Willow Creek Sugarhouse 2016!!!

[sugarmaker94]

Just a suggestion, you probably have your sight tube all figured out by now but if you have a dairy supply dealer close by milker hose would work good. It's 5/8 in. and shouldn't be too expensive

[red maples]

yes I had a piece of 3/4 inch left over from when I plumbed my filter press. just put a plug in the top and drilled small hole. there was too much air movement in there and if I needed to add extra sap and moved the float for a minute if the tank was more than 1/2 full it would pop out the top when it equaled back out. but works great love the stainless SOOOO easy to clean. just need one more small stainless tank under the releaser and I am all stainless for sap but that will have to wait I need a cream machine and candy machine first!!!

All buckets I think Are pretty much done at least for now.

vac sap has slowed but still coming in pretty good considering its been above 57 degrees for some time. should have about 300ish to boil tonight.

[red maples]

Well its still trickling in I hope tomorrow night is enough to get things going again. then as far as the forecast is concerned there are no freezes until maple weekend if the sap doesn;t turn and the trees bud we might be OK. as for right now I am less than 1/2 of a crop. probably at 50 gallons including whats in the evap. blahhhhh... fingers crossed!!!

[Russell Lampron]

Well its still trickling in I hope tomorrow night is enough to get things going again. then as far as the forecast is concerned there are no freezes until maple weekend if the sap doesn;t turn and the trees bud we might be OK. as for right now I am less than 1/2 of a crop. probably at 50 gallons including whats in the evap. blahhhhh... fingers crossed!!!

I am now at 94 gallons which with the taps that I have now is a little more than 1/2 of a crop. I need to make 175 to be at 1 qt per tap and need to make over 135 to do better than I did in 2012. I don't know how much sap is in the woods tank right now but I only need 200 gallons to make 3 gallons per tap from this run that started Tuesday.

[red maples]

Wow thats pretty good russ... I am pretty close to 2.5 Gpt for this one. only managed about 150 gallons today. hope its a good freeze tonight!!! There is a slight chance of a freeze on Sunday night... it says 35* but thats pretty close.

[Russell Lampron]

Since my last post I have gotten 450 gallons more which puts me over 3 gpt. Pretty sweet for 1 run! The sap is still coming in until it freezes. It's a little cloudy now so maybe my syrup will darken up. I'm hoping for a good freeze tonight to get the trees recharged.

[red maples]

Boiling tonight? or saving it for tomorrow? 3nights in a row. I have to say I would rather be boiling but it is nice to have a night off. This weekend we start with confection for next weekend!!! a little each night this week hopefully I will be almost ready to go. then I have off on Friday to finish up. No all nighters this year for me!!!

[Russell Lampron]

I'm saving it to boil tomorrow afternoon. It will be nice to do an afternoon boil for a change.

[red maples]

Didn't run as much as I'd hope for yesterday... need a few of those freezes in a row to keep things going only managed 150 gallons yesterday. still have to collect buckets. lots of bugs around already too. Sorry to say I heard the first peeper yesterday it went for about 45 seconds and stopped. buds are swelling... a slight possibility of a light freeze tonight then nothing for a while after next week end it looks like the are going on averages. I know things can change but OH well... thats how it goes when you are a slave to mother nature. Sometimes she can be a @#$@#$

[Russell Lampron]

The sap ran good here yesterday. I got 600 gallons by 6 pm and it was still coming in good. It didn't freeze last night so I'm sure that there is a good amount of sap in the tank this morning.