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Lots of Golden Delicate eh? I haven't had any this year, maybe I should *borrow* some from you for fair season lol ;-) Sounds like you're pretty busy and my own little microbush keeping me hopping. Right now waiting for 8l of tempestuous nearup to get down closer to 7. Then I have another 5.5l to hotpack. And another 60l out in the shack to begin boiling. Argh! I need to get myself cloned!
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Barely 8am and already have had a fun-filled morning. While getting a jar out of the fridge it fell and fortunately landed intact. Closed the fridge door thinking all was fine when I heard that sound of something in the fridge shifting. Well, on its journey down that jar had glanced off of one of my 2l storage jars of batch #3, which I had been planning to hotpack today...
So I opened the door and there was a stove-in glass 2l jar. Perfectly good, perfectly clear syrup everywhere. After using a few favourite 4-letter words I emptied the bottom part of the fridge and began mopping up the mess :-( Thankfully the break happened while the door was closed so there weren't any shards of glass on the floor and basically just several large chunks inside the fridge. Now there is a tupperware tote half-full of hot water and syrup- soaked towels and cloths. All I can say is thank gawd I used to have a cleaning business so no shortage of stuff around!
Oh and the trees aren't running today. Yet. Thank gawd for small mercies.
Hope your day is less exciting than mine!
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Also thankful for a day off but trees are down in sugar so maybe it's time...unless you
want dark syrup. There may still be a couple of runs yet?
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We definitely want some dark syrup and will be pushing right to the end. With RO low sugar isn't too much of an issue - just dial the concentrate flow back to get your desired Brix and let it run longer. We were still a smidge over 2 Brix the other day but not sure what we're dealing with today. Once this freezing rain ends we should get a decent run overnight and into tomorrow. There's still some snow left in the woods and the ice on Bennett Lake is still solid so that creates a cold microclimate that allows us to get through some warm days.
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Got caught up on last week's batch dark syrup this batch have 40G in storage. Pulled most of my taps yesterday. Trees budding here and Mega rain and ice storm here today. Will finish off what I have stored and call it a season.
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Hopefully everybody is ok after the storm yesterday. We have been without power since early yesterday. Have every generator I own running right now. And went and bought another one as a backup. Sump pump is going off every 20 seconds. So can’t be without power.
Was able to go check on the camp and bush this morning and had a couple limbs down on laterals that pulled the tubing right off the tap. But other than that nothing too bad. Got the pump back up and running and am pulling the same vac I was before the storm. So thank god. Had 1000 gallons that I needed to boil yesterday but couldn’t so today will be busy it’s running pretty good today as well.
Plan on shutting it down on Sunday and cleaning up. I can’t imagine it will be fun trying to make syrup in 20 degree weather next week.
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Sounds like you had fun, Brickie! Very lucky in that I had fairly little tree damage and only lost power for 2 hrs last night.
My trees still running and producing clear clean sap, though the little bush maples are slowing down but the bigger trees picking up the slack. But with the crazy temps in the coming week it looks like my season will soon be over too. They're pretty obvious about it; they either start to dry or produce sap that's definitely off. A little bummed that I got no Light this year, nothin but borin old Amber, currently Dark underway. Ah well.
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So I learned a lesson today.. when cutting a tree limb off a syrup line, watch out for line spring back.. as soon as the limb fell off the line, up came the line right into the chainsaw blade!
It was a quick repair but I'm keeping that section of line as a reminder.
Have tons of tree limbs down, mostly from my silvers that are tapped, but it's all high up the tree . No big trees came fully down at all ( just a few small ones, not maples except for one..but most two nice yellow birches).
Been out of power since 5pm on Wednesday.. still no estimate as to when it will come back.. had 300L in storage from Sat-wed already and have a other 100L in the barrel also.. haven't tested the new stuff yet but may end up dumping it.. the buds on the Silvers are getting quite big (partly why most of the damage is to the Silvers..they had big "hands" to catch all the ice with on Wednesday).
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Jeez Paul, be careful out there!
Out here, some slight cloudiness in a few buckets so keeping an eye on those trees. Been taking a sip from each spile before I collect. Nearly got instant diabetes from one of my 2 taps on #6. Over 700l sap collected now, just got another 23l this afternoon. Trying to decide whether to fire up SW or wait til tomorrow, but then I might have 45 or 60 l to push. 154l collected for #5 so far. Doubtful I'll get a 6th batch this year. Ah well.
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Small run here today (though we were done) and it looks like tomorrow ,Monday and Tuesday will be it with the forecast.
No bud formation yet .