t was cloudy until 1:00 PM.\u00a0 It hovered around 33-34 most of the morning.\u00a0 Then it cleared.\u00a0 We needed the sun to help melt ice in the buckets.\u00a0 We checked the buckets around 11:00 AM.\u00a0 Many were full, but also had ice.\u00a0 We were hoping it would melt enough to collect as we wanted to have empty buckets before the snow storm.\u00a0\u00a0 The sun did its magic.\u00a0 Once about half the ice is thawed we can collect.\u00a0 We dump\u00a0 the ice\u00a0 as its just water.\u00a0 Sugar does not freeze.\u00a0 The remaining sap is more concentrated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ice is nature’s reverse osmosis.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
We picked up 400 gallons of sap.\u00a0 More than expected.\u00a0 We can cook about 20 gallons an hour so we have 20 hours of boiling ahead of us.\u00a0 Again the R\/O machine would tremendously help us.\u00a0 It would remove about 300 gallons of water before we ever stated boiling.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It gets dark around 5:45 PM.\u00a0 We were not done collecting yet.\u00a0 But we recently picked up some strap on head lamps.\u00a0 That worked really well.\u00a0\u00a0 We should have done it years ago.\u00a0 We have tried car or truck headlights in past years, but they cast odd shadows so its still difficult to see well enough to get the bucket off, emptied and back on the hook.\u00a0 The head lamp puts the light right where we need it and keeps our hands free to work.\u00a0 We finished up by 6:45 and were back in the house by 7:00 PM.<\/p>\n
Still forecast to get a major snow storm starting tomorrow evening.\u00a0 Amounts are still changing.\u00a0 It will depend on where the cold and warm air masses meet.\u00a0 We are currently in the 5\u201d to 8\u201d zone.\u00a0 50 miles North its predicted at 9\u201d to 15\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 And there will be wind to blow around the snow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
We will most likely cook through the storm.\u00a0 We have done it before.\u00a0 It can be pretty snug and warm in the building while boiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
t was cloudy until 1:00 PM.\u00a0 It hovered around 33-34 most of the morning.\u00a0 Then it cleared.\u00a0 We needed the sun to help melt ice in the buckets.\u00a0 We checked the buckets around 11:00 AM.\u00a0 Many were full, but also had ice.\u00a0 We were hoping it would melt enough to collect as we wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-season-95"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","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=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}