Making Syrup
It’s been hectic! But worth it.
I got back from 12 days in Florida visiting Justin and my mom. We had a great time but while I was gone the sap started running and Gerry was left to figure stuff out. It’s always a struggle to get all the trees tapped and under vacuum. I helped get the trees tapped but Gerry was left to start the vacuum pump and it didn’t go well. The pump would start up and then quit when the vacuum reached 12 inches of Hg. We talked on the phone and Gerry spoke to the factory technician. I suggested to Gerry that he look at the moisture trap float since that would tell the pump to stop. He looked at it and said that he couldn’t see anything wrong. The tech said that we probably needed a new controller. $1700! So he picked one up. When we tried it the problem stayed the same. Luckily they took it back. Whew!!! We found that the moisture trap float was “stuck”. After shaking it around everything started up! Yea! That was on Wed.
We let the pump run all night and collected 2200 gallons of sap by morning. So we had to scramble to start up all of the other equipment. The RO started OK. But we had to flush out all of the lines using socks to collect the crud that grows in the pipes over the summer. Then we discovered that our line running through the ceiling and upstairs was cracked! It must have not been properly drained so the water froze. This caused liquid to run down the ceiling and walls which we had to clean up. We replaced the cracked section of line then discovered that there was crack further back. More liquid drips through the ceiling! We fixed that section and then got started. While fixing this leak the ladder I was on slid out from under me. The rubber foot was missing! Luckily I was holding onto the wall and caught myself. Only some slight bruising on the ribs.
Other than some minor leaks we were then able to start up without much difficulty. The only problem after that was with foaming of the keg of beer we made. (our first batch). Turns out that the size of the tubing from the keg, the tubing length and the air pressure is extremely important. So we had to deal with foamy beer for the first night. I just ordered the parts we’ll need so next week we should have our own draft beer at the sugarhouse!
We boiled all of the sap we generated and got things cleaned up by about 10:00 pm. I felt like I had been beat up! So I took Friday off and caught up around the house.
We’re ready for the season to start. Hopefully we’ll do as well as last year.
Namaste