Adirondack case guy
Well-known Member
We started gathering sap at 9:00 this morning, 8 of us. One cousin stayed in the sap house and lit the boilers.Today was the first that we gathered since Tuesday the 17th. During that period we had to lite maintainance fires twice to keep the evaporator pans loaded with sap from freezing and rupturing. Fires were just enough to thaw them out. We still had a brass shutoff valve on the storage tank lines split open and had to replace it.
In the bush to day we didn't collect a lot of sap as the buckets still had a lot if ice in them. We pour the liquid sap into our gathering buckets and then dump the ice in the ground. The gathered sap is very sweet as the sugar doesn't freeze at the same temp as water. We got out 4 275gal loads before a Thunder Storm rattled through and soaked everyone other than my uncle and me. (sure is nice to sit in a heated cab). HeHe. The guys are still gathering on snow shoes. We were hopeing to gather the whole bush today, but it was a lot of work for the amount of sap we were getting. My cousin Mike was pushing the evaporators today figuring on more sap, but we had to shut them down around 2:00 because the sap was getting low. We had to literally put the fires out with snow so we wouldn't burn the pans, after the last batch was drawn. He was able to pull off 26gal of syrup today.
After we shut down I headed for home down the farm road, and all the melting snow was running down the road and washing it out so I decided to pull over in the field and divert the water to the ditch along the road. Well I found a "slow spot", and the uncle had to pull me out with the MFD loader tractor, and then he opened up the rest of the ditch down to the bottom of the hill.
The rain continued on during the afternoon, and it is now turning to snow again.
The weather forcast isn't looking to good for makeing syrup for the next week.
Loren, the Acg.
In the bush to day we didn't collect a lot of sap as the buckets still had a lot if ice in them. We pour the liquid sap into our gathering buckets and then dump the ice in the ground. The gathered sap is very sweet as the sugar doesn't freeze at the same temp as water. We got out 4 275gal loads before a Thunder Storm rattled through and soaked everyone other than my uncle and me. (sure is nice to sit in a heated cab). HeHe. The guys are still gathering on snow shoes. We were hopeing to gather the whole bush today, but it was a lot of work for the amount of sap we were getting. My cousin Mike was pushing the evaporators today figuring on more sap, but we had to shut them down around 2:00 because the sap was getting low. We had to literally put the fires out with snow so we wouldn't burn the pans, after the last batch was drawn. He was able to pull off 26gal of syrup today.
After we shut down I headed for home down the farm road, and all the melting snow was running down the road and washing it out so I decided to pull over in the field and divert the water to the ditch along the road. Well I found a "slow spot", and the uncle had to pull me out with the MFD loader tractor, and then he opened up the rest of the ditch down to the bottom of the hill.
The rain continued on during the afternoon, and it is now turning to snow again.
The weather forcast isn't looking to good for makeing syrup for the next week.
Loren, the Acg.