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.

















                   

How Interesting!

This photo was taken on February 3, 2014....

This one was taken on February 1, 2015...















And these are from today, February 6, 2016....

I find it quite amusing that my son, Nathaniel, moved back to south-eastern PA, in part to escape the snow, and he's the one who got two feet of it last weekend!  

Definitely not a typical winter for Central New York.  Guess we're going to learn how an atypically- warm winter with much less than average snow (annual average over last decade is 90.5 inches!) affects sap production.... How interesting!  

The past two weeks we've been working steadily to get ready, knowing that we are going to have an early maple season compared to last year, in which the sap didn't flow until...March 6th!

March 4, 2015!

Last year we were tapping trees in 3 feet of snow and temperatures in the teens.  Poor Rosie didn't have snowshoes last year!  Her grandparents gave her a set for Christmas and she didn't even get to break them in this year.


Now, we are supposed to get a few inches of snow in the next week, but nothing even remotely close to last year's conditions.  And, we're expecting to have our usual mid-February "deep freeze" that will last only about a week.







We'll continue our preparations...



Wiring the lights in the sugar shack....

                               Bringing the sap mainline down to the sugar shack....

                                                               Cleaning out the bulk tanks and setting up the releaser....

This week we'll place the RO in the sugar shack and plumb it into the feed pump...

                                                                                                                                                                                    And, hopefully, we get to test out the whole system with the little bit of sap we're collecting from the high-vac gravity line and 5 or 6 bucket taps we have around the house.

Looking at the monthly forecast, we are planning to tap the bulk of our trees next weekend...Valentine's Day!  Nathaniel's coming up for a visit, so we'll have an extra pair of hands, and this mama will be happy to celebrate Valentine's Day with a home-cooked dinner and special dessert for the whole family!

The sweet good-bye of winter is on it's way, My Friends!

Bit by Bit....

The Roman Emperor Hadrian, while building the Roman Empire, once said "Brick by brick, my citizens, brick by brick."

And, that about sums up our preparations for maple season.

Sunday, Jan. 24th, 2016

Last March, while wrapping up our maple season, we, quite literally, had no idea when, or if, we would have another maple season. We knew we didn't want the hassle of collecting sap in totes and hauling it to someone else's property to be boiled and bottled, but we weren't exactly sure how we were going to update our own equipment and make our operation more efficient.








Little did we know (and I'm very glad we didn't!) that we would experience a devastating fire in May and would be totally replacing most of our equipment and building a new sugar shack!








All things considered, it has worked out well. Back in July we found a great deal on the perfect-sized evaporator and arch for us, along with a storage tank, some bulk barrels, and few little "extras" that are proving quite handy.

In August, we built our sugar shack.  

And, it just so happened that this summer, Will's employer was getting rid of a slew of commercial-grade metal shelving that will be extremely useful in keeping us organized during maple season! Don't 'cha just love freebies!

Don injured his knee mid-autumn, which slowed us up a tad.  But, bit by bit, on the weekends and their days off, Don and Will, with Rosemary's and Grace's assistance, have gotten us closer to that magical moment of "READY, SET, FLOW..."!





Having worked with a very modern, "technology-everything" producer last year, we knew we wanted a reverse osmosis (RO) machine. It can cut boiling time down by two-thirds!  Now, we weren't looking for one with all the bells and whistles, like hers. Unfortunately, however, even a used RO machine the capacity we'd need costs, roughly, $5,000. Upon taking a closer look, though, Don determined that he could build one - a simple and straight-forward version, for a fraction of that! He and Will spent many-an-evening pouring over information on the web, as well as looking at various schematics shared by those who've done it. 



Don diligently seached and found the best prices on each component and ordered from various websites, as there is no "kit" for such a project. (Hmm, could be onto something there...)  

Over the past 5 weeks he has gradually taken over our office/schoolroom. (Good thing the girls do most of their lessons in their bedroom or at the kitchen table!)

It's not finished, yet, but we're getting very close!

As I mentioned before, we are a DIY kind of family....

Actually, whether by necessity or choice (both, really!), Don has become King of DIY...so, he reveled in this challenge, while all I could do was pray and have faith! (I'm definitely no mechanic or engineer!)






As of this blog post, all of our main lines are up, "sap ladders" have been created to overcome some elevation challenges in the sugarbush, the sugar shack, the tanks, the evaporator and arch are ready, the releaser is just about ready to set in place, and plenty of wood has been chopped to keep the evaporator boiling hot.

One of three "sap ladders" in the sugarbush

Running more main line to accommodate over 200 new taps.

The RO machine will take another evening or two to complete, and we need one or two days of 35-degree weather to run the lateral lines from the new trees to the main lines.  Today is turning into one of those gorgeous winter days, so they'll surely get some of that done this afternoon.  Then, we tap our, roughly, 650 trees and wait for the sap to flow!

In addition to the start of maple season next month, William will begin his 4-week internship for his automotive technology program in mid-February, and I begin cosmetology school! 

It's going to be a very exciting month on many fronts, so keep following for updates from Westbrook Farm!

Gearing Up for Maple Season!

Straight-up ICE on our road into the sugarbush!

Folks from Central New York can often be heard saying things like:

"If you don't like the weather now, just wait ten minutes!"

And:

"This is where all the clouds gather to live out their last days."

This weekend was no exception to either quote...It has been VERY cloudy lately, and in a matter of 48 hours we went from snow showers... to 38 degrees and rain... to an icy mess...back to snow.  Today showed up with sunshine... and, as my kids would say, a "snot-freezin'" wind!
We won't even see 20 degrees here...

This is today.  I couldn't quite capture the fierce wind in this image!

As maple syrup producers, however, we really can't complain, because we need a good freeze for the next couple of weeks....makes for a better maple season when that regular freeze/thaw cycle begins as spring approaches!

So, this weekend, while the crazy weather prevented our visit to family in PA, it didn't prevent our preparations for maple season 2016!

Instead of driving a truck or tractor into the woods to a bulk tank, and pumping sap into a 200-gallon storage tote, we're running tubing all the way down to the sugar shack, streamlining our sap collection.

In this photo, Don and Will are stretching the high-tensile line and checking the grade of the slope.  Tubing will be added later this week.








We're also adding about 200 taps this year, bringing us up to around 650 taps.
Our sugarbush is a giant web of aquamarine!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

In addition to adding tubing, we also spent some time in the sugar shack, setting up the evaporator and adding the stovepipe through which we will soon sweeten the air of our neighborhood...literally!





On a good day, anyone within a half-mile of the shack who has a functioning olfactory system will know when we are boiling, as the scent of burning maple, ash and apple wood mingled with the sweet aroma of hot maple sap drifts through the air....Mmmm, mmm!












Here, the guys lined the evaporator's firebox with fire bricks, designed to concentrate the heat where we need it.  They added fire blanket to the edge to seal the heat inside.



Then, Don, Will and Rosie carefully placed the main syrup pans on top.

 In this photo, Don is cutting the hole in the roof for the stack.
















And, here is the finished product from the outside:

We will do a "test boil" with water in the next day or two, just in case we need to tweak anything.  We have a few other crucial things to do in the coming weeks...

Priority #1:  Build our reverse osmosis machine!  We have all the parts...

Stay tuned for our progress!  Please pray that we get it all completed before the sap starts to flow. We're getting really close, and who knows exactly when the season will begin with our crazy weather this year.

While our on-line store is closed for the next couple of months, we still have several quarts and pints from 2015. (An excellent vintage!  Syrup will not "go bad" so long as it is in airtight jugs or jars.) Don't hesitate to stop in or call - I don't mind shipping it to you, either!

Stay Warm, Friends!