MapleAcres

19 overnight. Cloudy and cold today; only 35. Wonder how the spring plants that are sprouting will fare?

Cleanup is dragging on. Mostly because we have time. Work in the woods in morning then late afternoon.

Disconnected the hoses from the R/O this morning. Then opened all the drains. Should be ready to come in the farmhouse tomorrow.

Pumped the remaining permeate water through the R/O this morning. Washed the storage tanks while that ran. Brought in the membranes this afternoon. They are now in the storage canisters with SMBS solution. They will go for professional washing hopefully in May so we get them back earlier in the year. Next big task is to disassemble the R/O: disconnect and bleach rinse hoses, drain all tanks and pumps, bring the R/O to the farmhouse.

Alternated between cloudy, sunny and snow flurries today. Temperature mid-30s.

The hands usually take a beating during the season. Wet. Cold. Warm. Burns from hot sap or fire. Immersed in cleaning solution while cleaning pans. Stiffness in the finger joints. Broken finger nails. But not this season. Hands did well. The difference may have been a different pair of gloves. The gloves were rubber coated to make them water resistant. Nothing is water proof. And the rubber coating provided additional cushioning which may have helped too. The test will be next season to see if hands also stay healthy.

Snow overnight. Just enough to make the ground white. Windy. Cloudy most of the day but the sun made an appearance late afternoon.

No woods work. Cloudy. Rainy.

Last season’s procedural error cleaning the evaporator wiped away today. Much of the nitre and scale came off while boiling the cleaning solution and water. The remainder wiped away easily today. Our pan is again the shiny stainless steel we take pride achieving both inside and the bottom exposed to fire. Lesson learned.

Into the woods at 7:30 AM to pickup the last buckets and covers. Done by 8:00 AM. Then started cleaning the evaporator. Syrup pan done by 10:00 AM. Flue pan done by 1:00 PM. Cleaned the bottling and finishing pans too. All pans are clean and stored upside down for next season.

The new MES membrane is in the storage tube. The old membrane is in a wash cycle. Expect it will need a second wash cycle.

25 overnight. Sunny most of the day with temperature in mid 50s. The pressure gauge is still on the tree. It registered -8 PSI. Trees are still moving sap. The leaves are not out yet so this makes sense.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:30 PM.

Picked up buckets this morning. The utility vehicle has low clearance. Driving over mud and ruts it got stuck. Had to get the H to hook up a chain and pull out. Did two more bucket and cover pickups late this afternoon. Still one more pickup of buckets and covers.

Tomorrow is evaporator day. Clean all the pans and empty the ashes from the arch.

One membrane is cleaned. Swap out the membranes tomorrow to clean the second.

Predicting snow for Sunday night into Monday.

And some hail. Quite the variable day for weather. Started sunny and mid 30s. Turned cloudy and windy. Then hail around 11:30 AM followed by bands of snow flurries and sun. Snow made the ground white. The sun would melt it. Several iterations of that pattern this afternoon.

Got more buckets and covers in from the woods this morning. Also prepared the new membrane storage tube. Added a solution of baking soda and water to absorb a slight glue odor. The storage tube is PVC with caps glued on the ends.

Finished all the bottling. 94 ½ gallons total.

Projected total calculated from the sap collected and Brix was 92 gallons. Most likely we under counted sap collected. Here are the calculated syrup totals.

Sap Brix Sap:Syrup Gal Syrup
Mar 2 480 2.5 34.4 14.0
Mar 4 375 2.5 34.4 10.9
Mar 8 650 2 43 15.1
Mar 13 500 2 43 11.6
Mar 17 670 2 43 15.6
Mar 24 470 2 43 10.9
Mar 26 420 2 43 9.8
Mar 30 230 1.5 57.3 4.0
92.0
Every collection was over 200 gallons with two over 650 gallons.

Remaining work:
Get all the buckets and covers in
Clean evaporator, finishing and bottling pans
Clean R/O
Tanks and floor

Back to the farmhouse by 5:00 PM

Used more wood because the first two boils we did not have the R/O working. There is plenty of wood ready to replace it. A complete woodshed full is in the yard waiting to be split and cured.

All the buckets and spouts are down. Want to flush with the hose when we bring them in to rinse out the crud.