December Journal 2018

[spud]

Congratulations General on your new baby. Truly a gift from God during this Christmas season. I hope you get a .6 again this year. I'm so jealous. haha.

Spud

[wnybassman]

Took a 4-wheeler ride down to the property yesterday and saw that I still had 80-100 gallons of frozen water in the milk tank. Went down this afternoon and carefully got that ice out of the tank while it was somewhat warm out and not stuck to the metal. I feel better about that!

Also, eyeballed most of the tubing and saw no major damage to repair before the season. I'll walk all the lines after the holidays checking for chews and other damage, and put new taps on all the drops at the same time.

Made about 10 pounds of sugar yesterday too

[maple flats]

I'm doing some work around the sugarhouse, will tap that first, then between Christmas and New Years we start doing the lease. If all show up, I have 4 "volunteers", my oldest son, my oldest grandson, a close friend of my oldest son (he is working this year on my maple just to learn, then next year he wants to start his own) plus my brother in law. That's the most help I've had in about 4-5 years, back when I hired 3 college kids, all good workers from tapping thru the end of maple season, working around their classes and study time.
The extra help will be great, the lease did not get tapped this past season, thus it has 2 years worth of damages/trees/branch down. That in addition to changing the vacuum set up at the lease. Before it was on a vacuum tank and was held to 19" to protect the vacuum tank. This year I'm putting a double vertical releaser and swapping the pump from an Alamo 30 to an Alamo 75-100. Taking the 6.5 HP Honda off it and swapping it to a Honda 9HP? (270 CC). Going from 1 gas tank 4.5 gal to 2 at 4.5 gal each. Would like to get 400+ gal of syrup, time will tell.

[wnybassman]

Spent a few hours in the main woods and got all the new taps installed on the drops, roughly 140 there. Along my pump-out pipe to the road, I have it attached a pretty large black locust tree that has really taken on a lean the last couple years. The roots around the tree really move during the wind and it is a matter of time before it comes down. I REALLY need to move this pump out line to a post or something on the other side of the tree so when it comes down it won't take the pipe with it. Because you know it will happen at the worst possible time! I'll have some time right after the first of the year to get that done.

pumpout.jpg

[Russell Lampron]

I finally finished cutting and splitting wood for my OWB yesterday. I'll finally have a chance to get into the woods next weekend and start getting ready for sugaring season. After a slow start the sales for the month picked up and this is going to be one of my best, if not the best ever.

Merry Christmas!