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That a boy Theron. You are experiencing the fine art of Mersch making. Why does mersch not come up in the dictionary??
When terms as "stink, stench, cottage cheese start showing up, then you will be done in the next 4-5 days is my guess. Watch the curds and whey sap very carefully! Last year I had 1000 gallons of that 9PM, By 9 am the next morning, it had developed pan soaking namonia. It was useless for boiling. Get it ran through pronto!!
Boiled another 1500 tonight. Been doing that everyday. Sap ran today 1000 gallons off the whole 3600. No freeze in sight for a week. Im thinkin I might be almost done. Gotta couple more 1500 gallon evenings and that might be about it. Keep ya posted. Pretty well had my fill of it anyway. Theeeeron
:) Looks like Im probly about done down here in Bigsap country so Im going to give you guys a rundown on the season excitement as it happened. Thought a lot about it before I did it but started tapping in second week of January. Pretty much have run the vac pump steady ever since. Matt and Russ came down and helped me get the bushes nice and tight and got me started boiling. Jerry and Mike came down the next weekend and made some huge improvements on my evaperator and my R.O. All the help I got from all four of my friends was invaluable and I cant thank them enough. Took me 4 weekends to tap everything in. Ended up with 3600 taps on the pump. A lot of them are super nice trees. Some of them are very small cull trees in the young stand. Also in the mix across the road I put in 150 taps that are tubed right but none of the mainline is on wire just laid on the ground. Also on that bunch is a 70 tap lateral I just used 5/16 on to use it up and hooked it on the mainline. The lateral is 1000 feet long. Real cool to watch. Flows like crazy. Totally wrong but what the heck I was having fun and out of time. Also put out around 150 buckets I think. Anyway thats the taps. Got a lot of sap becouse of a lot of runs. Only had a couple times got huge runs. Had a couple days got 5000 gallon on a daylight day without the buckets. Seemed to usually be around 6000 gallons behind after started getting the big runs but it usually didnt sit long enough to get too bad. Once it ran like that could not keep up with the ro and had to pretty much destroy the membrane to get the sap into barrells. Had to give up on it and called cdl and they overnighted me and back in business. Just had to run it for so long at a time I think its pretty well clogged up. Boils were easy most of the season. Recirced the sap normally to 20%, fill headtank, take off 20 gallons per hour. Usually make around 80 gallons. Had virtually no time to keep the woods up but did maintain high vac. Had to do some work to keep the pump cool. At some times I ran the coolant loops through my row boat and cut ice chunks out of my pond with the chainsaw and threw them in. Baby sat the releaser across the road every morning. Sometimes take it out and back to the house to unfreeze it. Got up every 4 hours max in the night to rinse ro unless I was pumping sap at night then every 2.5 hours. Thats pretty much the story. Made an honest 1300 in the barrells right now and probly will be another 50 when its said and done. Had a hard time mastering boiling the mersh. Got mad one night and was going to hang it up and dumped 3000 gallons and thought better of it and kept going on. Dumped an evaperator worth of syup and and 20% sap becouse of R.O. soap but didnt think twice about it. Right thing to do. All in all such an all consuming season Im not even sure I can believe its over. Hope you guys like the story. Cant wait till next year. Theee(bigsap junky)rooon.
far out sugaring coolness
Well, I for one have really enjoyed following the stories on this thread. It's great for a newbie like myself see the struggles, and triumphs of people that have a lot more going on than me. This is only our second year of boiling, and we only had 30 taps this year, 12 of which didn't produce enough to make tears for a mouse!
We ended up with 2.5 gallons this year of really great stuff. We didn't have to work REAL hard for it, other than staying up late a few Saturday nights. We just didn't have enough heat. If things go right, we may have an evaporator next year, but time and the economy will tell.
I have especially loved watching the Theron saga unfold....gave me a few laughs, scared me a little too!
Thanks to all who share on this board, your info is invaluable to guys like me!!! Hudson(barely enough sap to make a cup of coffee)Hawk
I'll be putting up some pics of this year soon..........
Well had my big sap for the year today. Every tree ran some more then others and collected about 80 gallons of sap. The weather man says theres no chance of anymore cold weather so will wait it out untill bud break and then start washing up. Have a bit of boiling to do starting tomorrow.
Theron,
Best part of story is "can't wait til next year"
Doug
Im a nut. Theron
BIG T,
Cheryl thinks I have a problem!
Next year! Right ON!
Wow that's a lot of syrup you produced!
Chris
Chris- I have mixed feelings about the season. Im really happy with the syrup Ive produced. Im not even close to my ratio of last year but I knew going in that I probly wouldnt hit that with the cull trees and buckets etc so that doesnt bother me one bit. I was after volume this year and I got that for sure. My mixed feeling is one of elation that it is all most over and actually a little sadness like what happens now. Ive been totally consumed with this since last fall when I started running the more taps. Im talking I dont care about anything else. I am totally consumed. Guess you have to be to be willing to do everything involved. Ill be darned if it ran about 1700 gallons yesterday again. My main bush is really slowing down. Maybe 700 on 2600 taps but across the road on the north bush it ran a gallon per tap again. Looks like no freeze till first of the week then some good weather. I think they may keep going. What Im doing now is pretty easy. I pump up 1500 gallons to the sugarhouse at night. Put it on recirc in the morning and have my mom kick it off at 1pm. Then I get home and shoot it in the headtank. Takes two hours to boil and I make about 20 gallons of syrup. Been doing this everyday for a week. Gonna just keep doing that. Sap is real bad of course. It runs right to the top of the pans and even slops over the side. I through some butter at it now and then and just let it make a mess. Get it to density and in the barrell. As long as I can do that Im going to. What if that stuff is worth 4$ this fall. thats 800$ a night. Seems rediculous but what the heck. I have a lot of money in equipment and its all dirty anyway. My pretty wife came out last night and just couldnt believe the smell. I told her Parker says you gotta WANNNNNNN IT, and, THERES NO SUCH THING AS QUESTIONABLE SAP! Parkers a very wise sugar maker and kind of a hero to me so I try too pay attention to his wisdom. On the barrell now thatll make 1350. Gonna try to fill it and if it keeps running next week Ill see if I can hit 1400. I dont think itll happen but what the heck never know. Theee( yuck, this stuff smells!)rooon:mrgreen: