MapleAcres

Into the woods by 5:30 AM. Temperature started dropping after 1:00 AM. Then snow flurries and it continued getting colder. 25 at 5:30 AM. 15 By 10:00 AM but it did get sunny.

First task of the day was investigating the pipes into the evaporator and why they ran slowly. Took them apart and discovered the ¾” pipe that runs down the side of the evaporator was obstructed with leaves, bark and twigs likely going back years. We clean it by flushing water after each season, but it doesn’t have enough pressure to flush out the sediment.

Made a makeshift snake to clean the pipe. It had a lot of stuff. This picture is after discovering the blockage. A lot more came out. The pipes are now clean and we expect it will flow freely.

While cleaning the syrup pan, we started investing the R/O temperature display and monitoring. Yesterday during the wash cycle it unexpectedly shut off twice. We saw a light on the display we didn’t recall. Unplugged the R/O and check the circuit breakers. All looked good. After restoring power the light was out. The manual doesn’t provide documentation on the display so we called our equipment dealer. While waiting for a reply, we ran a rinse cycle. Worked as expected. It’s possible all is well and we just reacted to unexpected behavior.

It’s now 9:00 AM and we tried to run a concentrate cycle. The pipe from the tank is frozen. It was warmer at 5:30 AM and the pipes may not have been frozen then yet. We had a heating tape on the pipes, but it wasn’t wrapped well enough to keep it warm. Spent an hour trying to thaw before realizing we could skip cooking today. We aren’t getting sap for two or three days and it’s cold enough for the sap to keep. We actually deployed the sinking tank heater into the tank to keep it from freezing tonight when it gets into the teens. And we re-wrapped the heating tape on the pipes to better warm them. We’ll still likely need to thaw pipes in the morning but we’ll start earlier.

We expected an easier day but did expect to cook. But we did fix the pipes running slowly so that’s a win. Back to the farmhouse by 10:30 AM.

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.

25 overnight. But the trees ran into the night before it got cold. Sunny and 45 today. Trees ran well today too. We had a big run and picked up 470 gallons.

Into the woods by 9:00 AM to bottle. We aligned the pipes from the tanks to the evaporator while the syrup was on the finishing pan. We’ll see tomorrow if that resolved our problem with the flow into the evaporator.

After bottling we ran the rinse cycle on the R/O and cleaned the syrup pan so we are prepared for cooking tomorrow. We have about 10 hours of cooking tomorrow. Plan to get into the woods by 5:00 AM.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:30 PM.

Into the woods by 9:00 AM to bottle. Finished by Noon. 33 overnight but the puddles are still frozen in the morning so the ground is still cold. Sunny and low 50s today. Trees did drip. Hoping to collect tomorrow.

If the season ended right now, we’d have 2/3 of a crop. We have approximately 50 gallons now, but not all bottled yet. We expect 75 gallons. There is still some favorable weather ahead so we’ll press on, but it may be smaller incremental runs.

16 overnight and down to 13 at dawn. Sunny and up to low 30s. No woods activity. We did check the evaporator because we left the valve run yesterday. The evaporator could hold it all, but it’s more than we normally do. We’ll need to cook about and hour next time before we can start drawing from the tank.

Into the woods by 5:00 AM to cook. It took an hour to clean the syrup pan. We accounted for that time when planning our day. But we had unexpected problems cooking that set us behind. We expected to finish between 11:00 AM and 11:30 AM. But didn’t finish until 12:45 PM when we just left the valve open to run sap into the evaporator and went to the farmhouse.

The sap was restricted from the tank into the evaporator. It looked like a good stream, but it wasn’t enough to gain sap depth in the evaporator. We had to reduce the intensity of the fire to accommodate the reduced flow so we didn’t run low on sap and burn the pans. Checked for obstructed pipes by disassembling the pipe sections to check for blockage. Looked good. After studying the situation, we’ve concluded the pipes from the tanks to the evaporator are misaligned causing low points that force the sap to flow uphill. Liquids don’t like to flow uphill. We have to reposition the large storage tank to level the pipes and eliminate the low points. We move the large tank when washing. That can cause it to get out of alignment. It didn’t help that the valve on the concentrate tank wasn’t completely open. It was about 7/8 open. With normal alignment it wouldn’t be a problem. We’ll correct these issues before the next session of cooking.

The day cooking.
6:30 AM R/O start
7:00 AM 4”
8:00 AM 7 ¼”
8:05 AM batch
8:30 AM R/O done
8:50 AM batch
9:00 AM 7 ¾”
9:35 AM batch
10:00 AM 6”
10:20 AM batch
11:00 AM 4 ½”
11:20 AM batch
12:00 PM 3”
12:20 PM batch
12:30 PM 2 “
12:45 PM left for farmhouse

34 overnight, but puddles again frozen indicating the ground is cold. Temperature dropped as the morning progressed. It was 25 at 12:45 PM and felt much colder with the wind chill. Cloudy all day. Snow flurries by 1:30 PM for a few hours.

Picked up 10 gallons that dripped overnight in good running trees. Added that to the tank for cooking today.

Back to the farmhouse by 12:45 PM.

Into the woods by 6:00 AM to cook. Finished by 12:45 PM.
The day cooking
6:30 AM R/O start
7:00 AM 3”
8:00 AM 6”
8:30 AM batch
9:00 AM 8”
9:10 AM batch
9:10 AM R/O done
9:55 AM batch
10:00 AM 6 3/4”
10:40 AM batch
11:00 AM 4 ¾”
11:20 AM batch
11:50 AM batch
12:00 PM 2 ¾”
12:30 PM batch
12:45 PM 1 ¼”
12:45 PM done

28 overnight. Low 50s and sunny. Warmed up fast again. But cold weather is forecast again for the next thee days. Tomorrow doesn’t get above freezing and lows in the teens. Saturday and Sunday are also cold. But next week looks promising again.

There was sap last night and today. Not a lot, but with the forecast cold weather it’s better to collect it because liquid today, ice tomorrow. And we’d have ice in the buckets for the next 3-4 days.

While finishing cooking we washed the tanks. Picked up 190 gallons. We’ll cook tomorrow, but it will take a good hour in the morning to wash the syrup pan. We couldn’t get a head start on that because we had to finish cooking.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:30 PM.

Collected 235 gallons but we expected more based the freeze/thaw from yesterday and today. The trees are dripping, but slowly. There is still frost in the ground. The recent cold weather may have refrozen the ground and locked up the water again. It was 33 overnight, but ice on puddles indicate the ground is cold yet.

Warmed up quickly this morning. Up to mid 50s and mostly sunny. Into the woods by Noon to check about collecting. Its been six days since we last collected and we wanted to get the sap that’s there. It looks good.

Back into the woods by 1:00 PM to wash the syrup pan and tanks. It took an hour to clean the syrup pan because there was a thick layer of nitre. Glad its done so we can get started cooking in the morning without the delay to clean the pan.

Back to the farmhouse by 4:30 PM.

20 overnight. Sunny and mid 40s today. That cold spell impacted the trees more than expected. It’s taking time for the trees to recover. They are dripping now. Should dip into the night. Hopefully we can collect tomorrow.

We have six milk cans. Five are brushed stainless steel and one is shiny (304) stainless steel. We use the shiny can, number 2017, for transferring finished syrup from the finishing pan to the bottling pan and the other five cans for batches of syrup from the evaporator as we cook. To better manage the syrup, we wanted to number the milk cans. Sometimes we want to finish and bottle in a different order then we then we filled the milk cans with batches from the evaporator. Rather than assigning a generic number scheme like 100, 101, 102, etc. we stenciled on the year we acquired the can. Now we have a unique numbers on the cans so we can manage them better.

4 overnight. Sunny and 40 the day, but trees are still recovering from the cold spell. Checked the woods at 1:00 PM, but not much activity.

We’ve made syrup for many years, but there are still small innovations that we discover like long reach matches that make work easier. They are 8” long. It’s much easier to light the burners under the finishing pan and bottling pan. The kitchen matches were 2” long and tended to burn out before all three burners were lit.