Spring Harvest 2020

[red maples]

yep... warm temps also concerned. too amny more days like yesterday and the season is over for sure. I am hoping things change but we can't control the weather even with vacuum holding steady @ 26.75" I didn't pick up much on the over night. bucket taps are dry. once things warm up a bit today should get sap moving on vacuum. I am just about 1/2 crop right now. even with the low sugar in the raw sap. Ha just pulled off my first deer tick also a sign of the warm up. went from no moths on sunday collection to a bunch yesterday and this morning. I hope the cold comes back trying to stay possitive... good luck every one!!!

glad to hear your doing good Amber!!! lots of sap from what I saw on Facebook!!!

[Amber Gold]

SSC sucks. Down to 1.3% yesterday. I liked last season when it averaged 2%...

Sap flow is good. Typical night has been 2000+ gal, but it’s only meaning like 30 gal of syrup. Sugarhouse could be cleaner

Over the weekend, I mod’d my releaser discharge piping. Eliminated the brass check, added an external spring check, eliminated the air vent, and pump is working fine. This eliminated a large air leak right into the releaser. I wanted to switch out the float type pump switch with the continuity switch, but for some reason, the changes I made to the piping, seemed to have affected the ground for the switch. I was dry running it without it being connected to the pump, and relay was tripping when it was supposed to, but now it’s not. All I did was take out a brass check valve that had PVC piping on both ends…not sure how that affected the ground.

RO running…meh. Still getting about 2C/6-7P depending on sap temp. Membrane seems to be fouling up quicker than it should be.

Since Saturday, vac has been holding steady at 27”. I found a couple hollow trees, so I removed those, plus some squirrel chews. I think this is the best vac levels I’ve had before. I think the pump deadheads at 27.5”, so it’s about all she’s going to give.

This week, I have to take Friday night off because I have meetings in the North Country and won’t get back till late. I think that’ll be a good time to do an acid wash. It’ll give me the 24hrs I need.

Not many cold nights in the forecast…

[red maples]

Now getting crappy sap here. very cloudy. no freeze since the weekend. not good!!! maybe a freeze tonight but might not be enough. SSC really tanked here. but hard to tell with warm sap even with a bigger sap hydrometer.

[Russell Lampron]

My ssc was at 1.5% yesterday and went up to 1.7% today. I was surprised and had to check it twice to make sure I was getting a good reading on my refractometer.

[Amber Gold]

Kind of failing on my thread this year.

Last week went well overall. Boiling every other night with around 2000 gallons. With SSC as low it is, and my desire to boil concentrate in the upper teens, I like a lot of sap before I fire it up, so I can boil for 2-3 hours. With last week’s warm weather, getting yeasty sap upped the defoamer use. Syrup is still grading out at a DA with %T in the mid to upper 30’s. Everything in the sugarhouse is working out well. After Thursday’s boil, I did an acid wash. After using 1 lb of citric acid, I got the pH to 2.5 and let it sit until Saturday morning. I gained 0.5-1gpm on the permeate side…typically running 2C/7-7.5P at 400 psi with sap in the 40-45F range.

Friday, I had to go to the North Country for a couple of meetings, so I didn’t get back till late. Got to the woods late morning because my handy, dandy camera never showed much sap flow. Turns out, my tank was overflowing…burns me to lose sap. Frost came out of the ground, so the back corner was a couple inches lower…wonder how much sap I lost??

The low SSC is requiring me to recirc in the concentrate tank for a bit before I can send it to the head tank. Further delaying my lighting the match.

Sunday, I finally got the releaser switched over to the continuity sensor float switch, and I like it. The float system has been working fine all season, but once I plugged the float string hole, I gained 1-1.5” of vac. out of the vac pump…getting 28”+ at the releaser now. So for the past X years, that little hole has been costing me vac…

Good freeze last night, so hopefully that gets the trees running good again. Sunday’s sap run was pretty sad…~0.5gpt in 24 hrs. Taking tonight off to relax. Now that Maple Weekend is cancelled, just need to make syrup.

[Amber Gold]

Still boiling every other night. Sap flow is decent, but not great. With the cold snap last weekend, the sap did clear up nice.

SSC got as low as 1.0%, but then hit 1.1% with the first run back from the freeze, but now back to 1.0%. I'm hoping I can stay above 1% for the rest of the season. It's taking forever to get it up to 16%+ concentrate.

Last night, I made about 30 gal of syrup with a TC of 33% with a strong flavor. Even though the sap cleared up, it still takes a bit to get the new sap completely through the evap.

Processed over 25,000 gallons of sap so far this season. If we can keep going through next weekend, we should be about 35,000 gal which will get us to our record from 2018 of 35,208 gal, and that's with losing a sap seller this season. Syrup production this year is north of 300 gal, but south of 400...pretty sure. Actually, looking at my 2018 records, I thought the 2018 season's sugar was bad, but this season is far worse.

As Dill said yesterday, it was a magic vac day. I didn't think it was possible, but the vac gauge was stuck at 28.75-29" all day. I didn't think it was possible. Since covering the float string hole, the vac has been 28"+...loving it!

Sugarhouse is rolling smoothly. H2O sent me a new recirc pump, so putting that in this weekend, and see if it helps with flow rates. Membrane's not flowing as fast as I'd like, but it is what it is at this point I guess. I think I'm going to spend tomorrow doing soap washes before I start concentrating. Benchmark tests are now around 11.7gpm on the permeate side when I started the season at about 13gpm +. I haven't been able to get it back since, even after the acid wash.

[Russell Lampron]

My vacuum had been sitting at 26.5 for most of the season. It's been a needle width above 27 for the last 3 days.

Hopefully the new recirc pump fixes your problem. I was hoping that the acid wash would help.

[red maples]

Hope you are still going a bit. Sap is turn here due to reds. probably is over there too. you could pull reds and keep going with sugars thats probably where the majority of your ap is coming from anyway. good luck!!!

[Amber Gold]

Hey Guys,
I meant to keep my thread updated last week, but then never got to it, and then all of a sudden, the season ended on Saturday. We still had decent sugaring weather, but the trees never really ran well, and then the flavor headed south. Hauled the last of the sap to the sugarhouse last Friday, boiled it Saturday morning, and finished the pans Saturday afternoon. Season summary email in the works.

Russ, sap flows were OK, but never got back to where they were during at the start of the season. I'm going to use all the wash soap I have left and just keep running wash cycles and see what I get them up to. From there, I'll decide if I send them out for a professional wash.

Hope everyone's doing well.

[Russell Lampron]

I ran 3 soap wash cycles on mine and did the final rinse for the season. For the second year in a row my flows never dropped off so I didn't do an acid wash. I'm not sorry that I called it a season when I did even though it looks like there were 2 more runs after I called it quits. The sap was still coming in clear and it was still running good but NC was calling. I finally got to meet my new granddaughter and am happy to be with family in this time of need.