Eastern Ontario 2018

[DrewCP]

Still going strong but now we have no choice...

Got up at 04:30 on Friday after working until after midnight, headed to the shack and fired up. Ran hard until I had to leave at 15:00 for a family commitment. Dad was going to run another few hours then we'd collect and finish on Sunday.
I got "the call" on Saturday night. He left 4"+ in the pan, loaded some wood, turned down the draft and went up to the house to grab a quick bite. 20 minutes later once he got close to the shack he said all he could smell was burn syrup. It boiled over and then burnt what stayed in the pan. Huge mess. Still cleaning up. We've left the pan unattended many many times. Always run into the house for breakfast and supper. Never more than 15-20 minutes. I guess the concentrate was a little hotter than he thought. Probably lost what would have been 20L of syrup.

Did a collect yesterday picked up over 400L. We now have more than 1000L in stock. It's keeping well in the shop, out of the light on the concrete floor. We added some sap ice we kept to keep it cool. We'll run through what we have this week then see what our plan is from there.

Our north slope trees have just turned on. Getting tons of crystal clear sap still.

[Run Forest Run!]

Geez, that's a rough one Drew. Good luck with the sap flow this week.

[paulslund]

Oh geez Drew that hurts I'm sorry to hear that.. makes my little "taffy" mishap seem minor.

Upon further taste testing, the sour taste is actually closer to a molasses taste to be honest.. so I think I'm going to thicken it up a bit more and use it for baking molasses cookies! So in the end I only wasted about 50 liters of sap.

I had left the barrel in a sunny area as it had frozen pretty good two weekends ago.. and then couldn't really move it. Next year I'll make sure to keep it shaded and deal with cold as it comes.. I still have two sugars with their taps in.. if I get 30-40 liters over the next week or so I'll boil it on the stove to try to make up for lost sap! Lesson learned for next year!

[cheesegenie]

Old sugarmaker told me every sugar maker will burn a pan. Still sucks, sorry.

[Galena]

Rest assured, Paul, that molasses is definitely on the flavour wheel so you're ok :-) Drew, Ah feel yer pain. Even though I asked my trees very nicely to stop running, there's still a couple gallons or so froze up out there. Guess I'll just have to keep telling them til they do stop.

My sap is frozen up out there in the pails, so making the most of this brief lull to clean the sugar shack stove and boiling pan, buck up some pallets (so much easier with the recip saw if anyone's interested) and get the fire going out there. Got the first 15l of 81l out there just starting to warm.

Inside, the house woodstove is still doing its painfully slow evap down to either syrup or dense enough nearup that I can put that huge 30l-pot on my glasstop stove to finish it, without fear of breaking the dang thing. Got masses of glass jars all lined up and will prep filters closer to the time.

Oh and Saturday I went to the new CDL/Atkinson store in Perth, 38 Dufferin (aka Highway 7) and Drummond. Small space, but they had good prices and will be open all year round, not just carry sugaring supplies 3 mths of the year like most stores do.

[Bruce L]

WOW Marty,how many gallons did you have ahead of you? Sitting on fence here,leaning primarily towards the done for season side.Last sap out of the tubing was pretty milky,kinda thick and smelled,boiled it down,still making an old medium syrup,stronger flavour but not yet buddy. Ran vacuum pump all day on one bush on Saturday,didn't pull in much sap,pretty cloudy,thought I might clear the lines out and dump,then see if a fresh run would clear up,got to the main bush and could smell gasoline before I got to the generator. Needle valve or something is stuck allowing gas to flood right through onto the ground,so will have to get that fixed before we would ever fire up again. Maple Weekend Open House here this weekend,whether to boil water,or might get lucky with sap,but it will definitely be water if sap is poor,don't want that snotty stuff going through the pans.

[ennismaple]

Bruce - I cleaned up Thursday and Friday's sap on Friday. Saturday was the first day all year we got 1 gallon of sap per tap. We ran the pumps all night Saturday because it was calling for a very late(early) freeze just before sunrise yesterday. The sap ran decent yesterday but we pushed through all we could so there was only 500 gallons or so left in the woods when it froze up last night. From Friday to Sunday we got about 3 GPT total.

Those of you south of Highway 7 have had a lot more good runs than we have to the north so it won't be surprising if you finish sooner. I know Ray Bonenberg only just boiled for the first time last week! Over the last month we had a lot of marginal days where we got 1/2 GPT and guys 15 miles to the south were getting swamped. The tiny bit of dark we've made wasn't because of the sap but because of the concentrate sitting in the pans. The sap is still very clear - the pic below is looking through about 1000 gallons of sap with the reflection of the window above shining off the inside of the tank.

Hopefully you get a few more days and can save some sap for this weekend.

Marty

IMG-20180330-WA0004.jpg

[paulslund]

Rest assured, Paul, that molasses is definitely on the flavour wheel so you're ok :-) .

Oh I'm a dope!! Didn't even think to check the flavour wheel! I'm going to print that out right now so I don't forget again..

[cheesegenie]

Washed up for another year.

[Galena]

Around 760l collected now, 75+l out there in holding. I think I'm certifiable to still be going, but I just can't stop!!! Nor can (or will) the trees. Some have slowed down but others have increased their output.