Collected 240 gallons today. Trees ran all night because it didn’t freeze. This is part 2 of the big run from yesterday.
Into the woods by 5:00 AM. Needed to cook down the level of the evaporator before starting the R/O. A challenging day cooking. The pipes are aligned but the stream into the evaporator is still weak. We are cooking faster than the stream can keep up. We used the stainless steel bucket from bottling to scoop concentrate into a 5 gallons pail then added to the evaporator as needed. It allowed us to continue intense firing but it adds yet another step to the workflow. We were adding two 5 gallon buckets approximately every 1 ½ hours. We plan to take apart the pipes tomorrow to check for obstructions. It’s hard cooking this way.
By 11:00 AM it became clear we needed to collect. The weather turns cold tonight: into the teens. And only 25 tomorrow. Liquid today, ice tomorrow. Started collecting at 3:00 PM. But we weren’t done cooking. We would have finished by 5:30 PM, but collecting interrupted that. Finished collecting by 4:30 PM. Then back to cooking. Finished by 7:15 PM.
The day cooking
6:45 AM R/O start
7:00 AM 1”
7:20 AM batch
8:00 AM 2 ¾”
8:20 AM batch
9:00 AM 4”
9:15 AM batch
10:00 AM 5 ¾”
10:10 AM batch
10:55 AM batch
11:00 AM 7 ¼”
11:55 AM batch
12:00 PM 9 ¼”
12:40 PM batch
12:40 PM R/O done
1:00 PM 10”
1:40 PM batch
2:00 PM 7 ½”
2:30 PM batch
2:45 PM collecting
4:30 PM done collecting
4:45 PM 6 ¾”
5:55 PM batch
6:00 PM 3 ½”
6:30 PM 2 ½”
6:55 PM batch
7:00 PM 1 ¾”
7:15 PM done
Back to the farmhouse by 7:30 PM after 14 ½ hours.