Dirty jobs, "the maple syrup maker" on tonight Tues. Dec 29 at 9pm est. on the discovery channel!!
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Dirty jobs, "the maple syrup maker" on tonight Tues. Dec 29 at 9pm est. on the discovery channel!!
I wish I still had that channel, Mike Rowe is the man!
I will be watching it tonight. I have watched several episodes today because I was feeling under the weather today. I did manage to split a little bit of wood though.
I have one english channel so don't feel bad. It's repeats for me tonight. Until I give up and do something more exciting.
mike rowe has to be the best tv host ever!! i,am on vacation and it,s cold outsde so i,ve been watching him pretty much all day!!
delbert
yes I like him. He does the deadliest catch too. Ax men starts soon on the history channel jan. 9th I think. NOt mike rowe though he would be good narating that too.
Brad, what do you have for a current temp. I am at -4.
9 but the wind is terrible. your way up there.. My sister lives up there she is in waterville a bit west of you. she works at Stowe. I was up there visiting in the fall when the leaves were changing and there are a ton of maples up there...wow she hates when ever they give the temps because it is always burlington, and she says it usually about 10 + degrees colder in the winter by her.
So who's sugarhouse did Mr. Rowe visit?? Hopefully a wood fired one from NH as that is where the best maple syrup on earth comes from ;) If he wanted to get dirty, he should have come by here, I'm still cleaning up :lol:
That wind chill is a killer. Below zero is good ...tighten things up in the woods.
wagner's sugar camp in PA. I think someone mentioned it here and they knew them. they have a website.
Well that was interesting!!!!
Well I didnt know its a furnace. I learned a few new terms and I already forgot them dang that was a dirty job. That must have been one heck of a camp in its day with all the evap arches in the bldg. Man there was alot of galvanized equipment.
I think they did a poor job on showing how sugaring is done,what was that white crap they poored into the maple syrup? I dont want anything like that in mine,also dont you think the guy might come unglued when the bricks start falling out,I really like the show, always whatch it but expected more I guess when you do it yourself you know?:cry:
Saw the show, not overly impressed, It didn't seem as if the dirty jobs crew was either.
I just saw it. It was pretty good. It was only half the show though. It was a huge woodfired evaporator. They burned bundles of slab wood. His method of starting it shouldn't have been on tv though because he used old baling twine and old paint. It was wagners in PA. He had some buckets and some gravity tubing. No vacum shown if he has any. There wasn't an RO either unless they just didn't show it.
Seen alot of wasted sap due to poor pouring, The drilling of tap holes made me very nervous because he was ovaling the holes. Not the cleanest but very functional. I think they said they tapped 1000 trees. Kitchen setup was very nice.
Zippy its called filteraid and you have had it in alot of things you have consumed. Beer, Apple juice, Grape juice, Maple syrup :o
Sorry I don't share everyone's enthusiasim for Mike Rowe. If I had hired help as clumsy as he is, I would send him down the road. Makes a mess of everything he does...
Wine also. If I had of know how hard it was to filter syrup before I started this hobby I might have taken up something like bungy jumping.Quote:
Originally Posted by Haynes Forest Products
I think I seen the show once or something like it where he was cooking in a really busy steak resturant with $50 buck steaks and he screwed up cooking about 10 of them and the guy booted him out the door and got his real cook in.
Pretty sure they said 2,000 taps and about 500 gallons of syrup produced each year.Quote:
Originally Posted by ehausinfrats
Dirty Jobs,
They have vacuum with a old dairy pump, they also have a RO that too is a older model. My claim to fame is I made sugar cakes on the same candy machine as Mike Rowe. The sad part is I made a mess just like him until I got the hang of it. Also I can't wait to pick on Henry Brenneman about doing a drive by during the filming of the show. I need to go pick up more tubing sometime in the next couple of days. Last fall he sold 13 skid loads of tubing. 50 rolls to the skid, 500 feet per roll. Do the math on that!!!!! Not bad considering he is Amish and does not have electricity or telephone in his home or camp or warehouse. Henry's camp and home is no more than a mile from the Wagners Camp. Does everyone call buckets Keelers, thats what they are called in the Somerset County area? Just curious?
Mark 220 Maple
Just watched it myself. They said 2000 trees not taps. Seen a few trees they had atleast 3 buckets on them. I really don't think that was paint in that paint can he started the fire with. There kitchen looks pretty nice. I am still pondering the termonology they used, camp syrup, keelers. Guy could not even climb a small hill. I gotta laugh at every episode that someone hands the guy a wrench to tighten or loosen a bolt though he always turns it the wrong way. He sure is very clumbsy.
First time I've seen the show. I also was disappointed. Too bad they did not show the vacuum pump and RO. It would have shown how more complex it can get. They spent too much time waiting for sap to drip and syrup to boil. They could of shown more of the hard work that was done prior to being able to boil. Possible Mike Rowe does some of the clumsieness for entertainment on the TV?
I to was dissapointed in the show. They made it seem so easy and more so on the boreing side like there is so much standing around. Always something to do.
I watched the show. I have mixed feelings . On one hand I like Mike Rowe, his bumbling is for entertainment value. That beening said I agree with most coments on here pro and con. They could have done a better job with explaining, but it wasnt about how syrup is made it, is about how you get dirty making syrup. And yes Somerset Co. Pa is the only place I have heard the terms sugar camp, keeler, and only south of me they call sap, water.
I am glad they chose Somerset Co. Pa just to show folks that Vermont is not the only place in the US maple syrup is made.
220- Does Mr. Brennamin(probly not spelled right) run a lot of taps? He comes up here and buys syrup at my buddy Richards place. Ive seen some huge releasers and things like that come in for him. Always wondered what exactly he was doing down there. Theron
Hi guys,
Ok lets look on the positive side of things here;
1). It was only 20 minutes of a day long process (long day too).
2). Terminology is all about the area you are in, do you call them taps or spiles, do you call it a cooker or an evaporator.
3). Yeah Mike is clumsy, but I think he is honest about things.
4). I love to take folks out gathering that have never done it before, cause they are going to wear the sap before the gathering is done, because I have and as one other said on here, getting the candy forms filled isn't easy at first.
5). They portrayed boiling sap as a slow process, well it is, it's like watching water boil. Yes I am busy and my help is busy, but for the visitor, it's like watching water boil and boring after awhile.
6). I think we all loose a little sap here and there, especially when the tanks run over and who hasn't dumped a full bucket before.
Now with all this said, I hope I haven't offended anyone, because that wasn't my intention. I'm just looking at things in a different light.
Stay warm ........... 2* below here this morning.
Dave
I saw it as a typical sugarmaker that doesn't know what he is doing...He stated he's been there for 5 years, and like a lot of other sugarmakers, feels he needs to handle syrup 5 times before putting it in a container! That was some good looking mud in his finisher! What for the love of God was that on his drill??? Like it was said...an awful lot of galvanized equipment, must have come to VT during the lead scare of the late 80s to buy equipment!!! With all that being said, I was amused by the show!!
How pray tell does a Amish person do a drive by unless is was a driven by as in a wagon. LOL you guys figure the terms used for things was weird you have to live around here then. They use pounds to measure syrup from a tree and a bucket is a chaudiere instead of a seau and a pot is a glass jar and it goes downhill from there.
I usually have a bootfull of sap a couple of times a week carrying it in a open top bucket but it dosn't help when I get hundreds of gallons and am in a hurry to cross deadfall and such to get it home. I would say the guy was to scared to let him near a RO or the realeaser as he might have wrecked that to.
I guess I never realized how smug and sarcastic Mike Rowe is. Its entertainment though.
Anybody have a thought as to the age of the arch they were using? Looked like it had seem some serious use. I'm assuming the bricks that were sitting on top of the other bricks at the back of the ramp were there to create air turbulence?
In regards to the drill, I believe that was a section of PVC designed to keep a person from overdrilling the hole. I thought it actually looked like a decent idea. I did cringe when Mike drilled the hole all crooked though. Should have had him help make firewood for an hour or two or had him come back and scrub out the pans at the end of the season. That would have given him plenty of activity. :)
He should come out to Pierce and Sons now and get the fast foreward version. He wouldnt be getting bored waiting for syrup to finish on my rig. I thought it was cool though too. Theron
There was a book published several years ago about maple sugaring in Somerset county. It talks all about the history of making syrup way back into the mid and late 1800's. There are a lot of old photos even of Wagners sugar camp. The book also talks about some of the terminology used such as keelers and spiles.
As far as Wagners Sugar camp goes, it was always a family run operation run by Sue that was on the show and her brother Dale who passed away several years ago. When he died, that Jerry went to work there and thats why he's only been there 5 years.
filteraid,never heard of it but Im not a big time producer,But I drink lots of
beer and Im still ticking.Whats in it anyway? I will say also, the folks at the suger shack seem like real nice people and hard workers. I think mike rowe just tries to make show amusing,he is in way better shape than me but he
always seems week or tired compared to some older out of shape guys
Filter aid is made of the left over bone and shells of tiney dead sea critters called diatoms which is why its proper name is diatomousous earth or something like that. It is used as a organic bug killer also as its so rough it casues the bugs to wear holes in there skins and die.
For filtering it seems to gather all the small particles into big ones so it dosn't plug up the filters so fast. We used to feed it to baby calves to stop scours also years ago. I haven't heard of anybody useing it in the last couple of years for that.
I just watched it and I wasn't really that impressed either. its really not that borring when your doing the work. hanging wire, stretching tubing, drilling holes and setting taps all day. loading the wood every 5 - 15 minutes. looked like it was pretty late in the season, no snow on the ground and looked like quite dark syrup and sap looked a bit cloudy. I think they said making syrup the old fashion way. but they didn't show the vac. or RO.
Man I get a little upset when I when I spill a drop of precious sap man he was spilling gallons!!!! those guys must of been biting their lip. oh well I guess its all about entertainment right!!! at least he got to brush the flues in the "furnace"
with three evaps sitting side by side, and using the one in the middle, that must have been the old r/o. i did not understand why they filtered it twice. i would finish on the rig and filter to the drum or draw into finisher then filter to the galv drum. who is watching the wood rig when in the finish room the charlott auto draw?my back got sore watching all the movement of syrup by bucket. all and all was great to see another maple operation
Like most of you I found it amusing but not really "dirty". The real nasty part is when you leave your evaporator full to let the bacteria work and clean it when it's 90 degrees in August and it has the consistency of snot, he should make another episode about that.....
What about cleaning tubing at the end of the season. That's the dirtiest job I have sugaring. And who still climbs into the evaporator to clean the flues? A long pole or cleanout doors by the stack. Riding on the back of a wagon to get sap, bad idea. I hope OSHA didn't see that show. Oh, and climbing hills, send him my way to climb some mountains! All in all I was not impressed by the operation or show.