Author: SugarMaster Page 1 of 97

Sunny and 70 until late afternoon. Nice weather to finish the woods work. Into the woods by 8:30 AM. Spread the covers out for the sun to dry them. Cleaned the tanks and removed the valves. Swept and washed the floors. Brought all the equipment back to the farmhouse. Wash off the bottler and filter press. After lunch, collected the covers and stacked and racked them. Disconnected the propane tank. Brought the permeate tank, collecting tank and spare 200 gallon storage tank into the syrup building. Clock and radio are the last equipment to take out of the syrup building. Brought the milk cans back to the farmhouse and washed them off. Then took the equipment into the basement. By 2:30 PM the weather started to cool and fog rolled in. Rain and thunderstorms tonight.

We need to arrange equipment in the basement, but no urgency to that. Back to the farmhouse by 3:15 PM.

This is the last snow patch hanging on from melting. It’s in the gully to the north of the farmhouse. It should be gone by the end of the day because of warmer weather and rain.

Retiring the 1944 H. Found a 2023 New Holland 35 HP tractor; the H is 26 HP. 218 hours. Front-end loader. Hydrostatic transmission. 3-point hitch. Diesel. 4WD. Actually MFWD (Manual Front Wheel drive) but all wheels pull. Wide front-end. Power steering. This tractor should get through snow and mud much easier. The H had narrow front-end that could snow plow in mud or snow.

The tractor was in Throp, WI about 190 miles away. Left at 5:30 AM. The dealership closed at Noon, so we need to arrive by 10:00 AM to give time to test drive and inspect it. We realized Cadott, WI, where we get the membranes washed, is only 20 miles further on US 29. Prepared the membranes on Friday so we could take them to Cadott first before returning to Throp. Membrane drop-off takes 10 minutes. With drop-off completed, we could concentrate on the tractor.

Arrived at Cadott by 9:20 AM. Back to Throp by 10:00 AM. Completed the tractor inspection and purchase by 11:45 AM. Lunch. Then started back by 12:15 PM. Back at the farmhouse by 4:15 PM.

Tractor should be delivered within the next two weeks.

All the pans are clean: flue, syrup, and finishing pan. Fire side and syrup side sparkle. Easy cleanup. The syrup side of the evaporator pans wiped clean without any scrubbing.

40s. Cloudy until mid-afternoon when it became partly cloudy. The sun makes it warmer while cleaning the pans.

Into the woods by 9:00 AM. Back to the farmhouse by 4:00 PM.

Sunny and lower-50s today. A good day to rinse the buckets. They’re all stacked in the garage now to dry. Saturday or Sunday we’ll rack them.

Wash pans tomorrow.

Finished and bottled the last of the syrup this morning: 1 gallon. 56 gallons total for the season. An average season for 300 taps. But there was likely 12+ gallons of additional syrup if we had collected the last two runs. We didn’t have the resources to cook it: out of wood; R/O out of service; evaporator not boiling at capacity.

Into the woods by 8:45 AM to start the electric heater on the bottler. Returned by 10:30 AM to finish and bottle. Nice color on the last syrup too. Back to the farmhouse by 12:30 PM.

Light rain this morning. We should have warmer temperatures the next few days.

Into the woods by 10:00 AM to repair the filter press hand pump. The replacement part arrived yesterday. It took longer than expected to repair because we had to disassemble most of the filter press. Spent too much time trying to pull off the hand pump connection to the filter plates. Turned out the pump connection to the filter plates was threaded: no amount of prying would dislodge it. It’s ready for bottling tomorrow.

Cold overnight: low-20s. Sunny and low-30s today. Back to the farmhouse by 1:00 PM.

No woods work. It’s Easter today. Sunny and upper-40s.

Into the woods by 12:45 PM to pickup buckets and covers. They are consolidated by the farmhouse now. We’ll rinse them with the hose before storage.

Heavy rain overnight and up to Noon. Lots of water standing in the woods.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:00 PM.

Into the woods by 10:00 AM. Disconnected all the lines on the R/O. Brought the lines back to the farmhouse where they were rinsed with a bleach solution to prevent mold during the off-season. The R/O is ready to move out of the woods when we have help to move it.

Removed the pressure vessel to inspect the defuser. The defuster is intact. We suspected a crack caused poor R/O performance. We had two new membranes. Why would they have fouled up? We’ll send the membranes for washing. They run a pre-wash flow test. If the pre-wash flow test is low that would indicate the membranes were fouled up. But it won’t tell us why they fouled up.

Back to the farmhouse by 2:00 PM.