]

Grassy Meadows; you guys need to put a steamaway on that 2x6 and you can double your taps! We have a Waterloo Small 2x6 with a steamaway and we can run 50 gallon per hour with it .We put an RO againist it this year and will run 1000 taps on vacuum through a 2x6.I'll have a lot more infomation in a couple of weeks when the sap starts running better I'll know how well she handles it. If we crunched the numbers right we should be able to draw 4 gallons per hour off the rig.I'll keep you posted

Jim

[lharris1]

thanks Tim, we may want to look at a steam away. I would like to talk to you about yours.

Boiled off 220 gal Saturday, collected 240 on Sunday and another 100 Monday with some more to pick up - may be another 100. Boiled Monday and have 8-9 gal syrup. Sap is trailing off but may run some through the night. No more sap till at least Thursday. Runs have been kind of light so far. (posting by iPhone)

[lharris1]

Very warm today (upper 60's) with lots o sunshine. Long time since freeze and we did not expect much run - good surprise - collected about 360 gal. Canned just over 10 gal of a light medium. Rain and cool down comming tomorrow.

[220 maple]

Iharris,
How far are you guy off I-64, I pick my mother at the Mall near Huntington when my sister brings her from Kentucky, I would love to see your camp, I'll PM you when I have to make the trip down there to get her. Maybe we can get together?

Mark 220 Maple

[lharris1]

220 Mapler: We would really like for you to stop by fo a visit, but if you are coming down I79 you will be 100 miles west of us when you hit Charleston. West Virginia Mapler is only about 5 miles from us.

On wednesday finished collecting and boiling. We have had about 1100 gal. Of sap and have made 20 gal. of syrup. Looks like no more runs till at least Tuesday.

[lpakiz]

Hey you Harris guys--
This is a really long shot but I knew a Harris from Alderson WV in the 70s.
Any connection to folks in that town?
Larry

[lharris1]

lpakiz: We do not have relatives in Alderson, but my Dad's was a rural rout out of the Alderson Post Office.

[lpakiz]

Hello Harris crew!
This is really a coincidence--Jerry Harris' father was the postmaster in Alderson in 1971 (and before and after, I guess) 1971 is the year Jerry and I had this mandatory government job which sent us to Germany. (It was also called the US Army)

Thanks for the reply! We have about a month or more to wait before we even think of tapping here in Wisconsin...
Larry

[lharris1]

I thought no more runs till Tuesday - little did I know. Friday gave us at least 330 gallons of sap and should get some more today. Evaporator up and running today.

[220 maple]

Larry,
I didn't know your camp was near Brandon's, I seen your location said Poca, WV, that why I thought you was near I-64 between Charleston and Huntington. I need to come down and check out both you and Brandons camps sometime.

Mark 220 Maple

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Mark,

My camp is 1.5 miles off of Dawson exit off of I-64 and Larry's camp is on the other side of I-64 off of the Dawson exit aprox 5 to 6 miles. Mine is easy to find as my sugarhouse is on the same road all 4 exit ramps dump onto. Funny thing is, my road turns to a 1 lane tar and gravel road 1/4 mile from exit. Tells you how rural it is and Larry is in an even more rural area!

I live next to Beckley, WV 27 minutes from sugarhouse and Larry lives in Poca, WV and yes you have the location right. He is at least 1.5 hours from sugarcamp!

[lharris1]

Thanks Brandon for clearing up my location with Mark. Actually the sugar house is a good two hours from wher I live. It is just out of the back door of the home place where I grew up. When I go there I plan to spend several days and either stay with my brother, at the home place or with my wife's Mother.

I just got back home from spending five days and during that time we collected around 850 gal. We had about 120 gal in storage from out previous run and also collected about the same amount Monday which we will hold till the next run which may not be until next Saturday at the current forecast. We never did get a good overall run but one or the other of sugar bush was running all the time with the last 120 gal running from north facing bush from noon Sunday till Monday morning. We have canned about 42.5 gal and have about 5 for the next canning. Last year our first canning was on 2/27. What a difference a year makes!

Cleaned out the evaporatort pans on Monday and we are ready for the next run.

[lharris1]

It has been a very busy 2 1/2 days. Started monday about noon gathering and with sap flowing strong we decided to boil to stsu ahead. Had 120 gal left from previous run and collected about 1100 gal more monday and tuesday. Boiled 5 hrs monday, 17 hrs tusdsy and 15 hrs wednesday and got it all boiled off. We now have over 67 gal canned and four more for the next canning. Looking forward for a big run this weekend. Posting by iPhone is s pain.

[lharris1]

I'm back home after spending Sunday through Friday at the sugar camp. Had a good run that started with a little trickle Saturday. Picked up 120 gal by noon Sunday and boiled Sunday afternoon. Run continued pretty good and by Wednesday we had collect about 1280 gal. and had big boil days Monday and Tuesday boiling it all of because sap was getting cloudy. Had unexpected run of some 170 gal by Thursday morning when we went out to flush and sanitize tanks. We dumped this run because it was very cloudy (may have been a mistake - could have made some dark or grade B syrup).

Cleaned pans on Thursday and made a refractory modification in the arch. We had fire brick lying on zonelite with a gap of about 1 1/2" to the sap pan. We raised the brick to give a 1/4" gap to the pan to force more flu gas into to raised flu. Collected 345 gal. and boiled it all off Friday. The modification to the arch seems to have reduced the draft with the result that we kept about the same 32 gal/hr boil rate but used less wood.

We now have canned 97 gal and have another 6 gal ready to can. Total sap collection to date is 5220. Looking for some good runs next week but some taps are shutting down because we tapped so early (1/27).

[lharris1]

This is the final report for 2008. We had our final boil out on Friday the 14th and had a very good year. We tapped early (Jan 27th) and at times sap was slow to come but it kept coming and we ended up with 5700 gallons of sap from ~372 taps which was about 15 gallons per tap. The sap to syrup ration was 50.0 for 113 gallons, which was not as good as last year but better than a lot of years. We'll take it any time. That breaks out to about 86 light to medium amber, 27 dark and about 6 grad B. All in all we felt very blessed this year. Good luck to all you out ther still having fun.