Well Brent it will come soon mother nature is just giving you some time!
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Well Brent it will come soon mother nature is just giving you some time!
Well I can't boil yet. Not enough sap and the new evap isn't ready yet.
But on say 120 taps
today: 70 gallons
yesterday maybe 30
getting close to minimum boil start..... gotta get the stack up.
tested at 3%
unless we get a gusher tomorrow, I'll put off trying the RO for a bit.
Looks like 4 or 5 more good days then cold again.
Well Brent we are all tapped up here in northern ontario. All 350 taps in, we started at 11 am and finished at 2:30 this afternoon. The sap was starting to run, roughly 5 gallons of sap in the buckets and a gallon on gravity feed. Thanks for the reply on the pm yesterday. If things run well I'll be a busy person this year.
If things run well, you can make your own version of the Meg Ryan / Tom Hanks movie Sleepless in Trout Creek
Well we will give it a try and see what we come out with...
Well I did my first boil last night I got 20 liters of sap and boiled it down on the stove and got 1 liter of light but has lots of sugar sand in it.
well we got 100 gallons today i have not tested sugar yet but will post later
Collected another 60 gallons today
Just discovered the big Coka Cola stroage tanks are marked and we now total
about 135 ... enough for the first boil. and my last collection today was about 3:30 - 4:00 so there's already a bunch read for pick up when it melts tomorrow ... if it melts
Got the holes in the roof and half the arch insulate. Now I'm fussing about the roof jack for the hot stack. How much clearance. Seems fires are pretty
common. Don't need that.
Well Guy’s thing are starting to let go up here in the north still 2 feet of snow around the trees but we collected 28 gallons for the first time this year, freeze tonight and high of +5 tomorrow and rain should help thing out, I should be able to sweeten the pan tomorrow night! We are starting to see the light for sweeter things to come!
Brent is that new rig all plumed in and stacks ready to go yet?
Mike
got the holes in the roof and the stacks going through. But Patrick forgot the roof jacks. They're on the way but he didn't say how, by who or what day he shipped so I can't trace them. Hopefully they'll get here tomorrow.
Still got some jig saw puzzling to do with the fire box bricks. I think these guys design them so bricking is nearly a voodoo art form.
BUT
I got 220 gallons of 3% sap with 3" of ice on it in the storage tank.
But I gotta lite the fire soon or I'll go crazy.
Hopefully first boil tomorrow.
Brent
When you going to post all the pictures of your new toy - inside, outside, left side, right side, bottom, top etc.? We need to see it from every angle- the one picture on the website doesn't do it justice. Make sure you take those pictures while it's still nice and shiny.
I'd like to know after the season if you thing the 2x6 is right sized for your operation. We do 100 trees on buckets (and I could easily do 200) and I don't know whether a 18"x5', 2'x4' or a 2'x6' would be best. I'm getting tired of 18 hour days with our 2'x3' flat pan and looking for more shiny metal but I don't want to have to save up all week for a run either.
more pix to come. got to get bricked and light fire first
Brent, good luck with the new rig. Hope things run well.
Well we are now up to 56 gals of sap so far the trees are slowly starting to unthaw, looks like our first boil will be Friday. I run it off and see what we get for first round sap it is at 2.3%, we should get another 30 gallons today high of +4 then below 0 degrees for the next 6 day. Got home yesterday to a fresh white 3” of global warming. Looks like things will start to really run by the end of the month.
Well we got 250 gallons of 3% on Monday and I spent Tuesday and Wednesday sweetening the pans after school and got no syrup yet but I am really close.
Hey we finally hit 100 gallons of sap last night its not much but enough to finally run the first batch tomorrow. The weather office just gave us the next 6 week report and their calling for more winter here we may have a slow long season this year well in to may!
I've boiled down 100 gallons so far and have another 50 or so in the tank plus probably 30 in the pails. Been a poor week so far - haven't bothered to collect since last Sunday although our forecast for the Easter weekend looks somewhat promising.
Here's hoping for -5 nights and +5 days for the next week. Good luck to all.
well this morning I put out about 30 - 35 more buckets. They were gushing when I tapped them. No sun, temp just about 34.
At about 4:30 I decided I'd better go collect. The 35 gallon tank on the skidoo topped up once. It was slow to transfer to the main tanks. Back to the woods. Topped up again ... slow would have been good to transfer ...
UH OH it's all freezing in the tanks and transfer hose. Not even going back for the 3rd load.
I'll have an early haul in the AM, if it gets warm enough to pour.
Everything is freezing. Wind is howling like Jan 10. YUK
So we had a members "who's got the biggest tree" thing.
How bout a "who's got the biggest ICE CUBE"
250 gallon brick in one tank. Opened the valve last night and a few drops moved into the ball valve, but not enough to make it dribble out. Put a heater on it and this morning we got a bit of a gush. Who knows how much is thawed behind it. The saks in the sunniest areas half melted yesterday. The buckets were hopeless.
Might get 1 or 2 degrees warmer today but they're only calling for ZERO around here. PHOOOEEEE.
You win Brent I don’t let my ice cubes get that big I learned my lesson 2 years ago with 7 55gallon drums froze solid after a flash freeze and no wear to put sap. Well I sweetened the pan last knight we should run off a bout 2 1/2 gallons later today. Temps should reach mid 20's today.
Still very much winter here, cold, wind, deep snow. Spring is not even close.
Will sit tight and wait it out.
We've got all the easily accessible taps done, about 5 to 600, but the big woods are still plugged tight. I've tried the loader tractor and the bigger tractor with snow-blower and been stuck so many times in the past 2 weeks that I'm going to wait on Mother Nature to help before I tap any more.
Well it's 1:30 AM and I'm finally going to hit the sack with a smile. Finally got the ducks lined up and lit the fire at 5:00PM. 225 gallons later I've got a few gallons of beautiful blond syrup. It's not filtered yet but it looks lighter than the lightest grading. We really lucked in because the first of this sap was collected 9, yes NINE days ago. There is still maybe 10 to 15 gallons of ice in the storage tank.
The new evaporator worked pretty much as expected. Doors need some grinding. The condensate collector never yielded a drop. Don't know if it's a construction or leveling error. And yes the thermometer does not get immersed properly so I had to adjust all the temps. The Ystec thermometer worked like a charm. Once I had the correction figured out it would sound off at the right point to draw off about a liter at a time.
Thanks to all for the multiple bits of help that got me to this point.
Nite all.
Well I got all of our sap boiled down yesterday we made 16 liters (4.22 gallons) Out of 750 liters (200 gallons) of 3% sap and we got a cross between light and medium. There is lots of sugar sand this year. In the 2x4' pan when I cleaned them there was a 1/4 of sugar sand on the bottom of the pan.
It been a slow start this year but I finally made our first 2 gallons of medium What a great taste now we just have to sit back and wait for things to open up and start running again!
We better get ready it looks like starting tomorrow is the start to a 2 week run its time for BIGSAP.
Well ,still very much winter here, forecast -25 tonight about an hour from here. But
the son and I finally got on the four wheelers to the bush this evening. The snow is so frozen you can drive anywhere. Impossible before, snow too deep (4')
for an ATV. The snow is up to the windows at the camp, door frozen in ,it would be a good time to fix the roof if it needed it. But I looked down in, the
arch is still there, firewood too, and no vandalism. Will go down again tomorrow with the ice spud, shovel and chainsaw (a few down limbs). Don't
know when we will tap, but this is a start. There is always hope.
Got all 225 or so buckets out now. Collected about 205 US gallons today.
Best ever for us. Should be close to that Saturday.
Sunday: lousy run. 75 gallons from 225 taps.
Well thing are very slow up here we only collected 60 gallons yesterday, I ran it thru in 4 hours last night not sure if that is a good rate for a 2 by 6 flat pan but it was fun! Hope fully with today rain things will pick up. Glad to here thing are running well for you Brent. You need it after all that snow.
Pretty poor run here yesterday. Put about 75 gallons in storage. Spent a few hours moving taps from small trees on the sunny side to the big trees on the north side. Had to wait for the snow levels to go down a bit. Warm and foggy here this morning. Don't know how to call this. Could be one of those mornings where we find it ran all night. Don't want to waste any so I'm going to go and check it out in a few minutes.
Good luck
ALERT IN ONTARIO
IT RAN ALL NIGHT the sap saks are 1/3 to 1/2 full already.
I'd still be out there except I need the second coffee ... and because I forgot the collection buckets.
We collected 100 gallons this morning i'm going to boil down on tues afternoon it is just to humid right now.
James
It is certainly lousy out there now. We got about 100 gallons also.
But I'm boiling without the evap.
The el cheapo RO system has dumped 100 gallons of nice pure water for us.
Cost 30 cents of electricity and I didn't have to light a match. I'm starting to really like this little rig.
Well I will agree with you Brent the weather is bad, I boiled till 1am last night in the thunder storm we had, when I left the house and went across the field their was a bout 2” of water on the ground, when I came back at 1am we had 2 ½’ of it just wish my taps ran that fast any how I made 3 more gallons last knight it sure a slow start to the season.
Godd greif Linus, you'll be collecting with a canoe soon
Have no fear Brent I am one step ahead of you I pulled my boat out of storage on Sunday and it is ready for sapping!!!
so you gonna do wild rice and cranberries later ????
We started the wild rice a couple of years ago for the ducks. I never thot of cranberries but I think i will just stay with one hobby for now. My wife has been making out the new honey do list for after the maple season.
The sap really started to run here last night at about 4pm but I collected 100 gallons before that started got back at 6:30 pm and started boiling and then packed up at 11pm got about 100 gallons gone out of 300.
I'm out of town this week - my kids are ready to revolt. My 10 and 14 year olds had to do all the collecting themselves last night. 100 trees - 150 gallons, and they had to haul all the sap to the 2 tanks strategically located as I wasn't there to tow a tank from spot to spot. Took them 2 1/2 hours and it was all hard slogging as the rain has softened the snow and they were sinking in all the way. Looks like a lot of boiling this weekend. Glad I still had lots of ice in the tanks. Brent's RO is sounding pretty good right now.
The excitement about the RO may have been premature. The initial few runs were great but the water production dropped significantly on Tuesday. But that may have been operator error. Fatigue, age, etc may have played a part. I did not flush the system Monday. I don't have any good cleaners. So I don't know if it will recover or if it is hopelessly plugged.
We got 165 gallons yesterday with an estimated 25 more left in the bush because of darkness and icing.
Should be good today as well but the next freezing night isn't forecast to be till April 14th SH*T