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I tried the rice trick in my releaser. I was able to get it to stick just moving it by hand in my kitchen. Added a 14oz box of rice to the float and no more sticking. Brought it down to the woods, turned on the vacuum, tapped some trees and watched as it filled and dumped. No sticking there either. Bring on the BIGSAP I am ready.
theron how close to corning and addison ny are u
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Well the Pa.Dept. of Ag was in our sugar house yesterday and inspected our operation. We passed with flying colors. Now all we need is some sap!!!
Hope the next couple of days get things rolling!
Jim
Got my check from Grove today and they graded my syrup. All 5 drums were graded C. I asked Jerry when he was down here what he thought the grade was and he said Pennsylvania Fancy. Sounds like I must be doing things right. Four dollars a pound they must have loved the stuff. Gonna try to keep up the good work. dont want to lose the grade. Theron
It is refreshing to see you finally try to make some quality product. I mean quantity product.
every 4.00/lb helps.
arrrrgh...the pirate is jealous of the earlier Pa season start. Seems like the northeners are chomping at the bit again.
Looks like all hell ought to break loose starting tomorrow. A swimming we will go, a swimming we will go....bring on the sap!
Grade C ! Come on Theron, there are high standards in PA. Maybe you shouldn't listen to the "northerner's";) Glad to see you making some money though.
Look's like the tree's will wake back up tomorrow. Looking to make some fine quality product.
Still tapping! 187 more buckets tonite. got a late start. sap was dripping and it was 25degs. another 200 and I should be done. Tap count so far is 2772. I may not make 3000. a fella that told me he i could tap his tree backed out yesterday. probably 250 taps. Oh well.
Talked to Tappin and sappin tonight comparing notes. He was dumping Ice and I was just heading out to dump mine. I must have dumped 300 gallons of ice on the gorund:( That last run must have continued as the snow came in and most of the totes had 5-15 gallon. Well the big ice chunks just do not work well with the pumping system so it had to go.
Jim Brown, Glad the inspector was pleased always nice to get a good report from the inspectors. I need to call and let them know we are making syrup too.
Have the water sample in but the results are do in a few days. Did get the results from the syrup sample back and they results looked good. So we are anticipating a run starting late Wed night and into Friday.
Gary, Get some rest its coming!
Jim Bortles did you get those taps in? Your rig looks ready to go.
Chris
Peace- Im really close to Corning and that area. Probly 35 or 40 minutes is all. Sounds like everybody made dark syrup on this early stuff around here for some reason. Richard said it had something to do with the weather. Staying home today and tying up some loose ends around here and getting ready to make a bunch more product hopefully. Everything is a mess. Gonnna clean the shed and finetune my pressing. Hook up the tanker trailer to the new tub in the shed. Run some main. Pump out a froze tank. All the fun stuff. I think the big run will be tomarrow and Ill be ready. Wanna fill some barrells. Dave Y- full buckets by saturday better get ready to fire up that rig. Brandon- Talked to a guy does maple over by Richards. He was hooking up a big vac pump. Guy has 8000 taps on a steep ridge and he told me that he never ran vac becouse you could go up on top of the ridge with the sap running and put a spile on your cheek and it would stick there becouse of the nat vac off that hill. Other funny thing was he said It would freeze the mains down low and so many taps would be running up above that it would go to to freeze and blow out the saddles and guyser everywhere. Real nice guy. Hes putting a 150 cfm pump on it now so Probly really stick to his cheek. Theron
my sister lives out in woodhull ny so next time i am out if u dont mind the visit may stop down
well got the pan off and assessed the damage. burn all the way throgh the floor and through one of the cross members in the sugarhouse last saturday. by the looks of it my season is probly over. if i cant find a solution within the next couple days
Sounds good Peace. Theron
As long as its not a huge hole somebody should be able to weld it. I can actually weld but don't own one and can weld pretty thin stuff with a stick welder even as long as nobody is watching me do it. If I have a audience I tend to blow holes in it every time.
Sap ran here but not very much. Any of you guys have any luck today? Think maybe next two days might be pretty good. Theron
Maplekid ,
What the heck did you do? did you burn you pan up and or burn a hole in the floor of the sugarhouse?
I just came in from tapping. I hung 210 more buckets tonite after work. need to finish tomorrow evening. I am 16 taps shy of 3000. I will pick them up tomorrow with out any problem. Sap was running today but not hard enough to make anything serious. Maybe tomorrow.
well my fire was going good and hot and i walked out to get something and seen smoke coming from underneath the sugarhouse. then put the fire out drew off near syrup and then today i finally got around to looking at it and i had a gaping hole in the floor. the pans fine. i filled the hole in with rocks and stuff today and will pour some concrete mabe tomarow. i had 2-3 inches of concrete under my grates i thought it wouldnt bother it. guess i has a lapse in judgement. im very lucky to still have a sugarhouse
Dave Y,
So are you saying I better get it in gear??
It was 3 below here this morning, so I don't imagine to much happened today.
Going to set the barrels up tomorrow.
We're going to tap Saturday.
Have fun.
Dave
Put 400 taps out this afternoon. I was moving pretty good - got them done between 1-6 and also replaced a good bit of tube that the squirrels had their way with. Ran the vacuum while tapping - it's a good time to find leaks.
Trees were running decent, releaser had probably released 10 or so times while I was tapping. Let all that go on the ground. Just turned up the vacuum and now I'm collecting - so I guess the season has begun for me.
Guess I better finish those arch modifications and get the sugarhouse ready.
Maplekid, glad every thing is ok with your pans. you just have to be careful boiling on a wood floor.
3% now is the time to get tapped. you will have sap before you know it.
Dave,
3,000!
I remember you standing in the sugar house when you bought that little 210 gallon tank for the Ranger! You have come a long way from there my friend. Good luck to you and all the other maple nuts out there.
Maple Kid, Glad to hear you still have a sugar house.
Tomorrow is sap day! Should be boiling along with most every one that is tapped in the NWPA area.
Regards,
Chris
Chris,
Yea I know I think I am a little OCD.
DaveY,
Keep up the good work, all that prep and tubing is going to pay off big time in the next few weeks. Hope your gathering squad is rested and ready. Do you let them take the dump truck on their own to gather?
I am debating about boosting the economy and buying a new truck. F-250 4x4 short bed but with more goodies this time. Debating on a super cab or go to the full crew cab? Suggestions are welcome!
Need to look good while gathering:)
Chris
Sugarmaker,
The gathering crew is resting at the moment. I let them take the dump truck to gather while I stay at the sugar house and boil. I also have a dodge 2500 that has a 425 on it. It will be out pumping tanks also. I have two young adults that help also. One young fella has become my right hand man since been laid off in November. He has done a lot of work for me that I would have never gotten done ,plus he has been doing truck maintenance for me.
Sugarmaker,
I have an '06 f-250, extended cab, diesel that I bought brand new and it has had nothing but problems. Brakes have been a big problem, three calipers have been changed. Computer went up on it, mass air flow sensor died as well. Back doors on it started to rust from the inside out with 20k miles. Sometimes when I start the truck the radio and power widows/locks don't work for the first three or four miles. The truck has 38k on it now. It will be my last ford for sure!!!!
I'm not sure if you are looking at buying a gas or diesel but if you are going to buy diesel I would go dodge with the Cummins. Also dodge's have 4 full doors on there version of extended cabs, the extra room is nice.
I just went out and checked my yard buckets. one of them was half full. it looks like the sap ran all night, slowly. It looks like we will be collecting tomorrow and boiling on the weekend.
got around to checking my buckets today and they are all in the half full range. stayed home today to move furniture( dad hurt his back) so after i move the furniture ill start fixing the gaping hole in the floor of the sugarhouse.
Guys- My run mirrored yours. yesterday off maybe 26 or 2700 taps I got probly 700 gallons with the night too. Nothing really on the north bush. I think today may get better. Looks like its over freezing till friday night. Maybe itll just run steady once it gets goin till then. Have to see. Theron
Put out two test taps today, they were RUNNING... drip.................drip.
BRING IT ON,
just in from the sugar house and finished boiling for the night had a good run today had a small prob with my filters a quick phone call to sugarmaker and prb solved thanks chris worked great built a hood and new preheater yesterday work awsome don't know how every boiled with out a hood checked tanks on way home still running will have a few hunder gallon to boil tomorrow
Just got home from boiling, got 520 gal of sap today.
I finished Tapping tonite. just slightly over 3000 taps. 1200 an some odd buckets. had a valve leaking on my expansion tubing. pump 300gal out of the tank and fixed it. worked in the sugar house trying to get that in order. the went out and pumped a tank to keep it from running over in the middle of the night. and that was the second shift.
Sap ran pretty good here yesterday and last night even with some south wind. Looks like Ive gotten over this run this week about 4000 gallons or maybe a little more up till now. I had to go out in the middle of the night too, around 3 am to pump out some tanks. I think it may run pretty long and hard today with the rain. Yesterday I took all afternoon into the night going through the woods fixing leaks. Fixed a lot of squirrell chews and found 4 drops off. Dont have too much more left. Started yesterday during the day with 20 at the sugarhouse releaser and 18 across the road. Some of it was the pump being a little warm and the sap running hard. Now with everything running Im holding 25 at the sugarhouse releaser and 24 across the road. Im very happy about that. I like to keep the woods perfect but with everything involved and having to go to work its hard. Hope everyone gets a good run today. Dave- Will the buckets be full tomarrow? Theron
Theron,
This doesn't apeer to be a great run. time will tell last nite a couple buckets in the yard was close to over flowing, while some only had acouple of inches. I will be very pleased to start with 3000gal tomorrow morning. that way I will have all weekend to boil. The tanks are runnind well so I assume it will play out to be a decent run.
Dave- I think your going to get the sap. This wasnt a perfect run for sure I dont think. Too much of the south plus things are kind of waking up I think after that really cold spell we had. I think you may hit it big today with the rain plus today the winds going to change to the west. I hope you get it becouse like you said going into the weekend is perfect timing. Theron
You guy are killing me....
Minus 2 last night, 6" of fresh snow, high today of maybe 10, maybe 14 tomorrow.
On the bright side I got laterals out to another 80 trees this morning...boy the tubing is tough to work with when it is this cold...
Finished boiling for the day around 3pm. The good news is I was able to get the evap to do about 550 gph. I found a direct relation between stack temp and gph. @ 600 degrees I was pushing 600gph, at 300 degrees I was lucky to do 300 gph. Good info collected today firing the evap. The bad news is the sugar content. 1.5 % at best. What gives. Any one else with low sugar?
I collected 160 gal on 200 taps tonight. Pumped it into sugarhouse feed tank. Will test sugar in am before I start boiling. My woods don't seem to have woke up much yet. This 200 is all new, all gravity. It is ready to go vac as soon as I get an RO. I am still only about 400 tapped, Only the 200 ran. Will tap my last 200 this weekend. Was looking to get 800 but only hit 602 for this year. That is still a 20% gain from last year.
We collected 1000 gallons last evening and this afternoon before the blizzard set in.. goingto get the RO and the rig fired up tomorrow morning. Would of had more but one generator shut down on low oil level. Better that than to burn up the gen. all sap is at 2%
We have only just begun,Say that would make a great title for a song!!
Jim
Holy Cow! That is all I can say.
Man did the sap flow last night and today. I now have right at 100gals of sap waiting to boiled tomorrow. I wanted to get started this evening but the wife got the flu this week and I have to take care of the daughter.
I had several buckets overflowing for who knows how long! They were still running when I collected so I have to figure I will have a good bit to get tomorrow. But I am beat.
Dave Y I just can't imagine you doing all those buckets, my 140 was enough.
A guy from the local newspaper managed to search me down and stopped by yesterday to take a few pics of me collecting the sap and then a few pics while I was boiling. He asked a bunch of questions. It was fun talking syrup. If it makes it in the paper in will be this coming weeks edition.