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!
