Started in Somers

[DaveB]

I started putting my taps in Somers & Stafford. We put about 150 or so in today and will do another 200 tomorrow. A bunch of the ones we did today were buckets and they are slower to put in! I forgot about that...been using tubing for a while.

Saw some sap flowing on southern facing taps, but not much. I'm not expecting anything till later in the week.

Dave

[DaveB]

Sap was flowing real good today or at least this afternoon with temps in the 50s here. First really strong flow today. The 25 or so buckets that I have out all were over flowing. The rest of the taps in tubing were flowing real well too. It really started flowing well this afternoon!

Looking forward to making some syrup this weekend!!

Dave

p.s. I had finished the rest of my taps earlier in the week so I'm all out

[MapLewis]

Dave,

Hope all is going well down in Stafford. Boiled for 13 hours last Sat. (1st time ever) and made 5 gal. of fancy...went well, a little nerve racking and you gotta be on your toes. I'm looking forward to some more fun this weekend...my 2x4 is giving me almost 20 gph boil off...how is your 2x6 working out? So far so good keeping up with my sap, but I'll keep you in mind i we get too much, 124 taps is alot more than one thinks!
Cheers.
Bryon

[DaveB]

Hey Bryon,

That's great!! I'm glad things went smoothly for you. We had great luck weekend getting everything running and I was real happy with the evaporation rate. We were getting about 35 gph and that was not even cranking up the fire too much. I just wanted to make sure that everything was running fine.

We collected about 250 gallons last week and another 200 today. I expect the sap to flow through Sunday. It was flowing really well when I went out to collect from my buckets today. Slightly less flow in the woods, but there was some action there.

I can always take some of that sap off your hand! ;)

Let me know if you run into any quirks.

Dave

[DaveB]

I boiled about 500 gallons over the weekend and made some pretty tasty light amber!! My new evaporator is giving me at least 40gph and is a heck of a lot easier than using a flat pan over a brick arch, that is for sure!

I had one crazy moment when I ran out of sap in my feed tank, but that was it.

Filtering went well too. I used a cone filter with several prefilters and used the filter-aide and everything went fine. I think I only used 2 prefilters which is a change from last year when it took three for every 5 gallons or so.

So, we're up and running full!

Dave

[MapLewis]

Banged out another 10 gallons this past weekend, bringing the total to 15. All fancy light amber... hoping to get some darker stuff soon (thats what i like). Sap was running today (Tues) really good around here...may have to do a mid week boil to stay on track. I did have a "kind of" funny moment tonight bottling, when a mason jar lid blew off in my face and covered me with hot syrup...it hurt a bit, but tasted great at the same time.
Glad to hear you are chugging along down there...keep it up.
Bryon

[DaveB]

Bryon, You'll get some dark stuff at the end of the season. You could always sell your light to Bascom's. They're always buying syrup! Even if the syrup isn't 'right' at the end of the season, keep making it and sell it as commercial syrup.

We made about 14 gallons of medium yesterday, bringing the season total to about 25 gallons. Looks like the weather is turning and there should be some good runs this week. I wish it were a little cooler at night, but we'll see. It looks like it will turn cooler by next weekend though which should help keep things in check.

Dave

[DaveB]

Sap started flowing real well yesterday afternoon. All bushes now kicking in. Some of the flow through the tubing was incredible to see!

I ran into an issue of air flow in the evaporator yesterday that slowed down the GPH. After about 5 gallons the front pan was just not getting up to temp. Finally figured out that the grates weren't allowing enough air flow and the new hard wood I'm using needs to be stacked slightly different than the older stuff I had.

Got the kinks worked out and we made 10 gallons of dark syrup today. I didn't grade it yet, but it was not the light and medium that we had been making. This brings our season total to 35 gallons.

Sap looks to flow real well all week.

Dave

[Mike Van]

Dave, I had a problem a few years ago with grates - I had to make up a poker type thing to reach up through the draft door every hour or so & knock the built up ash out. Kind of a pain to bend over that far & look up in there, but it sure makes it boil faster when clean.

[DaveB]

Sweeping the grates in the morning has really helped. I can clearly see the flow of the flames once I close the door!

Picked up about 900 gallons or so this week. Not much after Wednesday though. Boiled about 450 yesterday and made 10 gallons of dark/B. That brings our season to 40 gallons I think.

Not too bad so far, but with the season starting (for us) a couple of weeks late and I'm not sure how much further past next week we will go here, it could have been better. Any season is better than no season though!

Dave

[DaveB]

Made 10 gallons of decidedly B today. I'll finish up what sap I have tomorrow. I'm hoping to end the week with 50 gallons(?) and then that might be it.

Sap ran a little, about 1-1.5 gals per tap today on the ones that were running. Others pretty quiet. I'm seeing some budding action and I'm hoping that it holds off at least a week!

I think I've learned a lot this year from my new rig. Startup and shut down can be tricky, but in between we've been getting around 38 GPH, sometimes more sometimes less. I didn't know what to expect because some people were saying 25GPH and others were saying 30 and that you can't run 450 taps on a 2x6 without extremely long days. I've had over 1,000 gallons of sap some weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) and I've been able to boil that down without an issue.

I'm happy with my season so far....

Dave

[DaveB]

Made another 10 gals of B today. Finished up the sap that I had. Hoping for another 10-15 gallons next weekend. We'll see. Sap ran a little today but not much. I'm hoping the cold weather is going to help when it does warm up!

I discovered an issue with one of my lines: Not enough slope and support. I though it would be OK, but I can see what the issue is and I'll fix that this summer. I was wondering why it wasn't performing well and now I know!

Dave

[DaveB]

OK. Last weekend was it for me. I burned my syrup pan on Saturday and had a hard time getting anything on Sunday. Besides having no real amounts of sap to boil and producing motor oil, I'm just beat. We've been working on this season since last October when we started building the new sugarhouse and putting up new lines.

A note of caution to others. Starting with my very first weekend, I had a spare bucket of cold sap in case something happened. Being the last weekend, I some how unconsciously decided that I didn't need it. Wanting to finish quickly, I switched to some really well seasoned wood and got a evaporation rate higher than I normally had. Feed tank went dry and at the last second before getting enough sap in there, my center channel starting burning. White smoke is pouring out. No emergency sap bucket. Happened in seconds and could have been prevented if I checked the feed tank just 30 seconds prior. Oh well. Everyone burns their pans at some point, right?

Time to clean up....

We got about 0.17 gallons per tap this year. Not great, but better than zero gallons per tap. There is always next year!

Dave

[RyanFarms]

I "witched" my syrup pan too! Same thing - finishing too fast without the emergency sap nearby. I ended up with 17.5 gallons on 125 taps, .14 gallons per tap.

Dan Ryan