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Heading out of town this afternoon. Hopefully this freeze will hold up until the middle of next week. That way i can get back and ready to tap on the first warm day. The early thaw had me worried that there wouldn't really be a season this year, but, it looks like things could be okay.
sam
be back by tuesday, sam...that's when things warm again
I have the idea to mount barbed fittings on my bucket lids in order to minimize the amount of rain that gets into them now.
I found a cheap way to ballast the tractor to haul the tank up the hill. I still don't know if this is going to work yet. I can totes see hauling the loaded sled up the driveway with my truck
Quote:
Originally Posted by eustis22
Glad to see you guys are making progress. Do you know if anyone around here sells sap? I have some frozen, but not enough to run. I have time this weekend to boil before the baby comes next week, then all bets are off. I'm in Georgetown will travel in the northeast MA/southern NH area.
Thanks guys
great...more rain for my buckets
Finally tapped a few Friday and more yesterday. Got about 80 gallons of sap by this morning and missed a lot that overflowed the buckets. I'll get the rest tapped this afternoon and then get ready to boil next weekend. Sugar shack is not complete, it will be another year outside for me this year.
Sam
dumped 90 gallons into the holding tank but catastrophe has struck
first my shurflo pump died and w/o that I have no way of getting the sap out of the tubing collection tank. I'll disassemble it in a little bit to see if thats the issue. in the meantime I will need another 12V pump and fast.
secondly the whole 25 year old 12hp tractor to haul the 35 gallon holding tank up the hill went kerflooey as the tractor just isnt strong enough at its age. I had to unpium from ythe holding tank into buckets thereby not avoiding what I wanted to avoid namely humping the (**&^ing buckets up the (*&Y*&0ing hill :)
so now I am mulling alternative plans from picking up a stronger used tractor to putting the tank in my truck and then just offloading into buckets at the top of the hill....which I STILL don't want to hand dump into the tank
anyway, taking tomorrow off to boil the 90-100 gallons to get the pan sweetened
I still need to hang about 20 more buckets, but, sap is running well so far. I have about 150 gallons in the tank and need to do a little bot of tuning up so I can fire this weekend. I will probably get everything ready on Saturday and then boil Sunday and Monday.
All of a sudden the weather looks good for the next 2 weeks or so. There are a few warm, wet over nights, but, lots of 40's during the day and high 20's at night.
Sam
Well, I ended up going to Home Despot for a new electric pump and now the guy who sold me the shurflo says he will send another one so I will end up with two, one for the collection barrel and one to load the buckets into the holding tank. tomorrow I finsh off the sweetening and sunday should start to make syrup. I'm a little concerned about my stack temps as the Tru Temper stack therm I have registers at 270 before I start firing and will eventually lap the 1000 degree mark and push out to 200-300. I'm almost positive I'm not running 1400 degrees in my 2X3 and I'm wondering if I should block the stack more. Can't get a straight answer on a decent stack thermometer from the forum so Ima go by the seat of my pants for bit.
I will empty the barrel into the truck tank tonight then pull buckets tomorrow and dump for Sunday as I am headed to OOB for the weekend.
I believe that Auber Instruments makes a digital stack temp monitor that is reasonably priced.
for now I'm ignoring the stack..boiled 80 gallons today and drew off 8 gallons of concentrate. I'm hoping for 5 gallons after finishing