Eastern Ontario 2019

[Run Forest Run!]

And I’m moving over here. Southern Ontario is a bit of a snoozer.

I know what you mean Smokeshow. Central Ontario isn't raising the roof this year either. That's why I usually post more often with my friends here in the Eastern Ontario section. They haven't kicked me out yet.

[Bruce L]

I know what you mean Smokeshow. Central Ontario isn't raising the roof this year either. That's why I usually post more often with my friends here in the Eastern Ontario section. They haven't kicked me out yet.

Naw,we look for your posts Karen,like to see how you are doing in your neck of the woods

[cowboy729]

I woke up to more snow and ice on the ground. Now the weather network is talking about up to 15cm more snow today. When I collected this weekend I still can't see the base of my tree's and there is still almost 2 feet of snow in the bush. The water in the creeks are normally running wild by now yet aren't even moving.
From my 330 taps on bags this year I have only collected 4600 L of sap. Syrup totals will be confirmed later as I finish at home where I have running water for clean up and I can put enough syrup through the filter press to make life worth while.
This week is looking like a couple of decent days to get the year finished off for me. The season will continue around here but I have to move on to other things.

[Galena]

Uh oh....I was out there in the Mammoth getting more firewood for Shack Whacky when I heard that telltale plinky noise. Yep, all my trees are wide-awake again and giving me nice clear sap....oh gawd what am I in for now?!

[ennismaple]

We are boiling again today what we've gathered since Monday. Hopefully another day - another 0.1 L/tap! Looking to get those numbers over 1.5L/tap by the end of the weekend?!?!

[PCFarms]

So I'm now officially exhausted...

We got the new high pressure pump for the RO to the sugar camp by 11pm on Friday night. We had a few challenges with getting it installed so it wasn't running until 12:30am. At that point we had 3500 gallons in the tanks at the sugar camp and all the tanks in the bush within 6 inches of running over - and 2 of the pumps had been off for 6 hours! We gathered a full load from each tank between 1:00am and 5:30am while the RO chewed through sap. By 6:00am the concentrate tank was full and we rinsed the RO. I left the camp at 7:30am and my brother showed up at 7:45 to start boiling! We boiled until out of concentrate at 1:00pm, shut down The Beast, kept concentrating sap, changed syrup pans and fired back up at 4:30pm. By the time we shut down again at not long after midnight we had made close to 0.3L/tap in a single day! Yesterday was an "easy" day with a 10:00am start and the sun was still up when we left the sugar camp!

With the best 5 day stretch in our history behind us I am no longer worried about the season. This week's weather looks good and we still have a lot of snow in the woods so we should make syrup well into next week.

I had a marathon 22 hour day on Sunday - I dont know if you heard from John, but we had a big rip open up in our evaporator back pan. There was a good leak right into the fire, we had to douse it with water and bring out the welder. 12 hours of welding later, and 4 big rips/cracks repaired, we were ready to start boiling again at 2 in the morning. I got things started and passed it over to my brother who had gone to bed early and was up at 5 AM to take over. All the tanks were full with concentrate, fortunately nothing overflowed, and 2.5 mammoth days of boiling later, we are finally caught up. This morning we noticed another small crack in the back pan - we are taking it apart again this afternoon to weld it up. I hope we can make it to the end without any major failures.

[BrutemanAl]

I pulled the rest of my taps on Sunday, collected 120 L, finished boiling that last night. I collected just over 1300 L this year, dumped about 350 of that... didn’t like the look and smell of it after it had been sitting a few days, better to be safe than sorry. I ended up with 35 L or about 9.5 gallons, wanted more but it is what it is and I am happy with what I got. Finally all of it is nice and clear no signs of niter at all, first time I have been able to have all my syrup clear and not have a bit of cloudy stuff at the bottom, so I am pleased with that.






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[Galena]

Looks great Al! No wonder we haven't seen you on here much lately. And yeah, the nitre seems to hardly be a problem this year. Interesting.

ETA: Groan....my trees have given me another beautiful crystal clear batch of sap. 42l. And I am STILL pushing that last batch of 114l. Burnin wood like snot.

[BrutemanAl]

I must say, I saw on a Facebook post in a maple syrup group... someone mentioned adding a stick of cinnamon to the bottle when bottling it, I tried it with 2 jars.... I tried a sip of one of them 2 days after bottling it, and that sip turned into a good swig of it. It tastes amazing !!! I was a bit worried so that’s why I just added the cinnamon to 2 jars so I didn’t ruin a hole batch. Depending on how much cinnamon flavour you like you could add 1/2 a stick to a full stick, I wouldn’t add more than 1 full stick that’s for sure, it would be to over powering. The jars I added the sticks to were 500 ml jars.


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[Galena]

I saw that here on MT, so I guess it's a cross-post. Sounds intriguing, maybe once this season is done I'll try it.

Thank gawd for enthusiastic clients...got one of them to agree to take the 42l I got this evening off my hands. They sugar too but their bush is all reds and they didn't want to do it this year as baby #2 came along. I am partly responsible for her name...I once half-jokingly suggested that they name a baby girl Maple. That is indeed one of her names. Yay!