Maple Syrup 2024

[Stephen1]

Brent , the boil looks great. what kind of RO are you running. 

[DbltreeBelgians]

Good morning @Stephen1 its the components from Carl at the RO Bucket. It's been a great time saver and I've had very little issue with it. If I have any questions or concerns I email him and he replies within minutes. Can't beat that!!

Brent

[Chuck White]

Gathered another 60 gallons yesterday, it warmed up the night before and pretty-much shut the run down.

A little over 800 gallons of sap so far!

[SwampDonkey]

No one gathering around here yet. Too cold this morning for sure, down in the teens here now. Was 9° two hrs ago.

[Stephen1]

We've been boiling for 2 days now. We had. good run. 1st time we have ever boiled on Feb 29

[Ed_K]

 Finally got all the taps in and main lines tight, I still don't have a count of taps. Maybe Rita can get a count if she doesn't forget  . I now have to get the evaporator set up and build the reverse osmosis. I hope we didn't tap just to hit the close of the season.

[DbltreeBelgians]

I have concentrated sap from RO waiting to boil but I'm sitting in a waiting room at our hospital waiting for my first grandchild to be born.
Weather is so wishy washy I figure I'll probably pull taps this coming week. Calling for 70° in a few days. Looks like I'm done.

Brent

[Old Greenhorn]

WOW! Hey, congratulations Brent! Hope all comes out well and mother and child are doing ok. I hope the poppa is OK too!.  

[Chuck White]

SUGGESTION:  Don't let sap that has been processed through the RO sit around more than two days before boiling it!

When RO'd sap sits to long, bacteria will grow and most likely your evaporator will do a huge boil-over!

If RO'd sap has been sitting around very long, boil raw sap first and slowly add the RO'd sap.

If the RO'd sap has been kept "near the freezing point" you might not have a problem with boil-over!

[DbltreeBelgians]

Thank you for the kind words Tom and thank you Chuck for the advice on the RO concentrate. Maybe I'll just have to dump it as much as I hate too. It's only 30 gallons of concentrate. My loss but my daughter is priority #1

Brent 

[Stephen1]

Congratulations Brent  to everyone on the new addition the family!

[Stephen1]

Chuck , you're saying the bacteria causes more of a boil over? Would that also affect sap that has sat for a day or two? 

[Chuck White]

Brent and Stephen;
If in doubt, just blend the concentrated sap with raw sap, no need to throw it out!

We had a concentrate "almost" boil over a couple of years ago, it just kept rising, kind looked like a giant loaf of bread coming up!

We handled it and kept it from boiling over by following 3 Steps:  1. Close the draft door!  2. Open the feed door! This will put cool air against the bottom of the pans!  3. We ended up pouring pail after pail of water directly into the back pan, total about 55 gallons.

If you can do it safely, when the feed doors are open, take a shovel and remove as much fire as you can, we did, and just threw it out the door!

We cautiously resumed boiling after things calmed down!  We even salvaged the thrown out firewood!

[DbltreeBelgians]

Thank you @Stephen1 she finally arrived last night around 10:00pm.
Also thank you @Chuck White for the advice. I was about to send you a message but Stephen must've been on the same wave link as me and you answered the question for both of us. I went to the woods this morning and brought back about 50ish gallons of sap and pulled the taps.  Getting way too warm. Had several 5 gallon buckets I dumped. Nasty yellow cloudy and mildew in buckets. Mostly on South side of trees where sun was getting to them. I'll finish boiling after I get back from seeing my newborn granddaughter at the hospital.
Thank you for all the great advice and I hope your syrup is as sweet as I've made this year.

Brent

[Plankton]

Been getting some decent runs last few days. Really opened up last night and today! We have one section with 800 taps we did a fresh install this fall on that has been pretty much full pipe into the releaser since 8 ish this morning when the sun came out. Also forecast has changed here to have some freezes later this week so hopefully season wont end as fast as it started been another unusual sugar season here in w. Mass.

[Chuck White]

Congratulations Brent, on the new arrival!

[Chuck White]

Gathered another 192 gallons last evening, it broke loose the night before!

With this sort of weather, no telling how long it will last!

[SwampDonkey]

I noticed that the neighbor put up his sap buckets yesterday afternoon.

[Ed_K]

 Congratulations Brent on your new Granddaughter,  my son and grandkids came on Saturday the 2nd and they tap our trees on Sunday I think maybe 280. It ran on the ground during that day and over night, I plugged the tanks and late yesterday we had 100 gal today I'm going to show my son how to put the connections' and auto draw off together on the pans and start boiling. Hopefully we don't pull the tap on Saturday.

[Chuck White]

Due to a warm stretch, there was no sap yesterday or the day before!

We hope that today is different, we had a freeze-up last night!

[Chuck White]

We did gather 60 gallons yesterday, looks like there should be a good amount today!

[Stephen1]

We just keep gathering and have been boiling since Monday. slowed down to today in the rain and tomorrow is going below freezing all day. So we should get a day or two off. 
We bought an RO and are working at getting it set up.
 I hope I can it get it working for Monday run. 

[Chuck White]

We decided not to gather today, due to the high-wind warnings we're getting on the news.

Leaving the sap in the barrels will help hold the barrels in place!  

[Stephen1]

finished pumping up the last of the Sap yesterday and will boil it down today .Fixed a bunch of branches down on the lines from the wind. 
I will keep setting up the RO. We need to build an insulated box for it as our barn is only heated by us with a wood stove and the evaporator.

[Chuck White]

Went down and gathered sap this morning, we got just about 160 gallons.

It has been a nasty day here, started out with misty rain, then it turned to a mix with snow, now it's just snow!