Billion Drops Sugarbush

I have been away from the website for some time now and it’s time to catch up. January is the time of the year when the preparation for sugaring begins ramping up. Now is a good time to do so when the temperatures have been so cold lately.

This winter I am building a mini evaporator so we can do mobile cooking and mobile demonstrations when time allows. I will be posting the progress with photos soon.

In the meantime, “thank you” all who have been involved and keep warm. Please check back on Facebook or here on our website.

We will be bottling from our bulk storage. The 1/2 gallon size has been a popular size and ran out this week. Please be patient and there will be more available soon. Thank you everyone for visiting!

I Thought it was over on Thursday when my sap buyers ended taking in any more sap. Still, my trees still yielded 325 gallons on Friday. I concentrated it up to 16% (about 29 gallons) and put it in freezer storage for now. Today they were on another run since it froze again last night. I stopped with the vacuum early this afternoon. There is nowhere to go with the sap, so I returned 130 gallons to the forest. I have the evaporator acid cleaned to a shine. I’m not going to fire it up for a small cook.

I am now making plans to build a “miniature outdoor wood fired mobile evaporator”. It will have many conveniences. These include an automatic level float valve and automatic finish pan feed & draw valves. It will also have a digital controller. The entire unit will run on a 12-volt battery. It will be used for finishing up at the end of the season, demonstrations and small batch syrup cooking. It will be handy for things like making 29 gallons of 16% concentrated sap into about 5.4 gallons of syrup…anywhere!

So… this season… 12,840 gallons total, on about 850 taps, a new record!

Every 2 to 3 days the spring storm fronts keep coming through. We are at the 9,300 gallon sap point as of now. looks like it will be a good sap stretch up through the 11th. Temperatures are forecast to bounce below and above the freezing point.

To catch up, sap gallons stand at about 8000. I hope to get to the 12000 gallon mark but it has slowed down after a record week. Last Friday and Tuesday the runs totaled about 950 gallons. That is well over 1 gallon per tap in about a 10 hour run! We are about 3000 gallons behind from last year at this time.

Tonight and tomorrow I’ll fire up the cooker since the feed tank is concentrated up to about 15% sugar and full.

First of all, I would like to thank Jeremy for getting on a fast project for me. He promptly Sheared and broke up components for a new flue pan. I then performed the welding and finishing here at my shop and completed it in a long sixteen-hour day! I decided to go back to a traditional flat bottom divided pan. It is easier to clean in place when it gets a buildup of solids and sugar sand. The original “drop tube” flue pan did perform more efficiently. It was a better application for an open top cooker, which it originally started out as. My current set up is now all enclosed, so it was much more involved to remove the pan for cleaning. There are more fabrication pics in the “photos” page.

Moving on… We began our first cook officially on Friday March 14th. All equipment is running smoothly!

Today is also the first day of spring,( March 20th) It’s the “March Equinox”…equal day and night. Below is a photo taken here yesterday of the last day of winter. Looks like Old Man Winter has proven that for sure!

Finally, check out the “photos” section again to see a video of our upgraded vacuum pump project.

Yesterday was a mild day and the trees are beginning to awaken. All the lines are tapped in and flushed, so we started to collect the first 325 gallons of sap to begin the season.

Today on the other hand it has become very stormy, and temperatures are dropping. It is a good day to get inside chores done.

This is the forest trail behind our home today.

The latest cold spell is almost behind us now so today (so since it warmed up to 20 degrees) we drilled another 50 taps in. Total taps in so far are about 725, with roughly 150 left to go! The forecast is calling for a daily increase in temperatures now so perhaps by Tuesday all taps will be drilled in, lines flushed and we’re ready to begin collecting sap. we’ll see what happens and I’ll keep the posts updated. Thank you everyone for checking back!

It is February 7th, and winter has settled in again with subzero wind chills and single digit temperatures. Last week’s warm up allowed me to drill in over 500 taps.

Tubing replacements and repairs are at an all time high. There was more squirrel damage than ever this year so with that said there will be a lot more squirrel control efforts in effect. Don’t let their cute little faces fool you…these little critters can do a lot of costly damage in a short time!

It is nice to get a jump on things with the lack of snow and pleasant weather. Snow accumulations are about 5″ with another 3 to 6 coming on Saturday. It could be one of those years where the snow may pile up in the next couple months, so the sooner taps get drilled in the better! After all the taps are in it can snow as much as it likes.

Check back soon, I think I have the bugs worked out of the vacuum pump, so I’ll post an update on that.

January 27th is the official day we started drilling holes. It is the 2nd year in a row that the weather is indicating that spring is coming. The new vacuum pump is completed and ready for service. Forecast is calling for above average temperatures through The week so it’s time to take advantage!