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Well lads and ladies my season is done. For whatever reason it started off great and finished horribly but....I’m happy. I love making and sharing syrup. I these parts I’m known as the maple man. Godspeed.
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The weekend freezes gave me around 1100 Imperial gallons of sap. Some trees have either quit, slowed way down or a few gave me overflowing buckets. Sap is not clear for the most part. Making really yummy Very Dark syrup. So we gathered Tuesday and Wednesday, well some of the crazy trees still want to run in the heat with no freezes. Almost 16 yesterday. That's the hottest I've been in the shanty this year. Going to gather the dribbles today. Shanty drinking tree is not so clear anymore, but really sweet to drink! No more freezes in sight.
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Is it over? Wednesday and Thursday nights are both forecast to dip to freezing, but today's buckets had some clear, some cloudy, some yellow, orange, pink and almost greenish sap, and lots of moths....plus I noticed that the birch sap was running. Does the sap ever run clear again with colder weather after this starts, or are we all finished for 2020?
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Looks like the season is done. Located North Oliphant and did final boil 675 litres of sap and 16 litres of dark amber.
Ran some drop lines and single/double buckets - total taps 135.
Overall season 2112 litres of sap and 42 litres of syrup.
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I collected for the last time, on Friday and boiled on Saturday... Trees had pretty much shut down... and sap was getting cloudy...
The attached photo shows how our last boiling day started out... Full tote of permeate and part tote of concentrate flipped on its way to the shack... Narrow wheel-based dump trailer fell into a rut on one side.... Totes slid to the side and flipped it... Nobody hurt. Lost some permeate, but not a drop of concentrate lost... Quite a start to the day.
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Certainly wasn't the best year for yield for me. I'm glad I increased my taps this year. to 165 on a 12v diaphragm pump system and 25 on 3/16 gravity..
Started out at about 2.5% and ended off at 1.5%
Just over 100L of syrup produced.
In review, a few of my changes and successes for this season were...
1. Got RO system working... Been daydreaming about this for a couple years... Now I can remove 75%-80% of the water in less than 1/2 the time I can boil at.
2. Dropped my syrup pan by 1.5" and put a second float box between the pans.... This worked well... Less problems with syrup level dropping in the syrup pan... Going to raise my Flue Pan for next year, giving just a little more head pressure to the float box.
3. Increased fitting, valve and tubing sizes throughout my evaporator system... No more problems with flow restrictions.
4. Installed a 3/4" mainline in the bush, rather than several 3/16" runs.... This will accommodate further runs with more taps... Better vacuum levels upstream.. and I will spend less money, replacing small lines each year.
5. Put 6" of drainage stone on top of the mud, inside and around the shack... Much nicer working conditions for boiling.
6. Put a Tecumseh engine on a bale elevator for firewood processing... (which we hardly need now, with the RO working)
7. Added 1" of ceramic blanket insulation behind firebrick and in door or arch. (can actually stand beside the arch without melting my jeans)
8. Changed syrup pan flow to enter at front, lateral dividers and draw at rear... This works great... (and the only configuration I hadn't tried yet.)
9. At end of season boil, I kept the fire going while I chased the sap in the pans out with pure permeate. Had never tried this before... Other years, I would basically just shut down while I had a bit of sap left in the tank... and drain the pans afterwards to finish boiling on a propane cooker... This year, while feeding permeate in the back end, I actually drew off a couple gallons of finished syrup from my draw off, after I started introducing permeate..... and after shutting down, my syrup pan and float box had 55% concentrate to drain.. and the flue pan had 16%... Maybe everyone does it this way ?? If not, it works pretty good.
Big Thanks for all the helpful advice from everyone here... (Especially on the RO front, this year).....
And I wish everyone and their families health and happiness, as we endure this Covid situation.
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Hmm... Last Post in this thread for 2020 and first one for 2021.
We are in a bit of a deep freeze here right now... (-16C / 3F) Hard to imagine sap flowing.... and I haven't started to prepare..
I better get at it... Wont be long.
Hope everyone is surviving the Covid Lockdown... No Doubt looking forward to spending some time outdoors in the bush..
Cheers
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by the looks of the long range we might not be tapping until March this year. But never trust the weatherman, i will be almost 100% ready to go this weekend. Last year we gathered 380 gallons of Sap on Feb 23 .
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We often plan to start tapping on Family Day long weekend but that won't be happening this year! The only sap that'll be running will be off the end of your nose! Not a lot of snow in the bush but it's been a cold 2021 so far so I'm assuming the frost will be fairly deep. Time to start thinking about getting ready...
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Bronte Creek tapping in!
Well we've decided to tap in next Monday which is about average for us. Of course all the snow we've had this week is going to make our manual collection MUCH more difficult! On plus side, the long range forecast appears to be very favourable for sap collection.
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Howdy all y’all!
I debated tapping tomorrow but based on the forecast I will most likely tap next weekend.
My syrup last year was the best tasting ever! Hope everyone is safe and healthy.
Personally, I can’t wait to fire up the evaporator.