Willow Creek Sugarhouse 2020

[Russell Lampron]

When I boiled yesterday afternoon it felt like an end of season boil, not an early March boil. It's warm again here today and I'm getting about 25 gallons per hour. It's supposed to freeze again here tomorrow night. The low for tonight is supposed to be 33 but it could get colder, I can only hope.

[Amber Gold]

Now that you have the pump wired correctly, how's the new releaser working out. I've wanted to put a meter on my pump line, but have been hesitant too

I've also wanted to put on my evap. feed line, so I can see how fast I'm actually evaporating. And firing with wood, what firing/operating techniques makes it run faster and which don't.

[red maples]

Jeff Moore put a flow gauge on their evap. a few years ago. works pretty good.

oh the releaser is awesome since I got the wiring right. I love it. (I know it was alot) but it was well worth the money. since my main tank is in an enclosed room I eliminated the outside small tank that the mechanical releaser was dumping into so I have no bugs or rain leaks or anything to get into the sap.

Boiled out everything yesterday and made only 10 gallons of syrup on 800 gallons of sap. Low sugar... not like last year's 2%. much longer RO times!!! great flavor and the lightest I have made this year. mid grade dark. wish I could get things going a little lighter. got the back pan nice and light and what's in the front pan is nice and light but with very little sap coming in worried I am only gonna have 1/2 + of crop before the trees bud if things don't cool down a bit and we get some cooler night temps. supposed to get to 31* here tonight I hope it gets colder to keep things going. but its over cast right now so holding the warmer air in place. next freeze isn't until saturday night. I hope they are wrong in our favor!!!

[Amber Gold]

Good to hear. Glad it's working well.

[red maples]

have about 250+ gallons of sap as of this morning heading to out to check things out Gonna RO it and do a little test boil to see if the flavor is still good. trees haven't budded yet so??? at least I will have some permeate if it is bad.

weird freeze here last night the colder air was up higher. the sugar house sits a little lower than my house so the remote thermo at the house was at 28.5*F but behind the sugarhouse it was 30*F and the mud wasn't frozen it was still soft. weird? so I went to bed at 10:30 and it was still 39* so don;t think it was long enough. some folks around here have already pulled buckets??? don't know why the trees are gonna get regenerated this weekend. especially since the trees are all sugars there is still time if you are tapping strictly sugars. whatever. Vac still going to keep the sap columns open!!! it will be on until the sap turns or it stops flowing or both!!!

[Russell Lampron]

I went out at midnight to turn off the vacuum pump. At that time my thermometer was showing 30*. It didn't cool down much from there. It was 28* at 6 AM. I collected 325 gallons this afternoon and left 50 gallons in the woods. The sap is coming in clearer today. I forgot to check the ssc to see if that had changed.

[red maples]

Well first of all we decided to not be open for maple weekend. It will be a big hit to us but we are figuring out ways to get product out. Crowd.control is the best way to deal with an outbreak and keeps the numbers low.

Anyway we have had some light freezes so things continue on slow and steady. I have about 350 gallons of sap to cook off today took a couple days to get it but it will add to the total. Just watching the buds daily with binoculars and plan to pull taps of those that pop. I even still have some sap coming into the buckets/bags as well.

Cleaned releaser out yesterday. Was pretty coated inside. That will hopefully help with bacteria. Low sap flow is building bacteria in the tubing need a good hard run to keep them cleared out.

[Russell Lampron]

The sap has still been coming in here too but it has slowed down a bit. I have 500 gallons plus what came in overnight to boil this afternoon. The sap has cleared up some with the help of a couple of marginal freezes. It should be crystal clear by mid week if not sooner.

I'm still planning to be open for Maple Weekend but have cut back on some of the value added products. I'm not sure what to expect for a turn out but I'm thinking that it will low.

[BlueberryHill]

I blew a pump on my RO last night so I had to spend today scrambling around and it was a good excuse for me to just put out the closed sign. Don't think I'm going to reopen again. Hopefully next year will be twice as sweet!! The risk/stress is not worth it to me and the day job demands are about to hit CAT5 levels with all of this hoopla, so it all makes it that much easier for me to just throw in the towel on syrup. Gonna still cook off the sap as long as it comes in. The evaporator never quite hums like it does when I am out there alone with her.

[red maples]

Well I posted on out town's facebook page,my website and my facebook page, the sugarhouse facebook page a picture of my price list and all the stuff I made for this year. and got about 20 orders. I Cleaned out my farm stand and just getting a ballpark time and putting orders out there so we can keep our "social distancing" so I hope I broke $1000 but haven't added it up yet. I have a few more orders for today. I figured I'd leave it up for a while see what I get.

after last weekend's freeze up SSC got back up to about 1% but was about .75% yesterday with a season low of about .6% Vacuum has been a steady 26.75 most of the season with weird spikes and here and there and its not even colder days either. Friday evening it was about 27.75 I am thinking when the trees get a good warm up they swell a little and if a tap is not seated quite 100% they are sealing? and if the atmospheric pressure changes does the vacuum pressure change? I don't know.

Like Josh said he thought sugar was bad a few years ago I have to look back but I remember it being somewhere around 72:1 for me(remember I am mostly reds and a lot of swamp reds at that) but this year is even worse. I think I have reached the average sap I ususally get but the syrup amount is way down. I would say this year is easily gonna be a 80:1 year. The amount of time it is taking to get to 15+ sugar is crazy. and then what your left with after 400, 500, 600 + gallons of sap after rinsing the sugar out of the membranes is not much have had boils <1 hr this year. I try not to boil any less than every other day because the sap is coming yeasty even try to wipe out my releasers every couple of days and wiping out tanks regularly its coming out of the tubing that way.

I have a lot of trees that are popping went around today and pulled about 25 taps of those that popped. We had wood frogs in the swamp Friday and yesterday, and I heard peepers Friday night. but none before or after that. Got down to 21* last night. I have to walk 1 more section I know there are at least 3-5 trees that popped as I saw with binoculars but need my mud boots to get to them. some trees very tight buds some trees with just swelling buds. sun is very warm guessing I am gettin really close to being done. and syrup from my boil was lightening up too finished at 38 trasmitence still tastes OK I am very finicky about flavor but my wife said it still tasted good.