Into the woods by 6:45 AM.  Back to the farmhouse by 4:45 PM.  400 gallons of sap collected yesterday all cooked today.  Topped off one milk can.  Filled another milk can.  One batch into a third milk can. We were taking a batch off the evaporator every 45 minutes.  Eight batches total.  Past years it was about an hour between batches, but taking the sap to 7° Brix makes a difference.

 

Started the R/O by 7:45 AM.  Finished by 12:45 pm.  Should have finished sooner but did not have the high pressure pump adjusted properly.  We needed to make an additional turn on the handle controlling pressure.

 

The transfer pump worked better today.  Placed food grade grease on the threads and washer.  This helped seal hose/pump connector.  We use food grade grease to seal the O-rings on the R/O so using it on the transfer pump was worth trying.

 

Froze overnight.  Upper 30s and cloudy all day.  Dripped a little later in the day.

 

4”-7” of snow forecast for Monday night into Tuesday.  We’ll see.  March storms are hard to predict.