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got my season layoff from work on monday so it looks good for two weeks of PA deer seasom hope i don't need it all then it time for all things maple i have all the wood cut split and in the wood shed aka old sugar house just need to cclean out sugar house and hang tubing
Well, I go today to pick up my brand-spankin new Leader, 2x6 American! Have been cutting wood for the past two months, Put the flashing on the roof while the weather was still warm, built a new wood shed and now will start trimming around my Maples in the woods. I AM BLESSED! ;)
Not much for maple this week trying to get the house staighten up and x-mas lights up outside. man I have to say I love them but man my kids are pigs!!! stuff just evrywhere!!! I was never like that when I was a kid;). I just used to hammer my dad's tools into the ground:D scew drivers are great for that!!!!
anyway back to cleaning!!!
chris (sugarmaker) i remeber you saying about how to cut bulk tanks apart what was it that you do where you cut them
Boyd,
( ref 250 -500 gallon Dari-Kool ice bank type) Other type tanks I dont have a clue:)
I have used a 4 inch grinder, and aggressively attacked the seams, corners. This is fairly fast, but noisy and lots of sparks, be safe. I just got some thin grinding wheels that folks say work great too.
I have several tricks on this type tank. One is that I lift the inner milk tank out with a engine lifter:) then strip off the outer skin, remove the pink insulation and keep whittling.
3 hours and you can have it in the truck and home!
Regards,
Chris
Reading some of the folks that are expanding like mad, which is great. Could maple fever be akin to gold rush fever? I can almost hear the sap dripping:)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Chris
Hope somebody is hunting deer some place. On the way to school in the last two days I have seen more amourous bucks then I have ever seen around here. They are standing beside a busy highway trying to out talk a doe for affection.
I can find the floor of the shop finally so I can get enough room to build my evaporator now. I seem to have a plan now to go foreward with.
KenW I am always deer hunting when the season is open. I will be hunting tomarrow morning break for thanksgiving and hunt through sunday at sunset. I still got 2 tags left. I have all the venison I need but I use a tag for my sister who loves the meat but not the hunt and I try to fill the last tag for a friend who just cant get around like he used too.
I cannot believe the weather we have been having. I love it but sure does kill any ideas of getting some fall syrup on the shelves. I keep going to the sugarhouse after dark and can't find much to do except one little project that Fred Henderson helped me out on. Just waiting for an answer on how I can make that work. I think next week I will get after some more wood to get ahead on next year. Fred I still remember.
Just wanted to add a little note here for you guys that come up to my neck of the woods to get some steelhead fishing in. They are here and looks like it is gonna be another banner year on the river.
Been playing around with some dairy vac pumps this year. Yesterday finished one up that I want to use myself. Want all through it. Its and sp 11 and I got the oil changed out, Cleaned the sight tube good. Fixed the electric motor so it works good and painted it all up nice with ford blue engine paint. Really turned out nice. It just purrs and seems to make real good vac. I really like it a lot. If I can come up with the time I want to put it on a couple hundred taps mostly just to get to run it. Now Im working on an sp 22 that I found that was really bad shape. It was all seized up but it looks like with a lot of soaking Im going to have it rebuilt like new. I think Im going to put a gas engine on that and have it ready to go in an area where theres no electric. Plus my one friend has two ring pumps on gas that sometimes mess up and ruin a coupling somehow so I think well use it for an emergency set up. The pumps are fun to play with anyhow. Anyway Im real proud of the 11. Ill try to get some pics down the road of all this stuff. Hopefully Matt will come down in start of season and hes real good at that kind of thing. Theron
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It has been a better year here than expected because of the economy and I have a lot to be thankful for.
Theron I hope that you can save that SP-22. I love mine and will buy another when I can spare the money. A sweet purr and 23" of vacuum 24-7. A pump you can be proud of!
Me and the wife, wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. Keith
She who must be obeyed gave me a watch for my birthday that you have to load the Long and Lat into and it tells me when to go hunting. When I seen all the bucks yesterday and the day before it was flashing so it's pretty close.
It has to get cold here before we would get much sap here. Had some dasy with hard night frost and warm days wonder if they would put out sap. No time to really investigate further.
got the borrow vacuum pump running today after fighting the gas ring pump last year it is out the door hope for a ring pump for next year
It been a rainy day,hard to believe it is Nov 27. I found a worm in the driveway today and there is a frog in the pond by my sap house.It is 57degrees here tonight.
We just finished deer hunting in Wisconsin, the best was an nice eight pointer taken from the Sugarbush swamp edge. My son killed a 400 lb black bear with his bow about 300 yards from the syrup shack, also saw one wolf and a cougar. Now will begin cutting some dead maples for the 2011 syrup season.
Will spend February before the 2010 Wisconsin syrup season helping calve 300 head of black angus outside in the central Montana winter prairie. Not sure why I enjoy that.
southfork no cats this year
Cougars are rare here. Our hunting group has seen three in thirty years and one was this year. Wolves are becoming common, see their tracks and sign everywhere.
Had my first Christmas fair this past weekend and as it was going on I thought I was doing real good. A lot of purchases but after talliying it up sales were down about $250 from the same fair last yr. I realized that even though their was alot of customers they were buying less
Keith
Southfork it's because you love being up to your shoulders in cows. The last cougers I seen was back in Alberta. There were three in a group and the smaller ones were not all that small.
Finally got to work on the evaporator today somewhat. Still cutting up pallets for firewood and trying to get ready for winter also. If it snows as hard as it rains this month I am in trouble . Have to use a ladder to get the buckets down in the spring.
I did nothing maple all weekend. Got most of the holiday lights up. Cut another 2 cord for the house. And believe it or not I had to mow the lawn today. Was getting to high for she who must be obeyed. I have never mowed the grass in November before. Just did not feel right at all. But good news is in a few days another month is behind us. December and January to go then the tapping month arives. Hope all you guys and gals got there stuff ready cause it is almost here.
3 months at least for me to wait. I tapped the 5th and 11th of march last year and never boiled untill the 18th and then a week later then everyday until the 2oth of April. Who knows what this year will bring me.
Ken I like to think on the positive side. It is usually towards the end of febuary forme as well mainly because we ge so much snow here living due east of lake ontario.
We got 2 rally good days of weather on the weekend and got a ton of work done on the building for the new tank. By the end of day 2 we had all the walls up and braced, the rafters on and strapped, the tank in the building and the vacuum pump back in place plus a bit of the 1" lumber on the outside of one wall. All we need to do to get the steel on and finish the outside walls so we don't need to shovel snow out of it to finish things up inside before the season.
Here's a few pics of the progress: