Category: 2026: Season 109 Page 3 of 5

Mid-30s overnight. Cloudy with light rain turning to light snow by 11:00 AM.

Into the woods by 11:00 AM to prepare the pH wash. But the yesterday’s wash cycle was still running. Only reached 110 in almost 20 hours. Not sure why. The spare membrane was from a different manufacturer that has different specifications.

We let the R/O cool for three hours before rinsing. Didn’t want to shock the sensors with cold water while the R/O was 110. Waited for it to cool to the 50s.

Swapped back the FilmTec membrane then prepared the pH wash. We got a digital pH meter to better dose the wash water. We want 11-12 pH with closer to 12 pH better. Settled at 11.6 pH. We hope the pH wash restores membrane performance. Better sap will help too.

Back and forth from the farmhouse to the woods several times rinsing, swapping and preparing the pH wash cycle. Done for the day by 4:00 PM.

This is why we have a spare membrane. After 35 minutes, the R/O stopped because it reached the maximum of 500 PSI. A safety switch engages at 500 PSI to stop the R/O. We weren’t surprised because we noticed the pressure increasing during the short time the R/O was running and anticipated it would reach maximum pressure. The membrane was fouling. The warm weather degraded yesterday’s sap, although it didn’t look or smell off. We retrieved the spare membrane from the farmhouse and swapped it into the R/O. This membrane handled the sap. It’s specifically designed for R/Os used with maple syrup. Running the wash cycle on the R/O now with the spare membrane. We’ll swap membranes tomorrow again and run a pH wash on the fouling membrane.

Into the woods by 5:30 AM. Upper 30s overnight. Windy, cloudy and low 40s during the day.

The day cooking.
6:15 Am R/O start
6:50 AM change to spare membrane
8:00 AM restart R/O
8:45 AM batch
9:00 AM 2 ¼”
10:10 AM batch
10:15 AM 3 ½”
11:00 AM 4”
11:50 AM batch
11:50 AM R/O done
12:00 PM 4 ¾”
1:00 PM 2 ¼”
1:15 PM batch
1:30 PM ½”
1:30 PM done

Syrup color changed from light amber to dark amber. The color change also caused by the warm weather effecting the sap.

Back to the farmhouse by 1:45 PM.

Upper 40s overnight. Sunny and mid-60s during the day. Into the woods by 10:00 AM for rinse cycle on the R/O. Checked a few buckets. Some 2/3 or more. We collected two days ago: Friday. Saturday was wet, cloudy and warm. Sunday was warm too. Not sap weather. But the trees will run when they are ready.

Collected at 2:15 PM. Solo. 260 gallons. Back to the farmhouse by 6:15 PM.

Cook tomorrow. Temperature returns to more normal ranges. Some snow also forecast.

Above freezing overnight. Partly cloudy and mid 50s today. Could be warmer tomorrow. Tuesday or Wednesday we return to seasonal temperatures with freezing nights.

Ran another wash cycle on the R/O.

Into the woods by 6:00 AM to cook. Thunderstorm overnight means more snow based on folklore. Cloudy with rain and drizzle all day. Temperature 54 at 7:00 AM. Dropped to the mid 40s by afternoon.

No problems with the R/O. Tried to maintain 7 Brix. We didn’t get sustained boils until we mixed maple and other hardwood with the pine and cedar. Softwood burns too quickly.

The day cooking.
6:35 R/O start
7:00 2”
8:00 4”
8:15 batch
9:00 6”
9:40 batch
10:00 6 ½”
11:00 batch
11:00 8 ½”
11:10 R/O done
12:00 6 ½”
12:35 batch
1:00 4”
2:00 1 ¾”
2:25 batch
2:35 done

Back to the farmhouse by 2:45 PM. Temperatures in the high 40s low 50s the next three days. Not sap weather.

Into the woods by 10:00 AM to run the rinse cycle on the R/O and check if the re-circulation pump starts. It did! Yeah! We’ll still monitor the pump.

We planned to collect today. Sap ran into the night on Wednesday, two days ago. Also ran yesterday. By collecting today, we got the full run. The next 4-5 days are warm again. 50s. Even a 60 in there. Nights in the 40s. There won’t be much sap, but we’ll likely dump any that does come because it won’t keep in the warm weather.

Today was cloudy and rainy. Temperature in the 40s. We wanted to avoid the rain when collecting but it was there was a steady rain at 12:30 PM when we started. Or tried to start. The wagon had a broken carriage bolt on the front axle causing the front wheels to go in opposite directions.

Got a replacement carriage bolt at the hardware store. Fortunately, we weren’t deep in the woods with a tank full of sap. That would cause a challenge because we had to move the tank to access the carriage bolt. A full of sap would be too heavy to move. By the time we finished this repair, the rain stopped. Starting collecting by 1:45 PM. Collected 310 gallons.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:15 PM.

Into the woods by 5:30 AM. Sap in the evaporate was ice. Had to fire slowly until 7:00 AM to melt the ice while not burning the pan. Prepared the R/O during this time so it was ready. Started the R/O shortly after 7:00 AM. The re-circulation pump did not start again. That was discouraging because the R/O makes an easier day cooking.

Expected the same problem as yesterday: the armature in the re-circulation pump was stuck again. Disconnected hoses. Laid the R/O down for access to the pump motor. All for naught because the armature moved freely. Reconnected everything and tried again. Now it worked. We may have been inpatient waiting for the pump to spin up. Took over an hour. We’ll monitor this pump until we feel comfortable it’s dependable. It started and stopped several times today as we changed moods form concentrating to rinsing to washing. The concern is a latent problems that reoccurs when the pump sits for longer time frames.

It was 8:10 AM before we got the R/O going. Between the ice in the evaporator and the R/O we lost 2 ½ hours of cooking. The remainder of the day was okay. We kept more sap in the pans, so it was longer between batches. Four batches into the milk can.

Ran the R/O at 7.5 Brix. At one point the R/O was producing 8.5 Brix. We adjusted the settings to reduce the Brix. The new membrane makes a difference and the incoming sap was 3.5 Brix.

About 30 overnight. Cloudy and upper 30s/low 40s during the day. Won’t freeze tonight.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:00 PM.

Into the woods by 8:00 AM to work on the R/O. Inserted the membrane then planned to run 250 gallons of water through the membrane. We purchased a new membrane.

The feed pump started, but the recirculation pump at the bottom of the pressure vessel didn’t start. Called the manufacture rep to get troubleshooting steps. We had to lay down the R/O so we could access the recirculation pump. Then used a large screw driver to turn and free the armature. Apparently, it can get stuck and not rotate. After reassembling, the Service light was still on so the R/O wouldn’t start. That was an easy fix: press Reset button on the electronics for the recirculation pump. The electronics take the pump offline if they detect a problem.

The new pressure gauge along with the mounting gaskets we made held. Still need to check how it performs when the high pressure pump runs during the concentration cycle.

30 overnight. Sunny and high 40s. Trees did drip. Collected 265 gallons of sap. It’s 3.5 Brix because of the ice we took out. Back to the farmhouse by 5:15 PM.

Cook tomorrow.

Dumped ice to make room for sap. Trees ran more than we thought overnight on Feb 27 into Feb 28. Many buckets ¾ full while some were full. It was ice now because of the cold Feb 28 to Mar 2. We estimate it was 300 gallons of sap.

On the 27^th the trees started running late afternoon and ran into the night while the temperature dropped. If we started collecting at 11:00 PM we could have collected liquid sap because the temperature dropped below freezing around Midnight. By morning, temperature was in the 20s. But it’s not feasible to collect at night: it’s dark and we don’t have help. So we got ice.

We expect sap this week. Big blocks if ice take many days to melt in the buckets. Leaving ice in the buckets meant no room for new sap. At 12:45 PM we headed into the woods to dump ice from buckets. There was some melt so we saved a pint to a quart of sap while dumping the remaining ice block. The remaining sap should be sweeter.

By 2:00 PM the sun came out. Trees started dripping. They will drip into the night again. Low 30s tonight won’t produce ice. Tomorrow should be favorable for sap again.

Teens overnight. Sunny and 30s. Checked the woods at Noon. Still frozen. We need warmer weather. 40s and even low 50s forecast this week.