Way to go Spud! Funny how this is turning into an all out marathon and a game of optimism and luck. Keep it rolling!Quote:
Originally Posted by spud
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Way to go Spud! Funny how this is turning into an all out marathon and a game of optimism and luck. Keep it rolling!Quote:
Originally Posted by spud
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yesterday the sap slowed way down when the sun went away. I only got .25 gpt. Hoping the two nights of freezing temps will change things.
General it sounds like you had another great season.
Spud
I hope you make it till weekend.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiam
Mead are you still running?
Spud
No freezes in the forecast for us (trend has definitely been colder than what has been forecast), but our vacuum is 27+" Hg or better, and sap is still 1.6 Brix. At this point it's slow and steady since we're pulling water right up out of the ground, through the roots, and out the taphole. Got 3,000 gal of sap from the main bush over the past two days (Sat afternoon through Mon morning) -- all decent sap, a little cloudy but not buddy. Probably another 3,500-4,000 gal from our other woods...quality there is not quite as good -- not at all buddy yet, but perhaps a touch of sour. We're concentrating a bit of that questionable sap into a segregated tank until we can boil some of the concentrate and taste it and decide whether to boil it or dump it. Still have about 550 gal of concentrate in the bulk tank waiting to be boiled, and getting rather short on barrels. Looking at a mid-week boil to finish things up....UNLESS Spud's freeze makes it this far south. Fingers crossed.
Afternoon update. The sap from the Main Bush 3,400 gal was good. The 3,700 in the other bush was just slightly sour. We concentrated the first batch and put it in the bulk tank along with what we had from the weekend, for a total of 632 gal 35 Brix concentrate (253 gal syrup), which we'll boil tomorrow morning and then boil out the pans. We pre-concentrated the sap from the other bush sap to 20 Brix and will bring it up to 35 Brix, along with any sap that comes in from the Main Bush overnight tonight, then do another pass through the RO tomorrow (usually we do right up to 35 Brix in 1-pass) and boil that afterward and drum it up separately. Should end up with a total production around 3,150 gal syrup for the year (0.61 gal/tap), which is just slightly above average for us.
That is the plan...unless Spud manages to send some of his cold weather juju our way tonight.
we had a record run here friday. bout 3 gpt then pretty much 2 gpt saturday. the evaporator couldn't keep up! i need another 5-8 gallons to hit my minimum for the year. looking like another slight freeze here Tuesday night with a high of 50 wednesday, then nothing even close to freezing. still 18" - 2' of snow in the woods! hopefully one more solid run! then time for clean up and to break out the golf cubs, fishing rod and gardening tools!
I am not. The kids and I pulled buckets on Saturday (along with our first tick of the season) and got everything cleaned up. Was out pruning apple trees Sunday morning but it only got to 34 at my house so not enough to freeze.Quote:
Originally Posted by spud
Glad I stopped when I did because with the heavy rain last night into this morning along with warm nights the roads in Middlesex are taking a beating. Started today at 4am chasing sinkholes around town. Missing sugaring but work and family have me thankful I pulled everything when I did.
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Woke up to an inch of snow and temp flashing from 29 to 30. All the maple branches are white with snow. I'm hoping the trees have been recharged. Going up to 42 today and no sun. Supposed to freeze again later tonight and tomorrow is full sun and 58. I'm hoping to get another 3-4 gpt by weekend. Dr. Tim it looks like you may of got the freeze for s few hours in Underhill. I hope it was enough to keep the sap rolling. Good luck to all who are still rolling.
Spud
Hey Spud. Seems like you and Dr. Abby (who also predicted a freeze last night) pulled a rabbit out of the hat on this one. Yes....we definitely froze here and got a bit of snow https://phenocam.sr.unh.edu/data/latest/proctor.jpg Not a real hard freeze (roads are firm, but a bit mushy underneath), but the sap stopped running at 10:26pm and looking at our Smartrek sensors most of the woods in both bushes froze up around midnight. So we're pulling the plug on pulling the plug...and instead are cleaning tanks in preparation for the tsunami of sap today and tomorrow! Looks like we may be back to "boiling Friday" again. We might just need to start looking for more barrels...Quote:
Originally Posted by spud
Froze hard here. Low temperature of 29 last night with monster winds and an inch or so of snow. I've never been so happy to see sap not flowing!
You got to love it. Let's hope we get a bunch More sap all the way to the weekend.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimatetreehugger
Dr.Tim I hope you get a .6+ this season. The CV2s should allow us to get bigger flows.
Spud