Sweet and Sour Dill 2012

[Russell Lampron]

Alden the reason vacuum leaks get your blood pumping is because you think of all of the sap your not getting because the leak is there. It never got as warm today as the forecast said that it would. I still got a small run though.

[Dill]

Unfortunately I didn't collect the mother load at lunch that I expected. The gravity taps here in Northwood really haven't done much, I expect more tree rat issues.
And my releaser must have froze up early this morning, I got the dreaded 0 inches of vac when I got there at noon. Fortunately that little blue racquet ball saved my pump again. I picked up 100 gallons and it was running nicely. The office is beyond dead today, so I'm taking tomorrow off to finish running a new lower line at the vac bush and install my first sap ladder, it should add 100 or so taps.

[red maples]

We got a freeze here last night which I wans't expecting. and the sap was running really good for a while. the ground is still pretty frozen onlty really the first inch or 2 is thawed. The sap is slowed up now but still managed to get about 115gallons so far and it should run all night!!! pending the releaser doesn't get stuck!!!

[Dill]

Ended up with 175 gallons in Northwood and 60 in Lee. Not drowning by any means. The wife has class tonight so I have the kids so I'm not boiling. Odd 2 nights off in a row. So the sap goes to Josh. My brother also got 200 gallons on 150 buckets down in Epping. I still don't think the trees are turned on yet.

[Dill]

I got my best run ever 375 gallons in 24 hours out of the vac bush. Spent yesterday building my first sap ladders, and adding about 40 more taps. Now I probably should have only built 1 sap ladder but I'm planning on expanding some more.
Boiled off 150 gallons yesterday having some wood issue like usual. The dead stuff I put in the shed in Dec, some of its dry as a bone, some of it isn't. Hopefully I'll get a drawoff tonight.

[red maples]

There is always wood issues I get the same stuff... 1 row is dry then next isn't the next dry ????? who knows!!! How much have you boiled so far. I have been through about 1200 gallons so far. I got 50 gallons yesterday hoping for a better day today and a really good day tomorrow!!! Hopefully anyway!!!

[Dill]

I boiled until 11 saturday night, but it was so cold that everytime I went out for wood, I killed the boil in the 1st compartment of the syrup pan. This morning I went out to everything froze solid. Bad enough that I had to bring the feed lines into the house. Unfortunately we had a showing this afternoon, so I had to scoot around with a towel under my boots to try and eliminate footprints. Boiled down another 200 gallons today, so close to my first drawoff but not quite there yet. Not sure why it takes this evap so long to make syrup the first time, then it'll bump 6 or 7 gallons and settle right in. My thermometer said 7 over boiling but the hydro just wouldn't bounce.
A neighbor with a hobby setup stopped by to use my sap hydro, just to prove that the good old mother nature RO of letting the buckets freeze really works. His sap was 4.5% that's worth tossing the ice imho. He's collect sap this year in the back of a minivan using poland spring 5 gallon jugs, which actually works pretty slick.

[red maples]

I got the heat wire, for my feed lines works great, as long as its not too cold I can boil anytime. This morning would be tough teens are rough to get the sap to move through anything.

I boiled of a quick 50 gals because I knew I wasn't boiling today and didn't want the sap to sit. Well it was tough boiling in that cold wind I'll tell you what. the stack kept fluctuating something awful, just tryting to get through 50 gals man tough.!!!

[Dill]

Got 75 gallons of sap yesterday thanks to the vac pump.
But more importantly I finally got my first draw off, made 4 gallons of dark amber, which I attest to all the start ups and shut downs. If this is like last year, it'll lighten up by the 3rd draw off.
Always awesome when the hydrometer bounces for the first time!

[Dill]

Good to hear I wasn't the only one who didn't get much for sap yesterday. My releaser hung up before noon, and the pump was unplugged until 3. My moisture trap didn't stop the sap flow. The ballast tank had a ton of sap in it. I ran the pump backwards by hand which seemed to push a lot of sap out. It looks like the pump survived, but it gave me quite a scare. Had second showing on our house. The young couple wanted to walk the lot. It was pretty funny listening to their agent talk about making syrup out of the big trees on the property line. Too bad they are giant old red oak.