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Thanks very much! Hope you see this before you get there, saw your PM on the subject too. Thanks in advance :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by paulslund
ETA: unfortunately CDL doesn't sell metal spile hooks on their own....but Covell's in Rideau Ferry (just outside Smiths Falls) does! So now I have a dozen of em sitting there waiting for pickup :-)
Hey @Galena, thanks! Good to be back!
Got all our buckets and spiles out and cleaned off last night, might start drilling / hanging tonight or tomorrow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
Hey neighbour, great to hear back from you :-) Should be perfect weather for it! And lol yeah hear you on the renos...always somethin!Quote:
Originally Posted by Fort Wisers
We're completely tapped, vacuum pumps serviced and releasers in place in the woods. We spent half the day on Sunday checking lines - kinda hard to do when the vacuum is way down and there's 60km/hr winds! We did manage to get to 22" Hg in one woods and about 18" Hg in the other. Not ideal but a good start and enough that you can hear and see leaks easily- hopefully we can get up to 25" Hg soon.
Lots of misc troubleshooting to look after this year. Trees over mainlines, broken mainlines, deer damage, mainline pulled off the wire etc... Our Massey wouldn't start on Saturday but after some TLC we got the fuel lines bled and away she went. I'm developing a love/hate relationship with our new electric releaser - I love when it works properly and it is fairly simple yet there's always something that needs attention. Once it opened up on Sunday the screen on the submersible pump was getting plugged up with the snot coming out of the mainlines so the releaser filled up and sucked sap back into the moisture trap - turning the pump off. Hard to check lines with no vacuum... We got that resolved and then realized the pump worked fine on manual but wasn't turning on when the sap hit the upper probe. I called the CDL technician and after messing with the sensitivity and running a jumper between all 3 probes we determined the level control relay was bad. Luckily there was one in the store in Perth so $200 and 15 minutes later we were back up and running.
Made a minor change to my setup this year. As my best producer, #2, had limbing done this January, I chose to take if off the line to allow it every chance to heal. This left three spiles and buckets over. I put another bucket on Surprise, who has a massive bough that can easily handle one tap. I planned to tap only 7 trees. But earlier, as I was reading a thread on tapping reds, had a lightbulb moment.
Tree #7 is a red and I stopped tapping it a few years ago as I wanted to do all sugars. However, with my biggest sugar taking a staycation, I decided to go ahead and put #7 back on the line. So far it's done a pretty decent job, considering I only tapped it this afternoon :-)
Have you ever tried boiling the sap from the reds and sugars separately to see what the difference in flavors are ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Galena
@someclown...Nope. Only time I've ever boiled sap separately was when I had a small secondary bush going. I'm on 7 sugars and only 1 red, so it'll quite awhile before I get enough to make any syrup, and anyway my syrup changes flavour with the season.
We got everything up on trees today by 1:00pm, 21 buckets total this year.
Some trees flowing quite well, some barely dripping.
What a gorgeous day to be outside, 3-4 degC and sunny all day!
Collected 18 liters at 5:00pm, so not bad for a 4 hour timespan.
Oxford Mills area.......
[QUOTE=Collected 18 liters at 5:00pm, so not bad for a 4 hour timespan.
Oxford Mills area.......[/QUOTE]
Ditto, 18l but off of 18 spiles on 8 trees, stronger producers picking up the slack :-)
Small runs Sunday-Tuesday,nice runs yesterday and today. Fired up for first time today and made some light caramel hinted syrup.
Sugaring since 1981
230 taps on 3/16-5/16 gravity tubing
Henway wood fired arch
2x6 phaneuf/evaporateurs PJ pans
Battersea Ontario