Holiday season 2010
It’s amazing how close to the end of 2010 we are. It seems like a big stressful race to December 25 but we will all get there. I myself am looking forward to spending time with family in Ottawa this year and that is the important thing.
I have been pretty busy with packaging maple syrup for the festive season. Maple syrup is the perfect Christmas gift. It is hand made with care from natural ingredients and is renewable. Sounds great to me!
The season always seem to come so fast but it is also gone just as quickly.
Enjoy it while you can.
Dialed in – 2010
Well it is starting to get a bit colder these days, November is right around the corner and that means snow is not far away. I use to hate this time of year, the long winter was just around the corner and it seemed there was nothing to look forward to until July and August when you could finally go swimming again.
That was before I caught the maple syrup bug, now I look forward to winter because it means we are only a few months away from spring ( I know I am jumping the gun a bit).
It also means that the holidays are just around the corner which is a busy time for maple syrup gifts of the season. For now I am just waiting until the first snow before I start thinking of that.
Until then I am going to be thinking of having the operation dialed in.
When everything is running just right we call it being dialed in. The wood fire is perfect. The temperature of the concentrate is slowly rising. The flow into the evaporator is set just right to match the steam coming off the rolling boil . The temperature outside is in the magic zone. But best of all someone else is splitting firewood.
A new member of the family
Mike and I are very happy to announce that we have a new Maple Syrup Producing buddy. This is our 14’ x 4’ Lapierre / Waterloo / Smalls Evaporator. This is quite a step up from our little flat pan and Mike and I are very exited about getting it rigged up.
The reason it took so long to get this thing out of the truck were these stupid little wheel wells which sat about 4” off the bottom. They where a constant battle with all the equipment, let that be a lesson for renting a 26’ Uhaul.
We had a great time picking it up in Owen Sound, driving down to Tobermory and making the crossing to ManitoulinIsland on the fabled ferry Chi-Cheemaun.
Here is a little video of our first born, Cheers:
Thanks to Roger Garside for helping up get this as quickly as we did.
Song “St. Joe’s” by The Dave Chapman Relief Fund.
The New Bloor Street Festival – 2010
I had a great time at The New Bloor Street Festival this year. It being the first year I did not really know what to expect. I wanted to get a place right on the corner of Russet and Bloor right above Hair Wave where our old apartment was.
It was great to talk to some of the people in the neighborhood. When I was living up north I didn’t know that there was a community in Toronto, I always thought that people kept to themselves and were distant to each other. Dominic at Hair Wave was, I think, the first person to teach me how vibrant and friendly Toronto can be. It was sad to hear that he would be closing his doors only one week after the festival was finished, after being there for 31 years.
The New Bloor Street Festival was put on by two great chaps Dougal Bichan and Sid Bruyn. I watched them running back and forth all day long organizing every little detail. There were also lots of great volunteers helping out. They did an amazing job and I can’t wait until next year. I wonder if they will still call it “New”?
We also had a chance to chat with some amazing people at the Starving Artist Waffle Booth. If there is one thing on the planet that goes perfect with maple syrup, it is waffles. We provided them with some of our very special Dark Syrup and it seemed to be a real hit.
There were ton’s of interesting people stopping in to say hello. One of them was a member of the Toronto Beekeepers Co-op of Toronto. They told me about a really cool plan to tap the trees in the parks of down town. Dufferin Grove park, right near my apartment, has about 20 or so really nice sized Sugar Maples most of them double or triple tappers. I think it is an amazing idea! The more sweat nectar of the gods we can get the better. This year they were able to tap silver maples and red maples but the city would not let them tap any of the sugar maples. Kind of makes you scratch you head but……. there you go.
All in all it was a great time and it gave me a chance to talk Maple Syrup with everyone who wondered by.
Raccoon Dance
This gift was made from a video shot right in front of the sugar bush. He is mocking you Mike!
I want to be on Wipeout
So I am applying for this game show called wipe out. The grand prize is $50,000 so that will help us expand the sugar bush.
I think this is going to be great. Check out the video I submitted for it:
Cheers
Wanted poster
Hey Mike great post on the new scourge of the sugar bush. I agree Completely:
Some Posts to Recipes:
http://www.ma-eppc.org/morerecipes.html
http://www.fosc.org/GM-Recipe.htm
I love what these guys are doing:
A New Enemy In Our Midst
A new enemy has emerged for Maple Syrup producers. It sneaks into the sugar bush without the producers knowledge, it takes hold of the precious nutrients in the soil and slowly kills the team players will to produce sap, it multiplies rapidly and without warning, before anyone can do anything the invading army has imposed its will upon the land. But its edible.
I am refering to the invasive species, Garlic Mustard. In the recent weeks a few articles have described the new found threat discovered on St Joe that has the Maple Syrup industry worried. Garlic Mustard is an edible plant brought over by European settlers for gardens and has since escaped the boundaries of rock and wire to roam freely about the province.
It seems garlic mustard produces toxins that contaminate the soil hampering the trees ability to grow and produce sap, at the same time multiply rapidly to out compete the native vegetation. After a few years the area invaded is dominated by the plant. It is a tough one to get rid of because of the fact when the plant is broken or cut off it is able to regrow quickly below the cut line and when left to its own devices can produce large amounts of seeds and destroy the ecosystem invaded. The seeds can remain viable in the soil for up to 5 years.
I haven’t had chance to do any patrols in the sugar bush yet but rest assured if any of these edible little devils make an appearance in Sap To Syrup’s slice of heaven they will end up in my kitchen.
Maple Producers Beware
Enjoy
Mike
World Cup
It is great to live in Toronto during world cup. This city is so unique in the fact that there are people from all around the world in every corner of the city. You could not help to be part of it as cars drove around honking, waving flags of the victorious country.
We at sap to syrup are very exited about the world cup this year. Until Canada makes it to the world cup we want to get into the spirit by rooting for a team. This year we are rooting for Italy which play there first game today against Paraguay.
Good luck Italy sap to syrup is rooting for you.
Schedule:
Italy vs. Paraguay - 14 Jun 2:30pm (ET)
Italy vs. New Zealand - 20 Jun 10:00am (ET)
Slovakia vs. Italy - 24 Jun 10:00am (ET)
We would love to hear who you are rooting for, let us know.
UPGRADES ON THE WAY
Hello folks
With firewood done for the year and the setup in hibernation, Dave and I have been relaxing as much as the off season allows. But it won’t last long. We have acquired some things to upgrade the operation. There should be some interesting posts coming up.
Enjoy
Mike
Lead testing part II
I have given each company I emailed some time to respond and here are the results.
The first person to email me back was Dave Lachance from lead inspector, he responded on the weekend with the following:
“hello dave,
thanks for the email and your inquiry.
the kits would be great to test the solder for lead.
regards,
dave lachance”
Not a huge response but it was a positive one, he also responded the quickest.
The second response was from Jennifer McIntyre from homax who simply emailed me back that they no longer carry this product.
Other than that I have not heard from anyone else. As it stands now I am ordering the Abotex lead inspector but I will continue to look for other ways to test for lead.
If anyone has information they think would be helpful please feel free to leave a comment.
Lead testing part I
Mike and I are in the process right now of upgrading our equipment so that we can bring more of the sweet nectar of the Gods to you.
The problem with a lot of the used evaporator pans out there is that they are lead soldered which is considered to be a health risk.
We want to provide our consumers with the best quality product that we can so I thought I would post some of the research that I have done in this respect.
First I found this great consumer report.
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/safety/2007/10/testing-the-lea.html
It rates 4 different lead inspectors and how they work, the following is taken from the consumer reports website:
“Homax Lead Check, $8
Lead Check Household Lead Test Kit, $18.45
These two kits consist of cigarette-shaped swabs, made by the same company, that turn pink when they detect lead. They were the easiest to use and identified accessible lead in toys, ceramic dishware, and vinyl or plastic. If lead concentrations are low, these swabs can take up to two hours to change color, but in our tests high concentrations produced immediate results. The eight-swab Lead Check Household Lead Test Kit pack is a better bargain than the Homax two-swab pack. Its packaging was less susceptible to being crushed.
Lead Inspector, $13
Swabs turn yellow, brown, gray, or black if lead is detected. It can take up to 10 minutes for a color change to occur at low lead levels. The kit, with eight tests, identified accessible lead and might be a good choice for painted metal jewelry. It also might be superior for pink or red items, because if those shades of paint bled onto a Lead Check swab, it might falsely appear to be positive. Have good ventilation and wear gloves to protect skin from chemicals.
First Alert, $13
The four test swabs provided are similar in design to those used in Lead Inspector. But we experienced some false negatives for accessible lead.
Pro-Lab Lead Surface, $10
This kit was less sensitive and more difficult to use. Two small pieces of treated paper are cut to create six tests. The paper is moistened and rubbed on the object, but we found the paper often fell apart before the two-minute rubbing time was over.”
Both Lead Inspector and First Alert have videos which showcase these kits
The following is a copy of the email I sent to all the these lead testing kit suppliers:
Hello
My name is Dave Chapman and I am a maple syrup producer. Over the past few years our industry has been phasing out lead soldered pans for producing maple syrup.
We are currently looking to upgrade our equipment but want to make certain that any used equipment we buy is lead solder free.
does the testing kit that you carry have the ability to do this.
Thanks and I hope to hear from you soon.
If anyone out there knows of another company that provides these testing kits or you have had experience in these matters please let us know.
Jesse and the sugarbush
Jesse was a great big help this year in the Sugar bush. Mike and I were really happy to have him pull such a long haul. I think Mike was the happier one of the two of us as he had been living in the sugar shack night and day for almost two weeks before we showed up.
Running and evaporator efficiently is no small task, it may seem like nothing is happening but you have to keep things “dialed in” or you loose your fire, flood the pan or burn the syrup. There are also strange things that can happen when you least expect them. Check out this vid of Jesse dealing with something called a steam lock. This happens when the sap in the pre-heater boils causing the pressure to block the flow of sap.
Thanks again
Hello out there.
Thanks Mike for that amazing post, I completely agree with everything. Thanks to everyone for helping us out as much as they did.
Thanks to our Mom’s most definitely for helping out with keeping us fed, Mike and I would forget to eat without you.
Also thanks to Bill Smith for saving us when Canada “stupid” Post messed up shipping our thermometer. The stuff that we did not ship express showed up on time, the priority package took an extra day, which happened to be on a friday, messing up the whole weekend. Without lending us your spare we would have had to rig something up that would have never worked as well, thanks again.
Thanks to Kieth Brown for all the great information he gave us from day one. It no doubt saved us a ton of time and money. Also thanks for giving us the idea to put the sugar shack in a place with 4 walls instead of a wood shed.
Thanks to all the other syrup producers on the island that gave us equipment and advise. Dave Stadnic, Chess Wallace, Don Mancher and Kris Desjardins just to name a few.
Thanks to everyone that was there when I was not. Cody,Spenser, John,Steph,Kurt and everyone that was there to help Mike out.
Thank you to Jesse for making the 8h trip north to work in the sugarbush for 3 days just to take a 10h bus red eye bus ride back. Also the logo is phenomenal, your dedication is amazing.
Also thanks to both of our Fathers. My Dad who made it possible to get all 130L of maple syrup back down south. Also thank you Roger for your calm intelligence and problem solving skills. We will most likely both be living longer from the stress you prevented.
Thank you to my Girlfriend who has had to deal with traveling and spliting tons of firewood.
I would also like to thank my business partner and friend Mike for the insane amount of enthusiasm, resourcefulness and hard work. You alway had a positive attitude even when I did not. It has been a real treat working in a sugarbush steeped in your families history.
I look forward for many more years of syrup production!
Season #1 Is In The Books
Well we finished up on April 06, the official end of the season for Sap To Syrup’s inaugural year. What a blast. This syrupin isn’t so bad. It went by so fast we didn’t have time to go visit any of the other producers and see how things were in other bushes. But I did talk with Keith Brown and Bill Smith, it seems everyone had the same type of year. Low sugar content and dark syrup. We didn’t mind at all though, we were making syrup! YEEE HA. I still can’t sleep a full night being so acustom to getting up to stoke the arch. I still wake about every hour or so.
I went through the log book and did a count on how much syrup we actually made, 130 Litres is my count. I think it is right on the money.
We had quite the sound track this year as well. The sat radio came in handy. The 40′s 50′s 60′s 70′s and even the 80′s were some of finger snapping melodies we were groving to. If singing to syrup as it boils makes it taste better then we should have the best. The firewood music was supplied by a fellow islander that I used to work with at Thompson’s Maple products, the band is called The BREAKMEN. A real treat and fast becoming favorite of mine. You can check them out at http://www.thebreakmen.com/ They are a folk/Blue grass group. Great music to keep the spirit up while slaving away at the mundane task of firewood.
For our first year we had a few minor problems with getting to know how everything is going to run. Most problems were due to being distracted by the thousand things going on around us. The vacuum pump flooded a few times, over filling the gravity tank was always a fun one when Dave was sitting beneath it, or flooding the pan over the float box, and my favorite, forgetting to close the valve on the sap storage tank and getting excited watching the extractor pump over several times before realizing it haha. Oh well we needed to learn the hard way on some things I guess.
Dave and I would like to thank all of our friends and family that helped and supported us in this endeavor. We couldn’t have done it with out you. Especially our Moms who couldn’t stand the thought of us starving ourselves, and brought wonderful meals on wheels.
Well in closing I must say I miss it already and can’t wait for next year, and I know Dave feels the same. We plan on a few upgrades to the setup so stay tuned for some updates on our progress.
The memories layed down this year will last a life time.
Cheerio
Mike
Gearing up for the end
First of all let me apologize for not posting anything sooner. Our first year was so busy I barely had time to blink.
This was an old post that I wrote and just did not publish. I am putting together some videos of this season right now as things have slowed down a bit.
One thing that I can not believe is that it has totally snowed like crazy last night and the temperatures are back down to -5˚ or so. It was only a few days ago when it was like 20˚ out. Now it is winter again.
I thought I would put up this old post because it seems to be fitting again.
We were in short sleave shirts only two days ago and now.
Gearing up for the weekend
Well it looks like the year is coming to a close. Lots of people are saying that this is going to be the last really big weekend and than it’s are all over. It’s going to be great, I can’t wait to get up there.
Lot of stuff has to be done before than. I have to do a little bit a shopping to find some cleaning supplies and industrial storage containers for concentrate. I am also getting the computer system for the sugar-shack prepared which is going to be a feat on it’s own, of course we are going to get a mac.
I really wish that I had more time up north, I had panned on taking some time in late April but because of the early start this year it will probably not last past the April 12. Than again who knows what the trees are going to do.
I had a great idea last night about getting a giant snow making machine an blast the whole sugar bush with a nice blanket of snow to keep the season going. I am sure the trees would be really screwed up if I did something like that.
I’ll leave you with a great picture of Mike and I finishing our very first batch of maple syrup. Enjoy!
Extrator pump breaking
Hello
Happy syrup making to everyone. We are indeed making maple syrup this year! Our first batch that was pulled of turned out to be about 20L, not bad for about 3 days work. I have been pretty sick after getting back from the Island and when I finally was feeling better I had to get back to work in a big way.
I did get a chance to upload a few videos on to youtube before I started feeling under the weather. I think this particular video captures the essence of what maple syrup production is like, well at least when things start to break. Mike and I have been bumbling around with some of the new equipment as we can’t really test anything until the sap started to flow.
Here is a quick little video of what happens to an extractor pump when you put to much oil in it.
Enjoy!
First time Firing
It has been a very productive weekend in the bush. We started a very detailed log book to record all the events both good and bad. It is going to take a while to get use to how what to record but It will help us with a lot of our planning and also writing these posts.
We started up the evaporator on Friday night. The pan that we are using is a deep flat pan, not a flue pan. Because I had the most experience with the evaporating I was the first to fire it up. I decided to run the pan with a 1/4” of liquid in it to start, needless to say I burnt the pan pretty bad and pretty quick.
That was not the only problem we had with the evaporator. We also are trying to fuel it with Bass wood. It was pretty damp and really did not burn all that well, because of this we have renamed it Ass wood.
Steam is also one of the big problems that we had to overcome. Our custom hood worked pretty good at channeling the steam but the real problem came from not having it at the right angle. It was blowing steam right into the faces of the operator rather than to the back of the pan an out of the shack. The hood also did not really come down far enough so we draped towels over it to keep the stream contained. We have it dialed in pretty good now.
More to come on how the bush is running and what happened over the weekend.
Ready for action
It is getting so close I can almost taste it, I can’t wait to get up north and start boiling. It turns out this year might start off sooner than I thought. Servers me right for trying to plan my work schedule around the season.
Freshmaplesryup.com says that he was going to start boiling on February 28th. Though he is a lot more south than I am it sure makes me think. Bill Smith at Sugar Island Maple Grove is pretty much ready to go. I just talked to him today and he says it’s time to get our butts in gear. I am heading up north this weekend to start tapping in. I can’t believe that it is happening so soon!
Lots more to come!
sugar shack
I have had an amazing weekend up at the sugar bush. Mike has done so much work up there it blows my mind. When I arrived all the runs were completed, all the drops were in. We have a new count of 400 taps. I am incredibly happy.
That being said there was still a ton of stuff to complete in the sugar shack. You would not believe the hours we put in! Because I did not post anything all weekend I thought that I would put together a video that shows the whole processes we went through when building the sugar shack, enjoy.
I would also like to say thanks to Al for posting the information about the different maple syrup festivals that are taking place. If I hear of any more I will let you know. You check out the full list he has here.
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Royal Winter Fair 2009
This was the first year that I decided to check out the Royal winter fair held in Toronto. I would have never gone if it was not for my sister who was taking care of the Guelph booth at the show, thanks Sis. It gave me a chance to see some of the different farmers in Ontario and was a really interesting experience. I have never really been interested in farming growing up, I was always looking forward to getting out of the small town and into the big city. The Royal winter fair kind of was the best of both world.
I talked to all the maple syrup producers at the show, everyone had great insight and was very helpful. Two booths let really talk their ear off and even let me shoot some video. The first was from White Meadows farms. Richard was really nice and gave me some great tips on maple candy making. It turns out that they won best maple candy at the show last year so I am sure he knows what he’s talking about.
Next I had a chance to talk to Tracy Moore at Everything Maple. I have talked about her in an earlier post. She really went through everything with me and was happy to do so. She even gave me a few books to about packaging maple syrup. The great thing was the she knew all of the maple syrup producers from the island. You can really tell in the video that she is passionate about what she does. It was great to get to know other members of the Ontario maple syrup community outside of the island.
Now I know that the winter fair was a months ago but I have not had a chance to get everything off the camera until last week. I also want to apologize for the shakiness of the camera and the strange viewing angles. It was pretty loud and I wanted to make sure I got the sound I needed. Anyway, now that I have built it up, please enjoy.
