Jack Frost's Last Stand

In my last blog post, I mentioned that we were planning to tap trees on Valentine's Day....



Well, Jack Frost decided to dig his ice-capped heels in deep! It was 16 degrees BELOW zero upon sunrise on February 14th and our high temp was 4 degrees....not much warmer in the days that followed, either!  Needless to say, we did not tap trees....

We finally began thawing out, for real, just a couple of days ago.



And, yesterday...WOW!...who could ask for a better day to tap trees?

Unfortunately, our fearless leader, Don, was suffering with a stomach virus which threatened to rob us of several perfect sap-collecting days.



Thankfully, while Don confined himself to bed for the day, Will, Rosie, and our good friend, Rob, tapped most of our trees.

And, not a moment too soon...we're getting crazy-awesome sap flow today!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Don is mostly healthy again, though not as lively as usual just yet.  He, Will and Grace finished up a few things out in the woods first thing this morning, and got the releaser going.  He's very proud that all his engineering feats are working properly.  

In order to overcome elevation challenges, Don and Will built four sap ladders.  Those sap ladders, plus a wet-dry line come into this thing you see below:




It's called a manifold or booster...

It's purpose is to create a vacuum "pool" at the place where 5 sap lines converge, in order to support the vacuum pump, which is 900 feet away.   In other words, it brings together all the sap from every tapped tree into the one tube that carries it all down to the sugar house! Cool!  Don's a pretty smart feller, eh?

We still have one run of trees on high-vac gravity, along with 5 or 6 bucket taps.  That sap we collect using our very handy ranger....

...And add it to our bulk sap tank!

We had a decent run for our first day!  Our RO is presenting some challenges, however, they are surmountable, so it should be up and running in a couple of days.  

Stay tuned for more on that, the process of concentrating, boiling, and (my favorite part!) bottling...


As always, we welcome visitors.  We hope to be boiling full-steam later this week, so feel free to stop by next weekend to see....and smell...delicious maple syrup in the making!  

We'll have syrup for sale as well.