Ennismaple 2009 Diary

[ennismaple]

As many of you know, my father passed away last summer at the extremely young age of 58. He looked after most of our maple operation and for a while we weren't sure if we could continue. We wanted to but didn't know how we could make it work. We've put a lot of thought into it and with my brother's and my vacation, Mom's assistance and a lot of help from family and friends we believe we can continue the tradition. I know my father would have wanted nothing else. Now we both need to learn how to operate the RO and boil using our 5x16' beast. We've done it before but always under Dad's supervision so this year will be a lot of learning.

To make preparation easier we've replaced some old tubing that used to come down every year with semi-rigid. I'd say 80% of our tubing is now semi so that cuts down the time in the bush before we tap significantly. We've added a few hundred taps more than we had last year and may get the remaining 1000+ taps in our new bush up and running within a few years once we learn the ropes. A new evaporator is definitely required soon since we don't have enough time to cut wood for an operation as large as ours.

We've endured the warm temps this past week but my trigger finger didn't get itchy at all. We may have been able to make a bit of syrup but there's no way we could have tapped and gotten ready in time. Plus, it's not worthwhile for us to tap 4 weeks earlier than usual to maybe get a couple days' run. I'll make lots of syrup in April so in February I'm not worried about missing some. We always get a Jan or Feb thaw and this past week was no different. The forecast calls for it to freeze hard starting this evening and not get above freezing for the next 2 weeks. Looks like tapping the 1st week of March should be about right.

Good luck to everyone and we'll keep you posted on our progress. I'm gonna be a sleep deprived zombie by the end of April!!!

[KenWP]

I wasted my time tapping a tree since it was so warm but not a dribble. I had to do some trenching for drainage and the ground under the snow is like cement still so I would guess that I am looking at the traditional St. Patricks day start up that people tell me happens around here. I did get my evaporator finished today after finally breaking down and paying a small fortune the get a 5 inch peice of metal welded on it to plug a hole. Just have to start it up and see if it will actually boil water. I am hopeing for 3 gallons a hour boil rate so that I only have to boil 12 hours a day once a week.
I just wish I could find a small producer around here to learn from. I worked for a guy who had 18000 trees taped but he was not much help with guestions. I am impatiently waiting to see sap come out of a tree this year.

[dano2840]

a barrel evap should give you atleast 8 gph if not more,
ennis, good luck to you in your sugaring endeavor, its definatly what your dad would have wanted, dont worry it wont be as hard as you think it will be, hes still there helping you just dont see him though, it wont be hard, look at me i basically taught my self how to sugar and have been doing just fine,
just remember to have fun
Dano

[Haynes Forest Products]

KenWP: You cant have the full blown addiction if your willing to wait all week to boil. You dont watch collage basketball do you. All we ask is 2 hrs a day.

[Teuchtar]

KenWP
My sugar bush is in Glen Sutton, which is just the other side of Memphremagog from you.
I started with 4 buckets, then had 50 for years. I'd call myself a small producer.
You're welcome to come over this weekend and I'll show you what I've got.
I still have my first home-made arch from 1986 that used a 24x24" sugar pan from D&G. Used it for years until I saved up enough to get the 2x6.
I knew of a old fella in Dunham who worked at Small Bros evaporators. He'd do all kinds of sheet metal repairs and welding for the maple trade. He fixed my smoked out syrup pan more than once ! I bet there's a few in Waterloo as well. Germain, the CDL dealer (exit 68) should be able to advise you of the local guys. He's my favourite suppler nowadays. Has good prices, and full of helpful advice. You can hang out in his shop the whole day long and pick peoples brains.
I'd say get your taps ready 1st of March in our area. Snow is too deep before then anyway.
Let me know !

[KenWP]

I will see what the weather brings. We got a belt of snow again tonight. I found Glen Sutton on the map and its not to bad of a drive over there.

[PATheron]

Ennismaple- Sounds like your doing the right thing to me. Youve got a lot of taps maybe once you get going it will be a little easier than you think. I think you sell a lot of your syrup retail but maybe you could bulk more of it and cut down on some of that work. Another thing you could do is to recirculate to some extent and if you didnt go rediculous I dont think the flavor would even be affected. If you ran the ro half and half so your getting rid of water while your doing other things thats easy on the ro. Then when you do the final shot up into your headtank dont try to go real high just do what the machine seems to do reasonable. Maybe you hit 15% stuff. I dont think you could tell the difference with that and it would cut down the wood and the boiling radically. Just a thought. Whatever you do you have to make some syrup so we can hear what your doing. Your dad will be happy your doing it even if its a lesser extent. Im sure he didnt start out big. Have a happy. Theron

[ennismaple]

An update on our season so far:

We had some friends come help us for the weekend so we could get tapped. Saturday we got an early start and with 2 crews we tapped one bush with 450 taps in 80 minutes! After that the going got a bit tougher as there's still a fair bit of snow in spots and we were having to run back and forth with batteries. By the end of the day we had 2100 taps in, pumps on and the tanks washed. Sunday we slowed down a bit because... well we were tired. We ended up with 3400 taps in over 2 days and managed to walk some of the bushes to check for leaks. We had a lot of deer chews and the vacuum levels were waaay too low. We've got our regulator on the main pump (2400 taps) set at 20" Hg and before we did a quick check for leaks we had 12" in the tank beside the pump and 7" at the releaser 2000' away. By the time we were done our quick walk we were up to 18". There's still more leaks out there but we'll do another walk around and get them. By the end of the day Sunday we had maybe 500 gallons of sap in the tanks.

I had to get a new base for my smokestack built over the winter. The old one was rotten and couldn't support the weight anymore. The bottom is 8" x 48" and tapers up to a 16" square stack (or about that, I'm going by memory). I guess the guy who manufactured it was having a bad day and decided to measure once, cut twice. Turns out he made it too big and the bottom section of the stack doesn't fit over the base. He came to pick it up today to make an adapter to fit it. I'll need it back ASAP because I plan on making some steam on Wednesday.

We've also been having some problems with our tractor. It started with the fuel line getting plugged and yesterday the line was leaking where it attaches to the fuel pump which looks like it was letting air in and making the engine miss. A friend has offered to fix it for me - which is good because I'm not the person you want fixing something mechanical!

On the way out of the bush yesterday I quickly stopped off to check that one pump was working OK. When I got there the muffler was leaning funny and there was a lot of smoke. Turns out the muffler had come loose and was leaning on the ABS 90° bend that goes from the vacuum pump down into the lower chamber. We got there just in time because the ABS had melted almost through. We managed to tie the muffler up to fix this problem.

These are just a few of the many things we'll need to get figured out but where there's a will there's a way!

[ennismaple]

Another quick update on our season:

Wednesday March 11: First boil since Dad passed away. A tough day to work - both emotionally and physically. There was so much he did himself around the sugar bush that we really had to think about how to get set up and running. We managed to get the RO set up, evaporator ready and make a bunch of syrup. Wind was so strong I thought I saw the Wicked Witch of the West and a small house fly past at one point. We were lucky our smokestack stayed up.

March 14: Sap ran some on Saturday but did not boil. Got remaining taps in and we're ready to boil. DeLaval pump going through oil like crazy but other 3 working fine. Lots of help to tap and check all the lines.

March 15: 2nd boil of the year. A good day but was 2 day's sap. Had to really heat up frozen PVC valve on end of SS tank - need to replace with brass valve. Still worried about DeLaval pump. Quite a few visitors and some even bought syrup! My brother did most of the boiling as I'm more comfortable with it and he needs to learn. Beautiful clear, light syrup.

March 16: Good day for sap, bad day for equipment. Washed evaporator in morning. Broke transfer arm on wagon - luckily while going out for last load of the day and I had enough sap to shut down and flood. Most help left for home but managed to get them to fill up a lot of containers before they left! Got first order of season from our primary retail outlet which will be delivered tomorrow. Fixed broken blower on evaporator. Tripped main breaker running RO and cooking lunch at the same time. Later, RO machine shut off on "Overload Protection" and franglais user's manual was no help at all. Figured out breaker behind front controls had tripped. I did most of the boiling and am getting comfortable firing, managing levels, filtering and running RO at the same time. Sap changed to medium late in the day and was cloudy.

March 17: Great day for sap, another bad day for equipment. Fixed oil leak in DeLaval pump - loose fitting on muffler. Changed fittings and valve on SS tank to brass. Got transfer arm welded and re-installed. Broke plastic fitting on end of permeate tank while washing it out. No problem - we'll go to plumbing supply store and get another one... wrong! Part doesn't exist within 3 hours of home and must be custom made - $45 later we're back in business. Ran RO and evaporator all day without incident (other than tripping Overload Protection breaker again). Lots of beautiful light, clear syrup put in bottles. Up to 25% of what we expect a "normal" year should be and sap should run all night.