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Well I was disappointed with today's run. It was 44 today and I thought the buckets would of run better than they did. I'm thinking some are drying up with all these warm nights we've had so far. We haven't had a freeze since last Monday night and there has been a lot of rainy nights and days this March. I think we've had at least 10 nights it hasn't frozen and 2 more coming now.
Anyways I took a couple pics last week when we had snow. She's all gone now.
The swamp tank. A 400 USG or 330 Imp. gal. tank. 4 mainlines get sap from part of the bush and all the swamp. Just over 400 taps. Mostly soft maple.
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...March20001.jpg
The shanty boiling with my woodshed and some of the outside wood piles.
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...March20002.jpg
Pumping up sap from my 400 Imp. gal. tank to my 300 Imp. gal. feeder tank with my 3/4 hp submersible.
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...March20003.jpg
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Had good runs Saturday and Sunday.. collected about 200 gallons over the weekend. Up to a whopping 29liters so far... looking in the book I had 49 by this time last year. Still to finish everything from the weekend so total will go up.
fighting to get the new smaller healthy spiles I installed sealed in the trees.. have to post a question elsewhere on that one.
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well we are at 25 gallons of syrup produced thus far and I hoping that it will last a little longer
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We had a good weekend and between the 18 hour day I put in on Friday and yesterday's 18 hour day we produced 25% of what a normal season would be. So far we're below 0.5 L per tap but things are progressing well considering we've only boiled 4 times. I'd guess we're at 4.5 gallons sap per tap total.
Has anyone else been having trouble filtering so far this year? There's next to no sugar sand in the syrup - just a dark slime that clogs filters immediately. Our Sirofilter runs almost non-stop at 40psi just to push out a dribble of filtered syrup. Filter Aid helps but not a lot. I sure hope the real sugar sand comes soon!
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guys i have a question, whats happends if a little rain gets in your sap ??? not much just a little.. it will just take a little longer to boil down or is the sap no good at all ?
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You got it v. Deschenes... rain water just decreases your sugar content which means a longer boil for the same syrup quantity.
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Marty,we are at 40 % right now,lots of sugarsand for us,having to really watch the syrup pans for cleaning now,scary thing is how much has disappeared from the woodpile already.
Bruce
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Boiled 400 gals. today and got 38 litres and it's getting darker. We now have a total of 368 litres off of 1800 taps. I would be happy with .5 litres per tap , but I'm pretty sure I won't see it this year.
I haven't had sugar sand in a coons age. Just the first few years when I first started back in 94 and I was only tapping hard maples. I wonder if soft maples have something to negate it?
As for the black slime ennismaple, I have it, but I just use the cone orlon filters and the syrup goes through pretty well.
We gathered the other half of the buckets today and got 450 gals. to boil tomorrow.
Broke the rip cord on my generator today.
They say we'll be lucky to freeze here tonight.
Sap is starting to run cloudy now. I think those couple hot days sort of cooked my flow.
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Boiled on Sunday on our untested, built on Saturday, block arch.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...Picture777.jpg
Ran through 145g (550l) of sap in about 14 hours. By then the 2x4 pan was down to under 1.5". Pulled it off and finished up in 4 hours on Monday. Final yeild was close to 4g (+/-14l) putting us at 39:1.
Less the Monday finish on the turkey fryer the 2x4 pan on the block arch was running @ 9-10 gph. We did cheat a little by pre heating the sap on the fryer to about 100*C before adding it to the pan. We would only lose the boil for literally 2-4 minutes.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...Picture783.jpg
Best friend but useless when it comes to syrup making........
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...Picture786.jpg
Already have 100gal ready for Saturday. Would like to get another 100 or so this week. We'll see.
Later,
Drew
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Ennis, I had one batch with really bad slime, but i'd put alot of sap into that batch and figured I should have taken it off sooner.
Drew... I'm a fairly similar set up... and what I have done is wrap a piece of 3/8 copper tube around the chimney about 6 times and run the sap through that to pre-heat it.. a steady drip into the pan and I never lose the boil.... 5 gallon water jug mounted just above tubing height hooked up to the tube. so every 20 minutes or so I top up the water jug.
