Hi everyone, hope you enjoyed the off-season. As always, you have to wait till the last minute to get stuff ready for maple season even though you've been thinking about it since the end of last season.
• Added a 4th tank to the setup. This will be the permeate tank, and it’ll allow me to single pass sap to a concentrate tank during the day, and then single pass it again to the head tank. Still need to finish the RO piping to use the other tank.
• Doing long-needed maintenance work in the woods checking slope on near flat mainlines and swapping out PVC valves that’ve broken over the years (still a work in progress). Woods made out fairly well over the past year. Lost an end tree I need to fix though.
• Last weekend, I had to redo the PVC piping that fed the RO machine because it was all cracked…not sure what happened, so that was an unplanned repair and took up most of a day and half.
• Tanks are all cleaned and sugarhouse is ready to make syrup. Still needs a final cleaning, but at least I can make syrup.
• Still need to finish wiring the new water jacketed canner I had Bill Mason make. Been sitting half done for weeks…
• SHMF to remain about 900 taps. Everything in reach has been getting drilled for a few years now, so I’m as big as I’m gonna get.
• Greg and Sean (guys I buy sap off of) are both adding taps. Tap total coming to the SH this year UNK, but pretty sure I’ll need my swimmies at times. Plan this year is to get the RO going mid-day most every day to get a big charge of concentrate before I even get home.
Last weekend, I was hoping to get the RO going to make sure there are no issues, but that didn’t happen. Ran out of time with the plumbing work I hadn't planned on. Crossing fingers because I’ll be getting it going while I’m tapping. XX
Tapping the end of this week/weekend. Unfortunately, I’m going to miss the upcoming warm-up. My goal is to get enough trees tapped that I can start collecting sap on Saturday and make sure the woods/pump/releaser are all working fine. Even though next week looks cold, I’m sure it’ll change. Besides, it’ll give me time to make any needed repairs.
Good luck everyone and here’s to a good season!