Red Roof Maples 2017

[Russell Lampron]

I got the afternoon off from work. After pumping my woods tank I set out chasing leaks. I'm sure there's still some small leaks to find but I'm at 26" now which is what I have my regulator set at. I finished flushing the lines and started saving sap at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. I now have 460 gallons for tomorrow's first boil of the season.

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[Dill]

Good news Russ!

[Russell Lampron]

I just knocked on some wood here, literally. I stepped on a piece of wood on the floor of the sugar house while trying to open the cupola doors and landed flat on my back. If that's the only thing that goes bad this year that will be great. I'm okay this morning other than a scar on my knee from hitting the evaporator, the back is doing fine.

Everything is going smooth here. The best surprise is that the membrane in my RO is flowing good. It was practically clogged solid at the end of last season. I washed and rinsed it 5 times before the final rinse for storage last spring. It sat in the RO soaking in permeate for the rest of the off season and I think that probably made the biggest improvement. I bought a new membrane and was hoping to make enough permeate to flush it if the old membrane wouldn't flow.

My first boil went well last night. I got the pans sweetened and made 3 gallons of great tasting golden syrup. It's looking like it will be a good sap day here today.

[red maples]

awe-some sounds pretty good except for the fall. but sometimes when that happens... no one saw! didn;t happen!!!

[Russell Lampron]

Came home from work today expecting to find the tank full or close to it. Instead what I found was no vacuum in the releaser and the first moisture trap was full of sap. I checked the float rod and vacuum lines on the releaser and all looked good. The only thing that I can think of was that the releaser wasn't sitting quite level. I leveled it up and watched it fill and dump and it worked like it was supposed to. I hope that was the problem. I'll know when I go down to pump the tank in the morning. It wasn't a total loss for the day because I did get 325 gallons before the malfunction. The sap was running pretty good when I came back up to the house at 6:00.

[BAP]

That's frustrating Russ. At least it sounds like you didn't loose the whole days run.

[Russell Lampron]

I went down this morning to pump the tank if it needed it and there was only 50 gallons in it and the releaser was 3/4 full and froze up. It looks like it got cold sooner than it was supposed to and the releaser didn't malfunction again before the sap stopped running. That all adds up to a better sap day today than it originally would have been if we didn't get the freeze.

[red maples]

well it wasn;t supposed to freeze here but we got it fairly early last night everything was frozen at about 10:00.

[Amber Gold]

Glad to hear you made it through the digger with nothing more than hurt pride!

I always struggled with those mechanical releasers. I found they took a lot of work to make them work well consistently. Aside from my float issue, I've been extremely happy with the electric releaser...downside is you need electricity.

[Russell Lampron]

well it wasn;t supposed to freeze here but we got it fairly early last night everything was frozen at about 10:00.

It only froze down in the woods here. It never got below 35* up at the house.

Glad to hear you made it through the digger with nothing more than hurt pride!

I always struggled with those mechanical releasers. I found they took a lot of work to make them work well consistently. Aside from my float issue, I've been extremely happy with the electric releaser...downside is you need electricity.

I was glad that I didn't hurt my back when I went down. I hurt it last summer and was pretty much out of commission until October.

I leveled the releaser front to back and side to side and it is working good now.

I made 12 gallons of golden last night to put me at 15 gallons of golden for the season so far. I will be boiling again tomorrow night or Sunday. I've got about 450 gallons of sap and more coming in. The weather looks good for next week.