Spring Harvest 2014

[Amber Gold]

Official start of the 2014 for Spring Harvest Maple Farm.

Some changes this year. Installed an electric service at the tank, so I could move my vac. pump down to the releaser. Also switched to an electric releaser, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works. It'll be nice to have the vac pump and releaser in one location and heated...hopefully a problem free year. The vac. pump is pulling cooling water downhill ~180' across the field from a stream...trying it out and hopefully it works. If not, I'll be putting a sump in. I think it'll work, but my only concern is it freezing if we get an extended cold period. Upgraded my evaporator to an 802Maple 2.5x8 arch with Dallaire pans and got the new H2O 600 RO running last week...can't wait to try them both out.

All tapped in as of yesterday. Should have about 850+ in at this point and still finding more taps to add which I'll be doing this weekend. The 18" of snow with a nice crust made getting around a lot harder. Borderline snowshoe weather, but didn't want to tripping on line with them. New vac. pump/releaser setup is working at least without the woods turned on. Hopefully the woods warms up enough to walk the woods before things start running this week. A lot of repair work this year. Something (guessing deer) either walking through laterals and breaking them or chewing them in half. Really slowed us down on Saturday.

The Dill's are still hauling sap to me this year, and they're adding on a bit as well. Got a call over the weekend, and another local wants to sell me sap as well...100-200 taps on buckets from the sounds of it. Total tap count TBD.

[tuckermtn]

Hey Josh - good to hear the update...best of luck dialing in all the new gear...hoping we might have enough to boil over the weekend?

hope you get .5 gal per tap or better...

[Dill]

I believe the plan for the first boil is friday. If the forecast holds I don't see why not. To say the snow has made tapping take longer is a bit of an understatement.

[Russell Lampron]

Hey it's good to see that you have finally started your 2014 thread Josh. We tapped without snowshoes Saturday and put them on Sunday. I wish I had used them Saturday too. I am also glad that we got all of the tubing tapped last weekend. We've got a lot more snow to deal with now.

[Hop Kiln Road]

Used to have the problem of varying pressure feeding the flue float, but now the float is fed directly from the RO so the pressure is constant.

[red maples]

Hey you finally got your thread started. congrats on all the new stuff.... new stuff is always fun but a lot of work getting it set up!!!!

[Amber Gold]

I've been thinking about starting the thread for a week or so, just never got around to it.

Russ, I agree. Tapping with all this new snow would not be even less fun. We got quite a bit over here

Brad, shiny stuff is nice.

[Russell Lampron]

Yes to the shiny stuff!!! I like stainless steel.

[Amber Gold]

Collected 1800 gal of sap and have ~200 gal in the woods tank. After spending the weekend in the woods, vac.'s up to 25". On the wood's end, everything working well except the moisture trap/vac. pump issue. Have some ideas to resolve that this week during the cold snap.

Boiled Sat. and Sunday night...~1000 gal both nights. The new RO is running real nice. Easy to operate and shiny stainless. Still trying to figure the new evap. out...runs completely different than a standard arch. I either get a good boil in the back pan and a foaming syrup or a good syrup pan and a lackluster flue pan. I do like the crossflow setup and this year my draws have been nice and steady with no temp spikes that I've been used to. Another issue I'm having is the flue pan float not maintaining a consistent liquid level. Having issues with it letting the liquid level get too low.

Goal for this week is get my digital box wired up (stack and syrup pan temps w/ low level alarm on the flue pan), the sugarhouse cleaned, my neighbors 60 gravity taps in, and add in rest of the new taps in the vac. woods.

[sjdoyon]

First few years we had a number of lines stretched out and broken. Wasn't too difficult to see what did it, moose tracks everywhere. They now walk in our roads and we've seen them flip the laterals with their heads and walk under. Have found moose hair caught on our wet line wire/pipe from a moose going under the wet/dry lines. Had over 30 laterals chewed up and on the ground this year. Saw a black bear early December last year in the sugarbush, he did one heck of a mess.