The sweet perfume of a sugar bush
A sugar bush in the fall has a beautiful odour of crisp leaves that have begun to fall to ground, the smell of the assorted trees mixing togeather to produce the seeds being sown for next years crop of young saplings. Combined, all create an amazing perfume that is indescribable and is something to behold. It is the feeling, it is the ora, the majesty and the favorite time of year of mine to be outdoors in what mother nature has worked to create for eons. It belongs to the annals of life. The bush comes alive with the stirings of creatures gathering food for their winter hardships to come. Its is full of the sound of mating rituals, arguing hiararchys, and the distant cries of migrating birds. The feel of the chill in the air of the northern winds send goose bumps up your arms and across your neck. The sight of wood stove smoke gently drifting across the canopy awash in brightly painted leaves, sparks an awe inspired smile on ones face. It takes on a new strata of meaning for one and all. Just being able to expirence it is one of the greatest things that my forefathers could proudly pass on to me, and I accept it with my own sense of wonder and respect. I love it ! Fall is to me the best times of my life. How humbling it is to see this magical transformation from the interior of the artisans studio.
Well in a few weeks David will be on my door step and the Vac shack will be renovated to facilitate the vacuum tank and pump. I am looking forward to this as Dave has not really got a chance to see what is going to happen in the bush side of operations yet. Fear not we will be ready for spring in the lines department. Its the evaporator side of things that has got me thinking. We have an old 2′X6′ arch and two 2′X6′ flat pans that my grandfather had set up from his years in the buisness. The trouble is he was retired had all the time in the world to boil and didn’t really worry about efficency. We on the other hand can’t run like this! To add to my delema when I went to move the arch into the sugar shack the bottom and all the fire bricks fell out. I was bummed out but to tell the truth not too much because it was the first real hurtle I am faced with and it is easily fixed, Just requires some time. Anyway I have the parts I need coming and will have it operational in a few more days. The pans however are a problem. We only have flat pans which are used for the finishing of syrup. We need what is called a flue pan. Aflue pan has a series of small channels that the sap falls into in the bottom of the pan, and it protrudes into the fire below to increase the boiling surfaces and therefore increase efficency. I priced one out and they’re not cheap. I also have been hunting for a used one and have had no luck so far. But we can still make syrup it will just take longer thats all. I plan to build a stand for one pan attach a couple of propane burners for our finishing pan. The other pan will be the evaporator. It will need a hood so I am going to talk to Keith Brown on what I could use for a temp hood and if I have to I will build one. So that is what has been happening around St JOE Gotta go.
Enjoy Mike
Sap to Syrup Business Plan
Alright so I’m sitting here, procrastinating really, getting ready to write a business plan for our Sugarbush.
There’s been a lot of stuff happening in recent days. Mike and Steph (Mike’s fiancee) have successfully cut split and piled 15 cords and wood which will be our fuel this year. This is a definite load off my mind. Mike keeps me really well-informed but I still feel a little apprehensive as I haven’t seen anything, Mike still is not taking any pictures. (I think he wants it to be a surprise)
I have the daunting task to write the entire business plan for the Sugarbush. This is going to help us organize everything that we need in order to push forward. It’s also going to solidify the plane both Mike and I have.
It still doesn’t mean that I am going to enjoy this, I’m written business plans before and boy do they ever take a lot of effort, but I guess that’s why they’re worth it.
alright I’ve killed enough time doing this.
Boiling it down
Do you wonder why maple syrup is so expensive? Well the reason that it’s so expensive is because a great deal of energy goes into making it. Below is a video that shows exactly how much wood it takes when you fire boiler. We fire one side of the boiler at the time this way there’s minimal heat loss.
we put about that much wood in the archway every 15-20 minutes, that means that we are firing the boiler every 7-10 minutes. This is of course depending on the different types of what and how dry it is. This year was a bit of a disaster as we ran out of wood and had to spend some of the time burning some not so dry popular.
Mike stumbled across a great website called http://www.woodheat.org This website is full of information in regards to firewood. My favorite part of the website is the energy per air dried cord or in thousands of BTUs. This gives a list of the most efficient types of firewood to use.
I thought that the best wood to use was iron wood, I might have the wrong name for it though. As I can’t find it anywhere in Ontariotrees.com. it’s very dense wood that doesn’t grow very large, it has kind of a flaky bark as he gets older. Maybe somebody can help me. The bark looks a bit like Black Ash when it’s older, but I don’t think that’s right.
