steaming drill bits in Andover-2015

well, first taps went in today, courtesy of Parker and his crew. He has been a huge help with a lot of things maple, to which I am tremendously thankful.

We are only tapping two vacuum sugarbushes this year, plus about 40 buckets. should be a touch over 700 taps. will be buying sap again this year, hoping to make 400+ gallons.

we are more than 2 weeks later than we normally tap.

have my cousin and brother coming up tomorrow to help get vacuum pumps and releasers all set. lots of tweaking and tuning still to do. Sugarhouse is pretty close, just need to flush membrane and make sure no fittings and seals have loosened up during the off season.

let the madness begin...

Keep on keeping on...

-eric

Hey Eric. I Am going to start Tapping Friday. Maybe Finish Sunday. Should end up with about 400 Total. Saw your picture in the paper the other day. Congrats on your award/recognition by the NH Timberland Association. You sure are A busy man. Good luck this season.

Sure glad to see the "Steaming Drill Bits" thread up!
Doug

Just remember to cool the bits from time to time so they don't cauterize the tap hole preventing sap flow! Finally it looks like maple season is here.

thats a good one Dave. Good to finally see you got your thread up bud. Have a good season!!!

Good luck this season. Sap's a runnin' next week!

Another mapleholic checking in I see! It's good to hear from you Eric. Good luck with the new season.

Hey Eric,

Good to see your annual thread. Will follow your season from over here in sunapee. Good luck and have fun.

Eric, It is good to see you back. I have sold my equipment to a couple of young guys and will let them carry on the tradition. Hopefully it will give me time to get around and see some of the other operations in the area this year. Good luck, it looks like some warmer nights and days coming up sap should be running soon.

My brother and cousins Ben and Jim deployed and set up pumps and releasers today. 5" at one bush and 8" at the other. Parker swung by to chase leaks, and by 6pm we had 20" at both. Thanks to all who have helped get TMM up and running.

Now we just need the snow to melt out around the base of the trees and the sap be a tsunami...

the crew in the woods continues to repair leaks.

vacuum around 20 or 21 pretty much everywhere now.

Have bent shaft on releaser float rod, so releaser is not reliably working yet at Hattan. Dumping every 5 minutes when it doesn't get hung up.

in Boston for a doctors appointment in the morning, but hope to be boiling in the afternoon tomorrow.

Good luck with your doctors appointment and happy boiling. I'm boiling tomorrow evening.

Hey I was in Boston at Doc's appt ( for my daughter) today too. Where were you Mass general, Beth Isreal? I was at Children's. ITs never a quick trip to boston and the roads suck!!! Hope everything went as good as can be expected.

brad - i was at Brigham and Womens' - good visit- boston roads and traffic are never good - crazy that some people do that battle every day.

we had our first boil last night - after rinsing membrane, we started crunching 1000 gal of sap. a few start up hiccups, but managed to sweeten pans and draw off a couple gallons. have another 1500 gallons to get through tomorrow. State inspector coming tomorrow. like checking in with Vicki - but don't have much syrup to show her yet.

Eric, talk to Dill about bent float rods. He's an expert on 'em. You can order them from Lapierre for about $18 each. For the price and reliability, it's worth buying two and having a spare.

Oh we were right next door. I was one of those crazy people, I used to run one of the restaurant kitchens at the Copley plaza in copley Square, we lived in Newton MA but moved north and I did it for a year, It def. wears on you. Its much nicer to visit Boston then have to go to Boston for appointments those are always stressful and I swear that hospital time if different than anywhere in the world.

My sugarbush is at the house so I can shut things down when it freezes up and I dump the releaser completely before it forms any ice. I assume that is what bent the rod.

We hosted a workshop here on Saturday on pellet heating for commercial applications. Good that the sleet held off till noon-ish, had about 25 folks here and at Proctor Academy's biomass boiler tour.

We finally boiled again last evening. sap sugar content seems to be creaping up - low of 1.0 to a high of 1.7 now...

big news is that we finally went to an auto-draw off unit - a smoky lake mid range model - and love it. with me not being able to physically run the draw off valve anymore, and with a variety of folks helping out this year, i figured it was good insurance.

we have made approx 15 gallons so far...

keep on keeping on...

Eric, Great to hear that production has started. I'm going to try to get down and check out the new equipment this week. We used a Marcland draw off and it saved our pans a couple of times when we had float problems.

figured the snow banks were small enough now to hang our buckets. Only doing about 45-50 this year.

we boiled again on Monday afternoon, things seem to really go smoothly. made another 22 + gallons.

between what ran on Monday and yesterday, we gathered 350 gallons from our 700+ taps.

supposed to be cold for the next couple days, a good chance to make up some cream.

Keep on keeping on...

also having problems with our filter press building pressure early in a batch. Used to be able to get 40 gallons of early season syrup through the press with No pressure build up, now we are lucky to get 10 gallons through. It is a short bank CDL with air diaphragm pump.

I had the same problem with my filter press last night. After the first 7 gallons I had to stop and change papers. After that the other 13 gallons went right through no problem.

We boiled a bit on Friday, then again today. We had to battle frozen feed lines going to and from RO.

Right around 50 gallons so far. Sap up to 2.9 and 3%, helped by the ice in several tanks.

Left permeate in the back pan tonight. Hoping it loosens things up...

Keep on keeping on...

I though it was just me because I am new at the filter press thing. I had the same issue of spiking pressure with not much syrup. it seems to be better now. although I would need to use it a little more to really see. should be soon!!!

boiled again yesterday and a good chunk of the day today. made 12+ gallons of amber yesterday and 35 gallons of I'm guessing amber again today.

seem to have fixed filtering issue (more DE), but now having pellet auger issues. We will be cruising right along, and then start hearing the auger feeding the evaporator running metal on metal (it is silent when full of pellets) we have run the day hopper empty to check for pellet/sawdust clumps, but nothing gagging the day hopper. never had it happen last year.

sap is between 2 and 2.7%, so thats a good sign. but only have 400 gallons saved up for maple weekend. hoping for some more tomorrow.

keep on keeping on...

-eric

I wanted to boil last night but decided to save the sap I've got to boil Saturday. Anything that comes in today and Saturday is for Sunday's boil. I hope things let loose soon because it is almost April.

Eric- hope you have a good weekend. Good luck

excellent maple weekend for the crew at Tucker mountain maple. lots of help from family and friends to make things go smoothly. only one significant mess up- forgot to open the valve between the float box heading into syrup pans. have to check when we drain the pans tomorrow morning to see how bad it got in first cross flow pan.

syrup sales were excellent, especially today. glad I had a barrel of very dark syrup left over from last year that we jugged a couple weekends ago. almost sold all of that today.

managed to make 19 gallons of syrup on Saturday + about 26 or 27 gallons today. I think today will be very dark since we probably burned some.

Interesting demographics of visitors between yesterday and today. about a third of the people yesterday knew from before. Today, it was the opposite - I knew probably two thirds of the people already visit us today.

regardless it was excellent weekend with our sales being the best for a single weekend we have ever had here. tired but very content with our efforts.

keep on keepin on

-Eric

3000 gallons of sap hauled in today. 2000 processed this afternoon-evening. sugar content was between 2.2 and 2.7 for tubing, 3.0 for buckets. grade coming back up to borderline amber.

will rotate pans in AM as we sweeten the big tank...

keep on keeping on...

-eric

been steady since my last post. not since tuesday morning have we had any empty tanks. up to a touch over 400 gallons, which was my minimum goal. just crossed back in to very dark grade.

plan on listening to opening day for the Sox tomorrow afternoon while boiling away in the sugarhouse.

huge help with all things maple from a good friend Patty. She has been on sabbatical this year, and in mid March showed up at the sugarhouse and said "i have some time to help, what can I do?" she has been a tremendous help everyday since...keen to help, willing to do just about everything. Awesome... and another friend Deb just showed up on Friday and the same thing - "what can I do to help?" first thing she did was to work on cleaning out the cross-flow syrup pan we had just swapped out. and imagine that, she came back saturday and sunday for more!

keep on keeping on...

-Eric

lots of Sox games and boiling to end off our season. boiled the last of our sap this afternoon. at about 560 gallons so far, so suspect we will be right around 600 when all is said and done. lots of dark and very dark, but all with excellent flavor.

had RO feed pump go out on us Friday afternoon. on the horn to Eric at Lapierre and a few hours later Patty from our crew picked up a new pump in central VT. turns out solenoid crapped out on old one, so we will replace solenoid and keep old one for back-up.

good luck to those still at it...

keep on keeping on.

-eric

606 gallons total for us. 200 from our own taps (725) rest from purchased sap. no golden, some amber, lots of dark and very dark syrup. only the last 35 gallons had a bit of bitter metabolism flavor.

best equipment upgrade this year - toss up between smoky lake auto draw and lapierre draw off tank (two 28 gal sections) on wheels. The two tank configuration was a huge help - allowing us to drain front or back pans, keeping each separate, etc. only criticism of the tank is only one set of casters turns. in a small sugarhouse, made even smaller with me in a wheelchair, steerable casters on all four corners would be a plus...

once again I am overwhelmed by all the folks who chipped in to help to make my dream of continuing to make syrup here on Tucker Mountain a reality. Some folks came by for a few hours, some came back day after day... Special thanks to fellow Traders Parker and Courtney for all their tapping, sapping and vacuum pump help.

keep on keeping on you all...

Congratulations on a great season, sounds like you have a great community around you.