Into the woods by 5:15 AM. 28 overnight. Sunny and 42 today. Snow in the woods. Trees dripping. Steam rising from the syrup building. It’s the kind of picturesque day people think about when they think of maple syrup.
Washed the storage tank first then pumped sap from the collecting tank. Got the evaporating going by 6:30 AM. Had a batch ready by 7:00 AM. The evaporator was very sweet from yesterday.
Cooked hard all day because we wanted to get the sap pushed through. Very nice syrup. This is could Grade A, Golden. We’ll grade after bottling.
Finished cooking by 1:45 PM. Back to the farmhouse by 2:00 PM for a brief rest because we had to go out collecting at 3:00 PM. Brought two milk cans of water to the syrup building when we took the tractor over.
Collected 265 gallons at 2 Brix. Trees ran well. The storage tank holds 225 gallons so we have the rest in 5 gallons pails in the building. We’ll empty in the morning as we cook. Pumped the sap into the storage tank this afternoon yet so we are ready to cook in the morning. 265 gallons is 13 hours of cooking at 20 gallons/hour.
The day cooking
7:00 AM batch
7:00 AM 16.5”
8:00 AM 14.25”
9:00 AM 12.0”
9:00 AM 15 PSI tree pressure
9:20 AM batch
10:00 AM 9.25”
10:50 AM batch
11:20 AM 6.5”
12:00 PM 5”
12:55 PM batch
1:00 PM 2.5”
1:30 PM 1.25”
1:45 PM done
Rain/snow possible overnight. Low of 30. Cloudy tomorrow.