November is here and it will be sugaring season for some of us in just a couple of months. For me it will be February which is in about 3 months. I'm finally starting to get some stuff done now that I have recovered from a hernia repair last month.

I bought a new filter press for the coming season and had a chance to try it out yesterday. I ran about 16 gallons of commercial syrup through it and it never slowed down. The syrup wasn't very dirty so it wasn't a real test of what it will do with dirty syrup, but so far I'm impressed.

I also bought a syrup refractometer and tested some syrup samples with that. I think that it will speed up the density adjustment process over using the hydrometer and Accucup.

I've got a 10 wheeler load of gravel coming tomorrow to fill in a wet hole in the lower driveway to my sugar house. I'm hoping that one load will be enough but will buy as much as I need to get the driveway built up. That should make it a lot easier to plow the snow and get the tractor and sap trailer in and out when the frost comes out of the ground.