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Gary, that sure is an impressive setup you have there. You are going to really enjoy making some great syrup on that rig! It has been enjoyable riding along with you on your adventure. We all get bitten by this Maple Bug and get crazy involved with it but you are infected like nobody I have ever seen. I hope you have a great season and I look forward to seeing where you go from here, I know you will keep improving. (PS, how are you explaining this way over budget disease to your wife?)
Gary, I must say I was starting to panic about you getting your pan and stack in time! Whew!
We would have all cried over you missing your season after all this prep.
Can't wait to see it run!
Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Z/MAN
My wife is mostly looking the other way, sort of don’t ask, don’t tell sort of arrangement, but puppy dog eyes helps. I don’t think I will be able justify a really large investment like a professional evaporator. I am pretty well done with major investments. I will have to get really good with what I have. Lots to learn with this divided pan.
I think there are advantage with all pans, including steam pans right through to flue pans. But I am understanding more and more, the key whether you have 10 taps or 1000 taps, is how many gallons can you boil in an hour.
Same...I was starting to feel bad it wouldn't show up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy VT
Great job Gary. Nice set up. Glad everything is coming together in the nick of time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigschuss
ThanksQuote:
Originally Posted by Andy VT
I have to admit I was getting concerned as well, but the pan maker had promised I would get it in time and he did live up to the promise, although it was closer timing than I originally hoped. I had not sold my steam pans yet and had not discarded the concrete block I made with the 6” stove pipe embedded in it, so if push had come to shove, I would have reconfigure my evaporator and I would have had to buy some 6” stove pipe as I had already sold the pipe I had used last year.
If the heavy rain forecasted today ends early enough this afternoon, I will try a test boil and will take a video of it. I went to town early today and purchased the stainless steel pipe extension for the draw off and I have ordered the right length hose, but it will not arrived until tomorrow, so I will just use a longer hose that I have.
Although today’s weather was disappointing in a number of ways, there is always something to be thankful for. The roof jack seal around the new stack pipe did not leak at all, so I guess we did a good job.
I am especially thankful for my buddy who came up for a couple of days to help me, prior to him leaving for Mexico and he did a lot of the work, with me being his grunt. It would have been very difficult for me to get the double wall pipe onto the base stack by myself. It was not a perfect match and it took two of us to get it to fit properly. He was also the guy on the roof and did all of the work on the roof. He certainly earned a few litres of maple syrup. We help each other all of the time with projects and I was very grateful for his help with this one.
The proper length hose for the feed tank will arrive tomorrow via Amazon. I may boil to a concentrate what little sap I have collected over the last couple of days. It will not take long.
I look forward to the test boil hopefully on Sunday, and if successful, then it will be waiting for 2/3 weeks to start tapping. I will tap on March 1st, if not a little before.
Sugar Moon is March 7.
Today after going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, weighing the pros and cons, I decided to start tapping. I am not sure if it was the right decision. I have the feeling in my gut that it is a risky decision.
My logical side of me said to wait until March like every other year, tried and true advice and the smart thing to do. Another side of me saw the 7 days of flow in the next 10 days.
Ultimately two things came to mind, this winter has been different than most other winters since 2012. Winter came late and has not been severe. The ice on our lake is poor and is much thinner than normal. We have had several warm spells, including one that allowed me to tap during the Christmas break and I doubt that has happen in Northern Ontario too often. There is no guarantee that’s the Spring will an easy one or an early one, but being a different winter there is a chance that March will be a very good month. There is also a chance Spring could warm up quickly and the start of April could be too warm to tap.
The second thing if I am wrong, no one dies and if I end up with less sap, I will still have a lot of potential sap to make syrup, hence the advantage of tapping a lot of trees.
There is no doubt there is a side of me that thinks I made a wrong decision. Hopefully the old sayings “Fortune favours the bold” and “the early bird gets the worm” apply. There are other sayings that are not so supportive.
I had 40 taps that I tapped during the Christmas break. I am not sure how well they will flow going forward. I certainly have not remotely come close to the 400 gallons of sap they theoretically could have produced. Hopefully there is more sap to flow out of them.
Today I tapped 57 taps right close to my house. Tomorrow and possibly Sunday morning, I will tap the remaining 74 taps on the steep hill. I am still open to someone saying you are crazy and hold off on the 74 taps on the steep hill and save them until March.
There is no expectation for sap flow until Sunday.
On Sunday I will do my test boil with water and maybe Monday or Tuesday I will be boiling sap.
I still have that feeling in my gut when I have made a decision I am not 100% sure of.
Attachment 22860
https://share.icloud.com/photos/095U...0LwF6cxKUqNVjQ
Other weather forecasters have a more optimistic forecast.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0f9j...zrsVZe4FpceNrw
This morning at 6 am, walking from the washroom to the bedroom, to go back to sleep, I all of a sudden said to myself, “it is the middle of February, are you crazy”? In that lucid moment I decided not to tap the 74 taps on the steep hill as planned today. Almost immediately the instinctive bad feeling in my gut went away.
The two good things about the decision, is that the 57 taps I did yesterday, plus the 40 older taps, should give me enough sap, to break me into my new setup, without overwhelming me. None of them last year lines produced any daily high volumes, so although there is a potential 97 taps, I think I will be lucky to get 50 gallons from them on a good day. (Last year was a poor year for flow, so maybe I will be surprised.)
The second good thing is I hedge my bets and the 74 taps on the steep hill, which I expect will be my best producers, won’t be tapped until ideal conditions, and I should still get a good amount of sap from just them, to make it a good season. When they come on line, I will be more experienced.
Now to focus on the test boil with water on Sunday, and who knows I might be boiling sap come Monday or Tuesday.
I am not sure if this falls under the category of another whiplash post.
I am still feeling great about not tapping the 74 taps on the steep hill.
The one good thing is I am always interested in learning, and this year I will have taps from Christmas, taps from February and taps likely from March the usual time. I will learn how tapping at each of the times affects sap volumes and it will guide me in the future. I am sure they are lessons already learned, but they will be valuable to me all the same.
Today I am boiling the sap I got from the Christmas taps. There was only about 5 gallons to boil, but I did not want it to go bad.
I also did tap 6 trees in my yard. Now all of the trees around my house that I had planned on tapping are tapped. Last season these trees produced very poorly and I am not sure why. We will see how they will do this year. These 6 trees are mostly tapped for any visitors to see and check out as opposed to truly adding sap volumes. Anything they will add, is bonus.
I updated my sap spreadsheet so that it is ready for this coming week.
I am excited about tomorrow’s test boil and some sap should also run tomorrow.
While I was boiling the sap on the induction stoves, I had two friends and their two family members drop by. I gave them a tour and they were very interested in everything. They hung around for about 45 minutes. In the end I gave them one of my five last bottles of syrup from last year, so they can taste it tomorrow morning at breakfast. One of the people is interested in buying some from me.
It’s funny most of my friends around here I have heard the stories about making maple syrup many times and their eyes roll when someone new asks a question about maple syrup when they are around. It is sort of like on the Big Bang Theory, when someone asks Sheldon a question and the three guys all moan, because they know a lengthy response is coming.