Me Too, HEEEELLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Me Too, HEEEELLLLLPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alert Level Double Orange!!!!man Stations And Plan On Being There A While!!!!!!!!
Yeah BIGSAP coming out of our ears. The buckets didn't do much but the vacuum was pulling in the mother of all sap runs. Calling in sick today so I can stay home and play.
I have buckets running over and everything was empty 12 hours ago.
BIGGGG SAPPPP!!!- Running good here too guys. Just froze the other night and I got home and had 3000 gallons plus at 4pm from just that day. Was running hard too and ran all night and still running hard now. Made 50 gallons syrup last night in about 2 and a half hours. That sap was from other day. Had to quit running new sap in my ro tanks this morning or I was afraid I wouldnt get a batch worked up for this afternoon. Ro been running 13 hours and last I checked the 1500 gal tank was mostly full and it was putting 11% stuff back in it so must be a pretty sweet tank. Hope to make 100 gallons this afternoon. Not much time for sleep either. Got done boiling and had to go help my local syrup buddy fix an electrical problem so he could keep plugging and only got maybe 3 hours. Gotta be tough. Looks like next two weeks are nonstop sunami. Thats good, gotta FILL SOME BARRELLS. Theron
theron i made 300 gallons last nite big sap r/o washing now for next big run that is thawing now
Yupper - she's a runnin'. Had the tanks empty when I left for work yesterday morning. Temp was 32. By 5:00 tank was full - that's about a gallon and half per tap. Boiled that tank last night and she's close to full again.
I just gathered 610 gal 2 1/2 % sap from 245 roadside taps. I still have 400+ gallons to gather up from tubing taps.
Way to go Jon, sounds like you are having a good year.
Sounds like things are coming alive all over now. How about the rest of you guys up north? Things starting to happen? Brandon- Is your season about over. Jeff- You got the idea with the bigger Ro. That would sure be nice. Were gettin it done but litte on the tough side. Thats Ok though gotta work within your means. Are you in full swing now Jeff? Theron
Theron,
Appears that it is about done down here. Short and sweet season but that's the way it goes. Vacuum would have helped some this year, but hard to make a lot of syrup when you only get basically four runs the entire season. Still keeping the fingers crossed for another small run or two.
After 4 weeks, the trees can't take 50's to 70 degrees for 7 straight days with no freezing.
Brandon- Thats sugaring Im afraid. Ive always thought that you take what you get with this stuff and be happy becouse really its totally out of your control. Your kind of at the southern outskirts of the sugaring area so I can see the warm weather doing that to you. We actually have the same problem here a lot of years. The vac does help but its expensive and somewhat problematic so what do you do. Right now, knock on wood, things are humming along properly here. I got 9 hours of sleep last night so I kind of recharged like the trees. Last two nights I got 4 and 3 hours sleep so it felt good. We got a freeze night before last and it barely hit 32 degrees and this was after several nights of warm and it was off to the races. Got enough sap off that run to make maybe 80 or 90 gallons then it ran all night no freeze yesterday it picked up and ran like heck and got another 4000 plus gallons of sap. Very amazing with the high vac. Definitely a whole different ball game. Here the gravity stuff has done very little. So now Im cought up except the 4000 plus or minus gallons. Doesnt look like it will run much today so I should be able to get back at it and get on that sap. Feel real lazy this morning. Hope everyone is having fun. Theron
Brandon vacuum would help you out alot. When you have those warm spells when it doesn't run on gravity you can still get sap with vacuum. It has saved my season many times since I have started using it. Like The(highvacuum)ron said it is kind of problematic but the extra sap more than makes up for the problems.
just finished a 48 hour marthon made 502 gallons. all with dairy pumps at 17 inches of vac. have not got l/r pumps out yet. r/o is a bit of a dissapointment. my 1200 i had last year would drink 1600 gallons of sap an hour and make 8 percent with nice clean early sap. this new on with 2 7.5 high pressere pumps and three membranes will not drink 1200 an hour and make 6 percent. go figure thats what i call progress? but after all that it is 16 degrees with a wind chill of 10 below here in i have sap to boil later.
We boiled for the first time yesterday. We had some sap from the weekend and it only got above freezing from supper time on Tuesday to supper time yesterday. It ran OK but the crazy winds (like 50mph crazy) kept it from going hard. It should be a good weekend.
We had a HUGE day yesterday getting 400 gallons from 235 buckets. Lost another 50+ to dropped buckets from the 50 mph winds and being too full. It started running Tues aft and went all night til quitting Wed evening. I'm bushed. Boiled til midnight, still leaving sap in the tank, and then one of my farm clients calls at 5 AM with a cow with her uterus out. What fun.
Which is harder 15 hours of syrup or a prolapse. I might take the prolapse .
Awesome runs out there....sounds fun and exhausting.
We have been back in the deep freeze, minus 12 F this morning. Tomorrow afternoon it is to get back up to 35 and then next week looks like show time all week.
I am looking forward to it, as I hope to get the vac running tomorrow and get the final leak check done, and be set for the big week.
I believe we have to WAAANNNNTT it, and I do!
I agree that with vaccum, I could probably make 150 gallons or even 200 gallon of syrup per year, but living 30 minutes away and lots of days I don't get to the sugarhouse, vacuum would be a bad idea. My idea of vacuum is more taps and that is why I have as many as I do. I don't have the time or energy to make 150 gallon of syrup each year and my taps are scattered in 3 different locations well away from the sugarhouse, so that also kinda kills that notion. I could run aprox 250 taps on vacuum right to the sugarhouse, but not a good idea when sometimes I don't come over for 4 or 5 days if not much is happening.
I have the KISS idea of making syrup(keep it simple stupid) LOL!
I may add another 100 or so taps before next year as I had plenty of help this year and hopefully would again this year. Last Saturday when we boiled off 930 gallons was really the first time I had hardly done any boiling the entire season. I do all the maintenace, most of the collecting, cutting and hauling of the wood and all the other preparations and helpers do the boiling and help some with the collecting.
Brandon- Dont blame you, if I was that far from the bush I dont think I would either. Be pretty tough anyway. Has to have pretty regular attention. If you were wanting to make a living at it youd have to do it in my opinion but thats not your end goal so might as well have fun and what you get you get. Kind of nice not worrying if something is broke and just go see if the sap ran. Boy, here the gravity guys are having a tough time of it too. I dont think anyone in this area has done much unless they have the vac. It amazes me the difference in the sap you get. When we were kids here you could do pretty good on gravity but anymore we dont seem to get the weather thats just right for it. Probly just trends in the weather. 30 years doesnt mean much to this earth. Could be some cycle. Theron
It seems to do pretty good here year in and year out on gravity. 3600+ gallons of sap from only basically 4 runs is pretty good in my opinion. I am very far south, but in a good weather area to make syrup and the temps are normally right most years, just not this year. Either way, it has been fun and good sugar content. I was figuring last night I am averaging about 19.5 gallons of syrup per cord of wood and that is up from what I used to average with was always 15 to 1. I am boiling sap under 2% sugar and at a 46 to 1 sap to syrup ratio and with an 8' evaporator, 19.5 to 1 is tremendous in my opinion with that low sugar content. It appears I have enough wood to boil close to 7,000 gallon of sap in my shed, so that is good to know if we hit the motherload for a season in a couple of years. I have it stacked 6'+ high, so I guess I could stack a little higher.
Either way, it's been a very enjoyable year and has went smooth and quick with only 6 boils which helps the wood average some.
I keep changing the tubing setup some every year trying to perfect it and with almost everything on 5/16 and the changes, the sugar content seems to get a little better every year. I know some of it has to do with the prior growing season and the winter, but the less bacteria in the tubing and spouts and the better the design, the less chance for it to grow and the higher the sugar content and the more light syrup.
Brandon I can see where you are coming from. You've got to do what works best and keeps it fun for you.
With vacuum what is the chances of looseing more trees. I could never do it here as its 500 ft between trees and over a half mile to the last tree. But there are trees running but so very little its not worth dumping the buckets. I actually have no idea what to expect as this is my first year in Quebec let alone tapping trees.
Ken- The vac wont hurt the trees at all. Proctor research center says that drilling the hole is more damaging than any amount of sap you get. They claim that you are only getting a fraction even with the vac. Jeff- How many days run was the 500 gallons from? You do really good with the dairy vac once you get those ring pumps on line it should be something else. Looked like nothing was going to run today here like yesterday becouse of the cold but I just looked and it looks perfect this afternoon now. Im going to take a half day off I guess and come home and get to ro'ing. Ive still got over 4000 gallons of sap from the other day to do and lots of other work so better get back to it I guess. Two full nights sleep in a row sure felt good. Bought an electric hoist last night to move drums. The 55's are very heavy. Gonna have a nice fix on that today I think. Ennis- How you guys makin out boiling? Who's the draw off man? Are you managing ok? Other day I was over to Richards(sugarmaker) and checked out one of his bushes when it was running good. It was a 10,000 tap bush on high vac. Ill tell you what that was pretty spectacular. I was impressed to see such a good vac level on that many holes. It came in to a 15,000 tap releaser and then went to jet pumps right into a semi trailer. The sap was coming in so hard the mainlines were jumping up and down. All a guy can say is wow. It was a whole valley tapped. Ill tell you what if Im ever rich and famous Im going to tap a valley like that too. That was really something. Hope everyones havin fun. Theron
Brandon- I forgot I was going to tell you with the high concentrate Im boiling Im guessing Im getting about 100 gallons of syrup per cord with my evap. I think its a little over that actually. Im going to figure it out exact. That is pretty cool for me with trying to do so much volume with such a little rig. I need every advantage I can get. Theron
theron i got that sap in 48 hours and finished boiling that run out yesterday. 536 was the total count. started on the l/r pumps yesterday putting on pallets so i can move with tractor loader. strapping cooling tanks and pumps so in the future i can move them out and go get them and store with out so much hassle. still working out the cooling loops ect.will be nice not to baby sit those dairy pumps
I have 330 woods tree taps on tubing for the 1st time this season. This last 24 hour run they averaged 1.5 gallons per tap giving me 485 gallons of sap.
200 of these taps are on red maples. I know it was more because one tank was running over before I could get to it.
I also have 265 buckets all on road trees. During the same 24 hr run the buckets averaged 2.5 gallon per tap with a total of 660 gallons of sap.
We gathered the buckets in the morning and they ran hard the rest of the day. I didnt have tank room to gather them that day so they are sitting froze up but I estimate another 200 gallons in the buckets yet from the same run.
This entire run the wind was out of the south but mostly from the east where sap is supposed to run the least. Would I be still boiling if it were out of the north or west??
The last time I remember a sap run like this was 11 years ago with somewhat the same weather conditions. Rainy and windy.
Jeff- Keep those new pumps as cold as you can. You can chase leaks till your blue in the face and you wont do as much as you will cooling the pump off. If its steaming much its probly running at half the cfms. If your system is tight you better get the kinks out of that ro becouse your going to get sap like youve never seen at 17". I think you live in a particularly good spot to make sap anyway but at 25" all you need is 32 degrees and really not much else. The sap you get is going to be a lot, one %$#@ of a lot or holy #$!@ what am I going to do with all this stuff? You know all that youve been living next to Wheeler all these year. Theron
My brilliant idea has been to increase my taps hopeing for a couple of good runs this year. I figure I will be swamped maybe a couple of days which will hopefully make up for the days nothing pours. If I disapear its because I am out watching sap boil.
Next week looks like big sap in NH, from Saturday on, high 40s during the day and 20 at night. Bring it on.
I agree, but let me get my evaporator fixed first. Hope to have it completed tonight and boiling tomorrow. Can't find arch board anywhere close by. I could use a few sheets to do it right.
Theron - My brother and uncle did a lot of the firing on Day 1 while I worked out the RO. We were very focussed on getting it running while managing our sap levels so we didn't try too hard to get our sugar perfect. The colour was so good we packed it all in 10 L jugs for use as sugar or maple butter so if we're over 66.5 Brix it doesn't matter. Tomorrow we'll get the refractometer working properly and our sugar perfect so we can package for retail.
The weather looks great for the weekend - I expect MONSOOOOOON SAAAAAAP in Lanark County over the next 5 days!!!!!
Almost warm enough today for sap tp run. If the wind would stop it would be pretty nice out. It's a wait and see thing as far as I can tell.
You can get arch board at SALEM REFRACTORIES in Londonderry New Hampshire. 603 434 4455.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amber Gold
Thanks Jerry...much appreciated. Just found out they work 8-3. No dice today.
I'm going to take out some of my wall today and open the front up some more. I opened the back up using the cleanout on the back of the arch and there was a difference in the amount of steam generated. If I open that back up and it runs good, I'll leave it as is until the sap flow slows down, if not I'll tear it apart tomorrow morning and rebrick.
Disappointing in N W Pa today. Rushed home from work to find 0, zip, zilch, nadda in the buckets. At 4 pm it must have just started. A few taps dripping, but only a few drops in the bottom of the buckets.
Jim
Father& Son-Jim we had our pumps on for 4 hours today and did not pull 2 GALLON!!
Well I hope tomorrow is better:(
Jim
I have two tanks set for the great big run That was promised to take place today!!! It just started to drip. Still looks good for Saturday and Sunday.
I had one boxelder thats out in the sun start to run and then freeze up today. I can only hope that 45 degrees tomorrow will get things moving.
Get ready for blurred vision, wobbly knees, seeing steam coming off the evaporator when you close your eyes, and the sound of the sap flowing into the tanks when, and if, you drift off to sleep. This is the big sap big money week coming up.