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

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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

I’ll leave you with a great picture of Mike and I finishing our very first batch of maple syrup. Enjoy!

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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!

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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.

Filed under: 2010 Season, Making Syrup, Videos
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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!

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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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Hello Everyone

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THANKS FOR YOUR TIME

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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.

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This month is just flying by. Soon it will be time for the sap to flow again, I can’t wait! I had a chance to talk with Mike today about how the bush was progressing. He has been insanely busy running mainlines and I wish I was up there to help him.

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.

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It has been far to long since I have written about maple syrup. To tell the truth have been pretty busy. I mean, I always use that as an excuse but I really was pretty busy over the holidays. I had a huge flash site to develop please check it out, funcheez.ca. Cheese shaped like dinosaurs and planets, pretty cool stuff.

Anyway I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who purchased maple syrup over the holidays It is really going to help this year. It really pumped me up for next Christmas. I guess I have a few different times of year to look forward to. Next year it would be great to have store front of some sort, I bet I could really make a go of it.

I also made a few batches of maple candy, I am 1 for 3 right now and I think I know what happened last time. I let the candy get way to cold before I put it in the mold. I have not yet recorded how to make maple candy on video yet as I don’t want to look completely inept at the process. We will wait until I can look really professional.

I have found the time to put together another little video from that last time I was up North. It is a quick little show of what our evaporator looks like and how it will work. It might look a bit weird because we have one pan stacked on top of another to keep it out of the way. I assure you It will do the job this season when the sap starts flowing. I hope that you enjoy it and have a safe and pleasant new year.

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