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Sap ran last night, my dad gathered 360 gal this morning, boiled it this afternoon and was finishing when I got home from work at 6. Total for the season is about 1200 gal sap. Used our new 7 inch filter press for the first time tonight, filled two five gal jugs and left another five gal or so in the bottling tank.
Today seems to have been losy for some of us. Well it was for me also. I broke my UV lamp when I was taking it off the wall to clean the quartz tube.
Not going to kill me but it's around a 100 bucks for a new lamp. Now I need to make an extra 2 gallons to pay for it.
keith
Dave, I'm like you. I may get 1000 on tubing this spring, but still plan on running at least 500 buckets. Can't stand to lose those big roadside producers! Now whether I'll have time to collect them or not remains to be seen.
Tim
Yesterday went better for me than for some of you. I did manage to have the tractor and trailer slide down a hill backwards with both wheels spinning madly trying to climb...luckily everything stayed straight and I found another way around to get out of the woods. Got a lot accomplished Finished the last of my ladders and lifts. There are of 23 of them bringing a total of almost 800 taps into the vacuum system. Got my dump and measuring system for purchased sap set up. Will be able to unload the sap, filter it and measure gallons. It will then flow by gravity into a storage tank before the ro. By using the measure tank for storage also, I will have 1400 gallons of storage space at the sugar house and an additional 1700 gallons in the bush.
Got most of the plumbing done on the ro. Need a couple more fitings and she is set to go. In the afternoon, I moved my old hydrovac back to my new bush and got it plumbed in to the system. Had to drain the old gas and start fresh but then it fired right up. Was pulling 25 and 1/2 inches at the releaser. Better than it ever did last year. I have a shorter rum between the pump and the releaser and a larger pipe.
Whats left? finish plumbing the head tanks to the evaporator. Put in about 100 more saddles. Put in some line fittings. Plumb my new vacuum pump to my front bush and set up the tanks and releasers. Oh yeah, farm taxes are due March 1. Maybe I had better get at my bookwork. But this sugaring stuff is much more fun......
Doug
Sapman,
Dont worry you will have plenty of time to empty buckets. You can send anyone to pump tanks for you while you are empting buckets.:)
Doug- Sounds like your pretty darn close to being ready especially for all you had to do. Does it look like those guys are going to bring you a lot of sap? Theron
Theron,
Right now it looks like there will be about 1000 to 1200 buckets being hung. Not 100% sure on the last 200 yet. If my help situation crystalises (how the heck do you spell that?) I may tap 200 her at home on buckets too. I had planned on 50 for show purposes but might go for the rest. Visitors love to see the horses work!
Doug
Some of us had lousy days yesterday, Im in that boat for sure. Outer 4 wheel drive hub assembly on the deere blew up yesterday pretty cheap part only about $1700 bucks ouch. Woke up this morning to 12 inches of snow. I don't recomend john deere to anyone. I have had nothing but problems with the steering assembly and the hub assembly. I have replaced that hub once already along with the ball jaoint 3 times and the steering arm twice. Yep nothing runs like a deere. Should have never traded in the old case.
Not to mention how expensive the green paint is!! Guess there are poor ones out there in all makes. My 2 cents.
Yep I paid good money for that green paint. And still kicking myself for it. Like you said though I think I got that poor one. After doing a little research for parts I found out that yanmar actually made the model I have don't know if that is the difference or not.