There is a rhythm to boiling sap. Stoke the fire. Bring in wood from the wood shed. Check the boiling and add wood. Check the sap level in the evaporator and adjust up or down as necessary to keep a good boil. Check the sap levels in the tanks. Keep an eye on the evaporator to see if any almost syrup is ready to come off.\u00a0 Wash.\u00a0 Rinse.\u00a0 Repeat.<\/p>\n
So we are watching the sap level in the storage tank. We had about 180 gallons to pump in yet from the collecting tank and were watching the storage tank draw down so it we could add it. About the time the storage tank was nearly empty a batch of syrup was ready to come off.\u00a0 This is normal and usually not a problem. We setup the pump for the storage tank.\u00a0 Got ready to draw off the syrup. Stoked the fire once more. Now the syrup is ready to come off. Needed to pump more sap into the storage tank so we had enough fresh sap for the evaporator.\u00a0 Started the pump. Nothing. Checked that values and all connections. Nothing coming through. Meanwhile that syrup must come off the evaporator or it will burn. In the 30+ years we had the stainless steel pans we have never burned them and don’t want to start now. But we can’t take the syrup off until we have fresh sap. Now we have a problem. The sap froze in the collecting tank drain spout. Find a gas torch. Fire it up to warm the pipe. Finally the pipes open enough for the pump to work. But the syrup is getting close. We let the fire die pretty much to hold back the syrup from burning. Finally the pump is moving sap into the storage tanks. Now we can draw off the syrup. But we have to cut it back some with fresh sap because its gotten to far along. The syrup comes off. The pumps are working. But the rhythm of our cycle is shot. All our tasks are out of sync. The fire is low. And we have to start again to establish our rhythm. <\/p>\n
And southern Wisconsin got about 13\u201d of snow. We only got a dusting. Welcome to Spring.<\/p>\n
Today’s count
400 taps
40 quarts of finished syrup
A dusting of snow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a rhythm to boiling sap. Stoke the fire. Bring in wood from the wood shed. Check the boiling and add wood. Check the sap level in the evaporator and adjust up or down as necessary to keep a good boil. Check the sap levels in the tanks. Keep an eye on the evaporator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2008-season-91"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","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=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mapleacres.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}