Hello Everyone
Recently I found an online video on how to make maple syrup eggnog. I seemed like a nice enough recipe but what really got me was the fact the presenter was using fake maple syrup.
I decided to dub over the real ingredients that she was using, enjoy.
Remember there is no substitute for real maple syrup!
Hello everyone
Well tomorrow is a very exiting day for sap to syrup. It is the first Christmas show that I have taken part in. I am really looking forward to showcasing all our products. The Toronto Business Development Center was part of a program I was involved in. They help entrepreneurs get businesses started and do a great job of it. This is how I moved my interactive business forward.
They have a blog about the upcoming show and I have a small write up in it. Link
Another great thing that has happened is that we have a new logo… Well not really NEW, more like our FIRST.
It was designed by a very good friend of mine Jesse Gibson who has worked as a professial designer for many years. You know why branding is so expensive?
It’s worth it.
new logo
I have plans to redesign the website and add in more interactivity.
Today started out great. We began the day by fixing up the sugar shack. We installed a rudimentary sink drain for the sink . Mike put in some more rafter braces and cut out a few more logs. The Sugar shack looks amazing, much more wide open.
We did not spend much time out in the bush today as the weather was not helping what so ever. We are going to be able to get a few small things done tomorrow before I have to head back down south to Toronto. I really wish I could stay up here from longer but I have to keep working away at my web development stuff.
We took some time to visit with Keith Brown and pay off some bills, we picked up a gripple tool and some mainline ties. We should be all set for tying on the lines early tomorrow morning.
After we came back we leveled out the main evaporator and put in a sink and counter. We also put some insulation between the roof and walls to hold in a bit more heat. It gets nice and toasty in there now.
I will be able to post some videos and pictures when I get back to Toronto.
Thats all for now.
Well it has been a long time since I have posted something on the site. I am back up north for the weekend and Mike and I have a lofty goal of running all the mainline in the large part of the bush. This is about 350 taps and from now on it will called section 1.
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.
I wanted to take this time to congragulate the new maple syurp website of Tig Tillinghast for his new web design.
The site looks amazing and is much easier to navigate, really an amazing job.
Tig has some really great stories and ideas on his website which is why he is number one on my blog roll. I love his last idea of putting maple syrup in kegs, I really hope he figures it out.
Love the new URL and the site design Tig, keep on boiling!
Hey here are a few pics of the Sugar shack upgrades.
Enjoy
Mike
I posted two videos a few day ago of mike and I running around in the bush marking trees and putting up main lines.
As I said I would here they are
Enjoy.
Marking Trees
Marking Main lines
Well I am back in Toronto and back on high speed internet.
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 Mike and I have been incredibly busy the last few days, mostly clearing brush. Our plan is to eradicate every single balsam on the lot. We also finished layout the rest of the bush. We marked out our 500+ taps with taps with flagging tape, to good new is it was in a much smaller area than we though it was going to be.
This morning we are going to be marking out where our main lines are going to run. I am glad I am up here from this, it is really the foundation for a good bush.
We were chatting last night about how we were going to attach the main line cable to the trees. We don’t want to hurt them but we also don’t want to get too complicated. We agreed on strips of cedar from now as they are quick, cheep and simple. If there are any other ideas out there I would be happy to hear them.
Again it is difficult to deal with this dial up. To make matters worse the website is having trouble uploading pictures. Another thing on the list of things to fix up.
First full day in the bush and Mike and I are stoked. Started off kind of bad as the plan we had come up with was rendered futile. We wanted to keep busy so bad that we ended up starting to work before we knew what to work on.
I leaned how to weld which was very helpful, tomorrow I will lean to use a cutting touch to undo everything. We needed to elevate the holding tanks to create a gravity feed to the evaporator because we needed to get the sap up higher than the evaporator. We welded brackets onto a huge trailer frame in order to hold two 400+ gallon tanks.
The first thing that we did was to move the intended vac shack to its new location. The shack was about 14’ by 14’ and was not easy to maneuver in a bush where the trees are 12’ apart. We were going to move it all the way to the other end of the yard and then pump the sap back to the camp in order to boil it. Good thing we did not move it all the way. When I am not on “devil dial up” I’ll upload some amusing video of the moving process.
Keith Brown was nice enough to come to our bush and inspect our prospective operation. He put us on the the right path on a lot of the issues in the bush. I am sure everyone has heard of the KISS principle before, we just needed a push in the right direction.
Now we are going to put the vacuum tank in the garage that we were going to use as our sugar shack in the next few years. He than suggested that we just boil in there as well…. you know “where the sap is”. Both mike and I felt a whole lot better after having him inspect everything. We both feel confidant that we are on the right path.
After Keith left we decided to mark all the trees that we wanted to tap in the bush. We marked them with flagging tape until it was too dark to tell the trees apart. The count so far was 268, I think we are going to hit 500 tap goal in a smaller area than we thought.