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

I have been busy myself putting together a little corner for all my maple syrup stuff. I tripled my storage space (I added a shelf). I now have a place for everything to go and I won’t have to dig around to find labels or a book. I have a very understanding girlfriend to let me use what little space we have in our bedroom store all my maple stuff.

Of course this is nothing compared to what Mike has been done in the last little while. My hat goes off to him.

I had the misfortune of cutting open my finger after buying a new Remington knife. Beware, I’ll post the picture when I am not on devil Dial-up. It flipped open on the car ride from the Sault less than 20 minutes after I bought it. Not a great start but I am sure it will get better.

The first stop we made on the island was Keith Brown’s. We picked up the wire spooler and the mainline wire. He was nice enough to let us borrow a gripple tool, this was an amazing and time saving device. It helped us get all the wire up in less than two days.

We then had Bill Smith take a walk through the our bush. He took a look at our layout and our plans and said it looked good to him. He did however have some real concerns about our evaporator.  We have two really great stainless steel flat pans but there is no way that we will be able to keep up with 500 taps on a 2x 6 pan. We might have to pull back the number of taps we put in this year. It is either that or come up with $4500 for a new flue pan. We are keeping our eyes open for quality used stuff.

We have also made some major modifications to the sugar shack. We replace the rough log roof supports with regular 2×6. This allows us to cut off all the huge logs that run the width of the sugar shack.

Tomorrow we will do some more finishing touches to the sugar shack and put up the main line.  We really wanted to get blue line run in the bush but it was not possible to get it here on time, we had to settle for the black stuff that was in stock. There is nothing wrong with the product it just takes a bit more effort to clean.

That’s all, will post tomorrow.

As I said I would here they are

Enjoy.

Marking Trees

Marking Main lines

This makes me very very happy indeed, but of course I miss the bush. There was  a ton of stuff that we accomplished over the weekend I was up north. Once I got a chance to get to know the bush I understand a lot more about what Mike was talking about.

I think that we are in a great place right now because we have been laying everything out and planning things together. Every tree that we want to tap is marked with red or pink tape. Where we are going to run the main line is also marked with blue tape and leveled. Mike and I had a great time chatting about how we were going to run the lines and what trees we were going to tap and how. If we were ever going to kill each other that would have been the time but we came out of it smiling!

We shot lots of great video and took lots of great pictures. I will be posting them soon.

That’s all for now

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