Did not freeze last night.  Cloudy.  Windy.  Snow flurries today.  Up to 34.  Tonight down to the teens.  No new sap.  Spent the day cooking.  Or trying to cook.

 

Into the woods by 8:15 AM.  We washed the syrup pan last night so we were ready to go this morning.  By 9:00 AM ready to run in sap.  But the flow was restricted.  We thought frozen pipes so used the propane torch on the elbows and other places sap may accumulate and freeze.  Flow still restricted.  Got the pipe wrenches to take apart the pipes looking for obstructions like trigs or bark.  Reconnected and tried again.  Still restricted.  The obstruction had to be by valve because we could get sap at other joints.  Took off the valve.  Struggled to get that off.   Did not feel any obstructions.  Blew into and out came the obstruction.  Reassembled the pipes and got back to cooking.  This problem took two hours to resolve.  We lost about 2 ½/ hours cooking time.

 

About 3:30 PM we started filtering and bottling.  Needed to be done, but lost more cooking time.  Bottled 24 qts and 17 pts.

 

At 6:00 PM we started the R/O to empty the large storage tank.  About 125-150 gallons of concentrate to cook tomorrow.    We filled a milk can with syrup today.   Back to the house by 8:15 PM.