Picked up 525 gallons at 2.0 Brix.  It ran into late last night.  Then started again today after the snow.

We got about 1 ½ inches of snow early this morning.  Everything was white for a few hours.   At 6:00 AM it was snowing pretty hard.  The snow stopped by 7:30 AM.   It was cloudy all day but warmed to the low 40s.   The snow melted and sap ran.  Because of the R/O we had a day off from cooking today.

 

We checked the buckets around 1:00 PM.  A lot were full.  Called everyone for collecting and headed out by 3:00 PM.   Had a 225 gallon tank full by 4:00 PM.  Started the R/O to process it while heading out for the second tank otherwise we would not have enough tank space to hold the sap.   We now have 175 gallons of concentrate at 4.0 or 4.2 Brix.  And about 175 gallons of raw sap at 2.0 Brix.  We will hold off running that through the R/O until we finish cooking the 175 gallons of concentrate.

 

And water.  We now have excess water.  That has never happened before.  Every drop of water ever used from all the past seasons came from milk cans hauled on the tractor from the farmhouse.  The R/O gives us water.  Some we need for cleaning the R/O but the rest we can use.  Or dump, which seems just wrong considering all the water we hauled over the years.

 

Tonight 28.  Tomorrow 37, but then turns colder with lows in the teens.