Spring Harvest 2012

[Amber Gold]

Fired up the RO this morning w/ no issues. Sap was coming in at 1.5C...pretty cold and it ran a touch slow. Got another keg filled this morning and still have almost 7 gal in the canner. Season total is somewhere between 90 and 100 gal...not a bad start to the season. Surprisingly the sap was running today, unfortunately I never made it down to the releaser this morning...didn't think it was going to run....found the moisture trap filled w/ sap and sap in the vac. line. Shut vac. off and drained the line...hopefully I got it all. About 100 gal in the tank when I left at 3:30 and still running a bit.

So, I cam across something interesting today while boiling. Last week, I finally got around to plumbing in the preheater...for the most part it works well and it's nice having hot water in the SH w/out having to go to the kitchen...wife likes it too...but I digress. So the plumbing was completed Friday night. Today, everything's running smooth, but the flue pan float doesn't seem to be running as fast as it should...still keeping up and depths still OK. About 1.5 hrs into the boil, I notice the site glass is getting low, look at the float and nothing's coming in...plenty of sap in the tank...I think the preheater's vapor locked, so I open the bypass line and still nothing. Push the float down and jiggle it, and mes with it some more, and all of a sudden a torrent of sap comes rushing in, fills the pan and all is good....odd. Done boiling and take apart the syrup pan float and out of the valve fall a bunch of seeds....odd. Go to the flue pan float box and there's a handful of seeds in there...figure these got backed up at the float valve, then all of a sudden they broke loose. The only explanation I can come up with is a squirrel dropped a bunch of seeds into the feed tank through the hole in the cover (he's not in there and wouldn't be able to get out if he did)...must've done it between Friday night and this morning. Things got pretty hectic there for a little bit.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Hey Josh, did you notice what type of seed? When acorn breath grabbed me the other week, he was spitting sunflower hulls all over the place. Had pretty good range and accuracy too; probably could have hit one of your vent pipes from the driveway. Around the house, M and I have been relying on the border collie to keep the seeds from blocking the wood furnance chimney. Hope this helps more than the weather. Bruce

[DanC]

Josh-
I like to blame squirrels for all my problems too, but my guess is that mice stored some seeds in your preheater plumbing in the off season. Did you have the pipes sealed or taped to keep them out?

Dan

[Amber Gold]

Bruce, not sure what kind of seeds. Some were round and others were pear shaped. My shephard likes to catch squirrels/chipmunks, but she's slowing down and not as successful as she used to be.

Dan, I hadn't considered that. Pipes were not sealed and there was seeds in the feed tank..maybe they floated up to it??

[Amber Gold]

Sap's running hard. We collected >450 gal yesterday afternoon and had >400 gal in the tank this morning. It got just below freezing last night. Report is the sap's running ~75gph today so we'll have >1000 gal of sap to process today...RO Machine don't fail me now. Had to walk the entire woods. The cold snap loosened up all the spouts. Found one tap completely off. Fortunately, it appears the squirrel's have slowed down a bit.

Finally got a decent gradient established last night for the first half of the boil, but went to hell for the second half. Serious problems with the syrup pan float. No matter how much fine tuning, it was pouring in, so I close the gate valve down, but then I had to monitor liquid level to make sure it didn't run too low...aren't floats supposed to do this for me??

Season totals as of last night are 8gpt of sap collected and 96 gal of syrup produced...not a bad start to the season. All drums are packed at least 2 Br heavy and by my calc's, the kegs are holding at least 16 gal of syrup, so the real total is over 100 gal. Hopefully this warm spell doesn't kill the season.

[Amber Gold]

Help....I'm....drowning...............

[PerryW]

sound like the sap weather finally hit southern NH!!!

Hard to believe it froze last night in the Littleton area (after being so warm), but freeze it did. The sap is just starting now, but supposed to cool down even more.

Going to fire up my 3x10 for the first time this season right now. wish me luck.

[red maples]

Good luck perry !!! hope all goes well...sap hit here hard the few days after all those days of little tiny runs. but for me aleast the forecast looks awful, I hope they are wrong!!! I haven't heard any peepers yet!!!

@Josh

Yes Here too things are about to freeze up!!! I still have about 200+ gallons out there but need to sleep a little...but I will be up bright and early see what I can know out. my little vac pump is awe-some!!! too bad they don't make 'em like that anymore!!!

[Dill]

I agree Brad, you can't beat these old surges. Mine will be off tonight for the first time since wensday morning. It wasn't even warm this afternoon. Not bad considering I think the motor is original as well.

Josh the flow really slowed down this afternoon, I got nothing on the gravity taps and neither did Mark. Guess I could have kept that load here. At the time it just looked like it was going to keep flying in. Did your vac woods drop in sugar content as well? 1.6 is pretty good considering it has froze in 3 days.

[sjdoyon]

Had a good Wed/Thurs/Fri runs. Had over 4,000 gallons come in, unfortunately only a 1% + sugar content. Stopped flowing today but should start back up Sunday with 40s expected.