Today was cloudy, snowy and rainy.\u00a0 Into the woods by 8:00 AM for a day of cooking.\u00a0 Cleaned the front syrup pan before staring the evaporator.\u00a0 Then we had to boil down the sap in the evaporator before we could start on the tanks.\u00a0\u00a0 The evaporator got quite full the previous evening.\u00a0 It was 11:00 AM before we could start on the tank, which was full with 225 gallons.\u00a0 We got a nice fire going and were able to keep up a good boil.<\/p>\n
We are also cutting down our firewood.\u00a0 We should have 3 foot lengths but a lot of the wood in wood shed is 4, 5 or even 6 feet.\u00a0 Two things happen with the longer pieces of wood\u00a0 (1) more heat goes up the stack and (2) it blocks off the air flow of the evaporator.\u00a0 With the 3 foot lengths were are able to get nice sustained boils for 15 \u2013 20 minutes.\u00a0 But its more work handling the wood to cut it to size.<\/p>\n
Used the tractor to get water in the milk cans.\u00a0 Brought back 4 milk cans full.<\/p>\n
Around 11:00 AM it started to snow.\u00a0 We got a dusting of wet snow before it changed over to rain around 1:00 PM.\u00a0 By 3:00 PM it had stopped raining but it started again about 7:30 PM.<\/p>\n
By 9:20 PM the tank was empty.\u00a0\u00a0 We were in the house by 9:30 PM.\u00a0 All our tanks are empty now.\u00a0 We are not expecting sap tomorrow as its forecast to be in the 50s with no freezing tonight.<\/p>\n
Here’s how the days boiling went.<\/p>\n
9:00 AM\u00a0\u00a0 22\u201d
12:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 20 \u00bd\u201d
1:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 18 \u00bd \u201c
2:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 16 1\/2\u201d
3:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 14 1\/2\u201d
4:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 12 \u00bc\u201d
5:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 10 \u00be\u201d
6:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 8 \u00bd\u201d
7:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 6\u201d
8:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 4\u201d
9:00 PM\u00a0\u00a0 2 \u00bc\u201d
9:20 PM\u00a0\u00a0 empty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today was cloudy, snowy and rainy.\u00a0 Into the woods by 8:00 AM for a day of cooking.\u00a0 Cleaned the front syrup pan before staring the evaporator.\u00a0 Then we had to boil down the sap in the evaporator before we could start on the tanks.\u00a0\u00a0 The evaporator got quite full the previous evening.\u00a0 It was 11:00 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2011-season-94"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}