Sugarhouse Development Day 1

More Syrup

We had a pretty nice weekend once again, with this weekend  bringing all sorts of visitors and help.

Beyond Tim, Bethany and Sonny (the usual suspects), we had a great visit from Bob, Katy, Tess, Lynsey, Steve, Barry, Matt, Wynn, Resse, Wyatt...and I think that was it, if you exclude the kids from the neighborhood who I don't know..... If I missed you and know your name, sorry :)

Friday night I started with boiling through about 930 PM just to make a dent in the 110 gallons we had sitting.  I also had Tim enrout with 50 gallons (trashcan estimate!) and my buckets had been soaking for 2 days so I know they were full. I managed to get through 

50 or so gallons which was a big help. Saturday we fired the evaporator up at 8 am and went all out. We had some nice time with visitors coming and going to check out the operation- see what making syrup is all about. I get the feeling most people have an idea on how syrup is made, but when they see it- that is when they have a new appreciation for it. You will never look at a bottle of Aunt Jemima or Log Cabin in the same way again. Those be fighting words at our house.

The picture below shows the 4 gallons and a 1/2 pint we pulled off this afternoon when we finished it. I hope to get some more pictures soon and I will post them.

We hope the season keeps going- for at least another 2 weeks or until we run out of wood to keep the fire going.  The below pictures show the almost ready syrup getting to that final temperature before filtering, and the second picture is "our catch" of the weekend.

Becca and I collected 50 gallons tonight and added it to the pot. We also had 40 from Sundays collection. Brother Tim reports a 33 trashcan full to the brim. The scary thing is we have 2 more VERY warm days before we start boiling. We may be in trouble!

More later

We bottled 4.75 gallons of finished syrup last night

Sunday....M-A-R-A-T-H-O-N Boil!

We had the longest and most marathon-type boil today. While I was enrout back from Skiing, Tim had his sap and had the evaporator fired up at 7am. It is 8:15 pm and we just got done, and we didn't even finish it. We boiled down over 150 gallons of sap, to the finish pan. Currently we have around 8 gallons of "sweet" which we will finish and bottle Monday night.

We have our work cut out for us though...The buckets are soaking and we have 40 gallons in storage for next weekend. Should be another fun weekend ahead!

More later...

Hello from Sugarloaf

Ethan and I collected 40 gallons on Tuesday Morning. We had one minor "man down" when I let a 5 gallon pail of sap spill on the road as I tried to fill the transport tank. Oh well.

Tim reports 55 gallons in storage as of today, and I hope to have the buckets emptied this afternoon and back on the trees for the rest of the week. Sap is really starting to run. Maybe this will be a make up for last year, which wasn't so great for the industry.

More later.

First Boil Complete

full steam ahead!
Tim stokin the fiyah
Fillin her up!
Gotta be level. This was not easy!
Tim brought over his load of sap on Saturday and we decided to try this bad-boy out. Loaded her up with 15 gallons of sap and started the fire. We had full-on boil in under 20 min, and we fine tuned our air venting for the fire. At about 5 PM we had boiled down about 50 or so gallons between the two of us. I think we were averaging about 10-12 GPH evaporation which is pretty darn good for our first try on wood.

some pictures are below for your enjoyment because I know I have so many loyal fans following this, LOL