Bacteria is the enemy and one that must be conquered though constant vigilance. Once you have everything clean the trick is to clean again. Than when it is really clean you should clean some more. Last year we used so much water that the Mikes well went dry and started to cave in on itself. This year should be different as we are going to be making our own hot water using our big evaporator so hopefully we won’t run into this problem again.

We have been getting some pretty warm weather in the last little while. Plus temperatures during the day for the most part, it is way to early for this stuff we are not quite ready yet. I don’t think we are going to be convinceing mother nature to hold off on her time table, if she says jump you jump.

It is quite an achievement.

I promise to get more videos uploaded with what we are up to in the sugar bush as a lot of things are happening. Until than Cheers!

Look Like Central New York has lots of sap happening and not much snow. I think it is going to start pretty early this year. I have been keeping an eye on some of the videos posted to Youtube. It looks like Elizabethtown, Pa has 2012 maple syrup. Some places in Vermont are also tapped in an getting ready to produce. So it is coming soon for everyone I don’t see why Northern Ontario would be an exception!

Climate change is something we all have to be aware of especially being an agricultural business. Mike and I keep some pretty good records of what is happening in the bush but it would be good to know if we can help this cause in any way.

Take a look at the video and see what you think.

So much to do, so little time..

first sap of 2012

Our main concerns at this point are making it easy to clean everything. Having Chuck the evaporator was pretty easy to deal with, one person could lift the whole pan and put it on the quad to clean it. Our new pan however is a different beast. We need a trailer to get it from point A to point B so I don’t foresee us moving it around during the season. The hood alone takes 4 people to take it off and it is heavier than you would think. So Mike and I have put some rigging up to make the job a bit easier.

We also dropped the height of our extractor and are building a better surface to keep it on.

We were also able to salvage some amazing speakers from the garbage pile which work great in the sugar shack. Last year we must have blown about 6 speakers as the stereo setup is not really thought out we simply found old broken speakers from one placer or another, plugged them in and turned the volume up as loud as we wanted. If they blew up we replaced them. The new speakers we found have not blown when we turned the amp up full blast so I think we found a winner.

It is also going to be nice there is not going to be as much moisture in the sugar shack because all of the steam is going to be piped right out the steam stacks and out of the building. Should make for a pretty amazing show, I can’t wait to get the boiling happening!

a picture from the new holes drilled thought the logs

Dave and Travis

More fun to come!

We started by moving the big evaporator into position with the tractor. We used some good old tractor knowhow and placed it perfectly. We than put the stacks in up as high as we could on the inside of the building than proceeded to cut a rough hole in the roof. This was quite a delicate procedure as we already had 3 stacks coming out of the roof from last year. Our poor tin roof has started to look like a huge piece of swiss cheese patched with mismatched tin roofing on a ton of silicon.

Once we were ready for “the big lift” Mike and I move the 16′ of stack slowly up the side of the roof until we got to the peak. “All right lets lift it up”, I said wanted to get this over with as fast as possible. This was not about to happen as we just did not have the leverage or balance to get it done. Now for those of you who have significant others whom you love and love you,  you know that they can sometimes separate themselves from a situation that could be potentially life threatening. We decided to come at if from another angle and set up an extension latter latched to the building with a rope leading though the highest rung back to the ground where Brianna could keep the stack from falling.

Now the moment had come, we had the stack upright on the roof ready to lift and put it into the already secured stack sticking out about 3 feet above the roof. Now any number of things could have gone wrong, fingers crushed, falling off the roof, being tangled in the safety lines or loosing the stack off the roof. On the count of 3, Mike and I lifted and place the stack perfectly. A few seconds of panic and we were solid! The engine now has an exhaust!

shot from the roof of the sugar shack

Down the Stack

it's a stack victory!

We have a friend coming up this weekend to work in the bush with us, I hope we don’t work him too hard.

“Stoke up the fire, it’s maple syrup time!”

We also tore everything out of the old shack, rebuild the floor and now our sugar shack will be much easier to keep clean.

We also spent some time organizing the hole in the universe known as “THE BROWN SHED”! That thing was an enormous junk pile. So now we know where things are for the most part which makes life that much easier.

Things are moving forward now, summer is over and it is time to Gear UP! Get it done!!!!!