Red Roof Maples 2019

[Russell Lampron]

I collected another 400 gallons tonight and could see that my coldest section was running the best that I have seen it run this season. The other two sections were running good too. I haven't gotten half of the sap that I got last season yet but I've made more than half of the syrup that I made last year.

The ice on my haul road is breaking up which makes getting the sap up the hill a challenge. Usually the ice breaks up in early March and I'm driving through mud in April.

[red maples]

nah don;t need that much perm to wash 4 inch membranes.

[Russell Lampron]

I had another good night in the sugar house last night and made another 16 gallons of Dark. My season total is at 119.5 gallons with a long way to go to reach last seasons total and 1 qt per tap. Thankfully the sap has been sweet and I've been able to make a lot of syrup with what I've been getting. It was at 1.8% last night. The forecast doesn't look good after tomorrow. There's a lot of borderline lows that could turn into freezes here though so there's hope.

The ice on my haul road is breaking up bad and last evening I broke a big hole through it. The tractor dropped down into it when it broke through and I didn't think I was going to get out of it. I did finally finesse my way out and got back up the hill with 275 gallons of sap in tow.

[Dill]

Same here Russ. I've been getting about 4 degs colder then the forecast so I"m hoping another week. Heck I had slush in the releaser yesterday morning. And my trees are just kinda running or walking really.

[red maples]

too bad mine has been spot on except for last night was supposed to get to 32 which could go either way but ended up at only 35. that doesn't work.

[Russell Lampron]

It was 31 when I left for work this morning and the mud by the sugar house was frozen. It probably got into the upper 20's in the coldest part of the woods. I got 325 gallons of sap today and should get a good run tomorrow. After that who knows?

[Russell Lampron]

I collected another 325 gallons last evening and left about 50 gallons in the woods tank. I did the first pass on the sap from Thursday and yesterday last night and will do the second pass this morning. I don't know how much came in overnight but will bring that up and get it through the RO for a boil this afternoon.

Right now it's looking like I'll end the season in the 150 gallon range which will be about 40 gallons less than last season. That's with about 5,000 fewer gallons of sap. I collected 12,660 gallons last year and am at 7,115 right now.

The things that have helped are the higher sugar content in the sap this year and the RO not passing any sugar. I was using an NF-270 membrane to speed things up and there was always about .3% sugar in the permeate. I did that for 5 or 6 seasons and don't know how many gallons of syrup I didn't make because of it. I should have added the second tower to my RO years ago. I was always thinking bigger when I should have been thinking just get faster and worry about getting bigger when the time comes.

[Hop Kiln Road]

.3% sugar would be 35 gal of syrup per 10,000 gal of sap?

[Russell Lampron]

I collected 425 gallons of sap today to add to the 650 that I had collected Thursday and Friday which gave me 1075 gallons for this afternoon's boil. I made 16 gallons of syrup to put me at 135.5 for the season. The sap is still coming ij and the vacuum pump is still on. I'm hoping for one more boil before I call it a season and finish the evaporator.

I finally found and fixed a nagging vacuum leak that I knew was there but couldn't find. It was about six small holes in a mainline that weren't near any fittings. I don't know if an animal did it or if it was from a shotgun blast. This section of mainline is real close to my neighbors house and right behind mine. No one should have been shooting there.

[Russell Lampron]

Just went down and turned off the vacuum pump to give it a little break. It wasn't supposed to freeze here last night but it did.