Spring Harvest 2013

Mostly tapped in at ~700 and pulling ~22" of vacuum when I decided to call it quits. I still have about 100 taps to put in tomorrow morning that are already hooked to mainline, then 50-75 more that need to be tied in. Been busting hump the past two days getting everything in. Yesterday Dil and I got about 550 taps in, and I tried a new releaser stand, and that didn't work, so that was a waste of time. Today, got the vac. running w/ no problems, but had frozen sap in the vac. line...two hours there. So far, things aren't going smoothly to start the year. This is one reason I tap early...get the bugs worked out now.

With temps around 38 degrees yesterday, turned on the vacuum pump. Only a few hundred gallons came in. We've got the pans sweet and have 80 gallons made to date for the 2013 season. Cold temps scheduled for next ten days, hopefully some warmer temps after.

Did you ever get the bigger RO???

Hoping to fire up and boil mid week....will give you a call if you want to see the Ro in action...let me know ..good luck...

Same here on the tapping early to get the bugs worked out. So far the only problem here has been a broken tongue on the sap trailer. I guess 150 gallons of sap in a 275 gallon tank was too much for the old light duty trailer.

Did you get a bigger RO Josh?

Good luck with the new season.

Yes he did get the bigger RO, had a plumbing snafu with it already. But should be all set by the next run.
I had to run all over and dig through some old dairy setups to find a new/50 yr old stallcock for my vac pump.

It's been an interesting startup this year. Probably the slowest going one yet. I did get the bigger RO, and spent time last week trying to figure out why it wouldn't run, when it turned out to be a bad breaker. Also, after we got 900+ gal of sap processed on Saturday (permeate tank overflowing) I discovered I had the plumbing backwards...perm. going to conc. tank and conc. going to perm tank. Called it a night and drained everything back into the conc. tank...lost about 200 gal of sap. Replumbed Sunday morning and things went well although it was cold. I cracked a gate valve on my preheater plumbing, which a little JB kinda fixed. About the only thing that's gone without a hitch this year is the vac. pump and evaporator started just fine. On the evap. I installed new arch rails to remove the bow and it's helped the front float to seal mostly all the way. Yesterday we sweetened the pans and made about 4 gallons. Really disappointed I missed most of last week's warm spell getting tapped in.

Chris, I'll make it over when I get a chance. Likely not until next weekend. This weekend I have another 50+ taps to get online, and any sap we may get processed. Glad to see you're up and running.

Forecast looks good for a run tomorrow and Friday.

Yes a few hiccups here as well, and we haven't even fired up the RO yet!

Good luck Josh- may you make 600 gallons!

Yesterday started with ~200 gal of a block of frozen sap in the tank. Sap started to run about noon time, but didn't doo much....maybe 150 gallon through 6pm. Sap flow started to pickup about then. Sap ran almost all night and probably got another 200 gallons, but still have this frozen block in the tank...it'll melt someday. The nice thing is it's keeping the sap nice and cold.

Yesterday, I turned on the two lines w/ sap lifts on them (~100 taps total) and got them walked and tight. I found anything I tapped Sat. morning when things were frozen needed to be pounded back in, but everything tapped last week when it was warm is just fine. Have almost 800 taps online now. More to come this weekend. So far rodent damage hasn't been too bad.

Noontime report from the woods is it's running good and pulling only 22"...need to get it back up to 26".

Collected 525 gallons yesterday and was able to drain most of the liquid from the woods tank. Still have a large chunk of ice in the tank. Sugar's about 2%. Boiled last night and made ~5 gal of syrup. First boil's syrup almost didn't make a dark amber it was so dark, but last night things lightened up a lot so I'm almost making a medium. Things are coming together and working well.