It was down to 17 last night. It warmed slowly during the day and only reached about 35 with clouds coming in this afternoon. The sap started running slowly late in the afternoon, but not enough to collect. Tomorrow should be warmer and we are hoping we can collect.
Next week rain is forecast and no freezing nights. That has us wondering if the season will come to an abrupt and early end.
It was cold over night. Down to the low 20s. Everything was frozen up this morning and most of the day as the temperature only got up to about 33 later this afternoon. With the storage tanks empty and no fresh sap we did a bit of cleaning today.
Cleaned the syrup pan on the evaporator. The sugar in the sap starts to coat the bottom of the pan and disrupts boiling. While we are not exactly sure of the interaction that cause it, the results are that syrup is prone to boiling over even with a low fire under that pan. With a slow day we had a chance to take the pan off and clean the coating before it got so bad as to cause a problem. And we washed some of the stickiness off the floor and washed out he collecting tank.
We also brought back from the woods the finished syrup and brought four milk cans of water to the woods.
And we had snow flurries. Nothing that accumulated but after two days of warm temperatures it was surprising to see. Today turned out to be much colder than was forecast even yesterday.
We now have 144 quarts, 36 gallons, of finished syrup for the season so far.
Still too warm. It did not freeze last night. It was sunny and about 50 today. But without a freeze the sap was not running.
We were able to empty our storage tanks from yesterday’s collection. Into the woods around 9:00 am. By 8:00 pm we were done, all the storage tanks empty. We took four batches of syrup off the evaporator, but we doubled up the batches so we only bottled twice. 16 quarts around 1:00 pm. 15 quarts around 6:00 pm. 31 quarts total.
Tomorrow and Friday are forecast for freezing nights, about 25, and highs in the 40s and sunny. That is what we need. The long range forecast says rain for next week. That is not a good sign. This season may end early.
Last season we were running the syrup through the filter press twice in order to get clear syrup. That was a lot of work. We spoke with some other maple syrup producers at the annual meeting about it. We were bottling too hot. We need to be at 180 degrees to 185 degrees. We were typically bottling around 210 to 215 degrees. This was causing the particles to precipitate out of the syrup again and making it cloudy. Now that we are holding 180-185 degrees we are able to filter only once. Saves a lot of work.
It was up to 66 today. It did not freeze overnight. This is too warm for sap flows. Tomorrow is also forecast to be warm, mid 50s. Wednesday night and Thursday its forecast for more normal: 20s at night and 40s during the day. If it stays in the upper 50s without freezing night we could be ending the season early.
Water from the melting snow was running all over the place. This was the big thaw.
Out to the woods about 4:00 am again to finish up the sap collected on Sunday. We ran out of LP gas which we use for finishing the syrup and bottling. Last season we picked up an extra tank of LP gas so we should have been OK. Nope. That tank was empty. It must have leaked. So we had to make trip to the Coop to get LP gas.
We did collect. Picked up 325 gallons. Help came by 1:00 pm and we set out. Some buckets were half full to three quarters full. Others were almost empty.
And bottled 19 quarts today.
No new sap today. Working on boiling what we collected yesterday. Out to the woods about 4:30 am. Boiled all day. And the storage tanks are almost empty.
Bottled 15 quarts today. We have 92 quarts total now.
Collected 340 gallons of sap today. Started at 1:00 pm. Finished up by 4:30 pm. We had trouble with the pump again. Its getting old, over 20 years already. Fortunately we got it running again, but we may need to replace it.
And we bottled 12 more quarts of syrup today.
Things went better today. We were successful getting the pipes on the storage tank thawed. Then we boiled down the sap and emptied the storage tanks. Worked on the tractor and got it running again. Then we could get water. Today is Friday the 13th, but it sure seemed like yesterday was with everything going wrong.
It stated warming up today. We expect sap this weekend again. And we bottled 11 more quarts.
Today’s Count
11 quarts 1 pint of syrup bottled.
Into the woods about 4:00 am again. There is still sap in the 150 gallon storage tank. But it was cold overnight. And the pipes froze. Or maybe there are just plugged up with twigs. Tried a small torch to thaw the pipes without luck. Needed sap in the evaporator as it was running low. Tried to pump from the storage tanks to the evaporator, but the pump did not work either. And the tractor would not start. Tomorrow is supposed to be Friday the 13th, not today. Some days things just don’t go right. By 1:00 pm we gave up and went back to the house. It had already been a long day.
Went into the woods about 4:00 am to starting boiling down what we collected yesterday. The temperate had dropped and was already freezing everything. And it continued to drop to 12 degrees around 8:00 am. Tonight it could reach 0. As hard as it was collecting yesterday, it would have been a waste for all that sap to freeze in the buckets.
By 9:30 am we had a batch of syrup finished. Got that bottled. And kept working on getting the sap boiled through. We actually bottled two more times during the day. Stayed until 9:00 pm to empty the large 250 gallon storage tank.
Today’s Count
38 quarts, 1 pint of syrup bottled.
When the sap is ready to run, it will run. Today was rain, drizzle and fog. But it did get up to 37 degrees. Yesterday after the snow storm the sap started to dip a little because it was sunny. It did not get very cold over night and the sap must have run over night. We collected 450 gallons of sap. And we were not expecting to collect.
We did not check the woods in the morning. We went out for a leisure lunch and did not get back until about 3:00 pm. Went to look at the buckets, but did not expect there would be sap to collect. Wrong. Half to three quarters full with some running over. So get the tractor and head into the woods. It was still drizzling and foggy. No sun, but it was about 37. The snow we had on Sunday made walking in the woods very difficult. While walking from one tree to the next there were a lot of places we encountered knee deep snow. Now carry two five gallons pails of sap. It gets real difficult. We were able to get one person to come help which was wonderful.
Night was approaching and we still had trees to visit. But the collecting tank was full again so we had to go back to empty it. While waiting for the collecting tank we filled all the five gallon pails we had so when the tractor came back we would have another section of woods collected. It was about 8:00 pm and dark when we finished collecting from the last tree. But we still had to empty the collecting tank. We topped off the storage tanks then filled four milk cans yet.
And finally we had to prepare for colder weather moving in. By morning its forecast to be 20 degrees or even colder. We had to setup heating tapes and heat lamps on the pipes from the storage tanks to keep them from freezing. It was about 9:00 pm when we finally got back into the house. That was a hard six hours.
Today’s Count
450 Gallons of sap
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