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   PPE, sunglasses-as-halfass PPE, and wire-brushed metal. I'll brush it once more then wipe down with a damp cloth, let dry and paint with rustoleam stove paint. I need to get arch insulation ordered or bought, and I've got the old rig listed for $700. If it doesn't sell for that I am going to move it up to the barn, and then on some schedule, remediate and fix up the lower arch body, paint it nice, and re-list it for more like $1000 towards the beginning of the season.
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May 22, 2022 21:49
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  Still need to reinsulate and rebrick, but this is where this will sit and holy poo poo do I have more space to work with in here suddenly. I am going to get fire blankets to put under the entire arch body on the floor, as this sits closer to the floor than the old arch, and my shack is, for better or worse, a wood floor.
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May 30, 2022 15:49
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  My spouse is cutting up ~$300 worth of 1/2 ceramic insulation board because they are much better at detail work and "measure twice cut once" poo poo than I will ever be, and getting good complete coverage here will help protect the galvenized lower and extend the life of the arch. Next steps are bricking this and then I'll be ready to do a test fire with water and try to get some estimates on boiling rate. Probably try to have a friend or two over, crack a keg.
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Jun 9, 2022 19:34
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Rebricked, cemented, fully insulated and looking ready for some test fires. 
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Jun 30, 2022 19:28
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud2GWa9oGVg my parents asked me how the gently caress this works so I narrated a video during a test fire. Planning on a longer test fire to really get up to heat, then shut everything down well for the year and focus on getting new lines up and getting ready for vacuum.
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Jul 19, 2022 20:19
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Do you still get sap flow in the spring if it doesn't really go below freezing during the winter?
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Jan 9, 2023 23:11
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For sap to flow it has to fluctuate between freezing and non-freezing, the time of year doesn't matter. It just so happens the time that's most likely to happen is late winter/early spring. I actually tapped trees last weekend and have been getting sap all week here in PA.
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Jan 11, 2023 22:14
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Really? Sap should be flowing now where I am in that case. Do you lose out on end-of-season sap if you tap early? I think I read somewhere that tap holes last only 6 weeks and then they heal up. If that's not the case I should probably start sooner than later.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:23
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That is true, they will heal and you'll get less flow the longer it's tapped. I have more trees than I could ever hope to tap though, so I generally only tap a dozen at a time and pull taps/tap new ones based on performance. Climate change has made the weather so unpredictable, especially the last few years, that I tap as soon as I see a favorable two week forecast.
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Jan 12, 2023 04:47
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I didn't tap in during this melt, gently caress that noise. I think I hurt my yield tapping in too early last year. No rest for the fuckin wicked though, that's for sure! I am putting up entirely new lines this year.  In a former existence this toolbox used to hold the sort of things you'd expect such a sticker to be found near. This toolbox has been cracked for a decade but still keeps trucking.   Lashing new 1" rigid mainline to existing wires. I got both done but managed to gently caress up and crimp the second one. Thankfully it happened like 15' from the end of the wire so I can probably just run longer droplines for the last 2-3 sets. Also I need to get a coupler anyway, because if I end up with extra time somehow, I want to run another wire and run mainline further up into my bush. This stuff is heavy and a loving pain in the rear end and I am glad to be done with, at least, the required amount. I have a piece left over that would be long enough to run on my neighbor's side and at least have that all collecting in one spot, but there's no reasonable way to junction it up to my side where I am planning on putting in vacuum
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Jan 16, 2023 22:49
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 $1200 later and I have another 1500' of 5/16", assorted fittings, and.... a vacuum pump rated up to 400 taps 
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Jan 20, 2023 21:03
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Nice! Setting that thing up would make an excellent YouTube video.
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Jan 21, 2023 04:01
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We're trying to finish tapping this week. The snow has this great crust that isn't nearly solid enough to walk on, but entirely slick enough that if you set a tapping hammer down it goes sliding down the hill into oblivion. I would think so anyways.
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Feb 7, 2023 19:55
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Uncle Lloyd posted:We're trying to finish tapping this week. The snow has this great crust that isn't nearly solid enough to walk on, but entirely slick enough that if you set a tapping hammer down it goes sliding down the hill into oblivion. I want to get the rest of my lines up this weekend and get all my T's cut in over the next week, but I'm probably not going to actually tap in for a bit, I'd rather wait for a day when it's above freezing and looks like we're headed into run weather, and right now the snowpack is still quite deep. Once there's deep holes in the snow around the base of the trees with some high 30s/40s projected I will go push all the taps in. I need to understand if I need to do anything as I put taps in, in terms of checking vacuum, too. Probably have some reading and youtube to do.
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Feb 8, 2023 15:22
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Looks like it ought to run like hell this weekend. On our section of woods with vacuum we tap everything then start the pump and go back out to chase leaks.
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Feb 9, 2023 13:14
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Uncle Lloyd posted:Looks like it ought to run like hell this weekend. On our section of woods with vacuum we tap everything then start the pump and go back out to chase leaks.  I'm not expecting anything this weekend but that picture makes me feel like I've got to get everything loving tapped in over the next few days; sun-mon-tues are certainly contenders for runs _but_ we have significant snowpack and as of now no holes in it near tree roots, so we'll see. So, okay -- tap everything in, make sure mainline ends are well sealed, connect mainlines to Y to join them, then connect Y to pump..... turn on (once i am sure there's no ice in the lines!) and then..... go around tap by tap and what, listen for hissing/look for bubbling, and if I see any, give the tap another whack? Also if you don't mind, remind me / tell me where you are geographically? I feel like you're generally up here in NE with me somewhere but I am not sure. edit: also, yea, that's freeze thaw but it's also absolutely schizophrenic weather. I am 80K short of the 200k vertical feet I skiied last year but I don't think I'm catching up to that. Of course it's entirely possible we get another foot of snow in 2 weeks and that sort of happened last year  IIRC last year I tapped in around now, had a run around, like, 2/17, and then nothing for 3 weeks.
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Feb 9, 2023 21:47
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IDK, I had sap running right out when I was tapping earlier this week, I think that starting Sunday we'll be boiling for a few days. I'm in central VT which I think is actually quite close to you. Yeah we try to get everything set up completely so that we think it's shipshape and then start vacuum. I find that most vacuum leaks are from chewed lines, not so much the spouts, although since we try to tap ahead of when it actually starts to run the trees have some time to seal themselves, so YMMV there. What we do is follow the mainlines and look at each lateral, the tell tale sign of a vacuum leak is if you see fast moving air bubbles in the lateral. That way you only hike up the lines you know have a problem and you don't actually have to walk every foot of line. A major leak will be audible, but you can't really rely on that alone.
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Feb 10, 2023 00:10
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Uncle Lloyd posted:IDK, I had sap running right out when I was tapping earlier this week, I think that starting Sunday we'll be boiling for a few days. I'm in central VT which I think is actually quite close to you. Cool. Yeah you're close but I'm at 1500', you? I won't be surprised to see runs next week especially with vacuum, but I don't think I missed anything, this week was barely above freezing and a foot of snowpack around the trees Not much to do but tap in today and tomorrow!!
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Feb 10, 2023 16:29
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..yeah, I'm about to get my poo poo pushed in if I don't tap. My bellweather is the guy down the road, he was untapped on Tues, today I see he's tapped in and his pump is running this changes my plans a bit, i am going to go clean my tank and then start by pushing 50 taps in on the side that's already got droplines, hook that up to vacuum and see if it's dribbling out, and then probably spend tomorrow running more droplines and also probably some cable to pull mainline a bit deeper in.  here's another tree fiddy in maple supplies sitting on top of, I dunno, two grand in ski gear. Doing it all today. hey uncle lloyd or anyone else on vacuum -- as this is new to me -- when stuff is running or even dribbling and there's no freeze projected over night.... do you leave your pump spinning all night? I've got a diaphragm pump, so, running with any ice potential is a no no. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Feb 10, 2023 |
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Feb 10, 2023 20:02
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argh, everything is always hosed. My spouse was nice enough to go back to CDL to get a mainline drill, but they didn't loving sell her both necessary pieces to it, and additionally these god damned saddles I have seem to just fuckin NOT want to hook up properly, the inner gromit just does not fit in a 5/16" hole. Need to get back down there tomorrow. I drilled some holes experimentally mostly in trees that won't be tapped, one gave me a sap drop but the rest were silent, so stuff isn't awake yet but also it's probably waking up. Back to CDL in the morning to straighten out my mainline drill and saddle situation, then I think I try to get all my lines up tomorrow and start splicing T's in, but tomorrow looks like freeze temps all day and I will likely wait until it's above freezing on Monday to tap in.
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Feb 10, 2023 23:44
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Checking everything out, I need a vacuum gauge and mainline cutoff valve to put in front of this vacuum pump, so that's a trip to CDL tomorrow to (hopefully!) straighten out. I'm going to test fire the pump to make sure it sucks/blows, but I'm not going to attach it to the line without that stuff. I have a vacuum gauge I use for purging hash oil that could prolly rig up into a piece of mainline, but rigging up a valve is more work than I'm taking on today, given that I have 3 of ~120 taps in, and about 40 drops cut. Goal for the day is to have 55 taps cut in finishing one side of the line on my property, and then get as far as I can on the others. I expect to have the first 55 tapped in within the next couple hours here as we cross the freeze/thaw line, so we'll see what happens. There's still serious snowpack out there, but stuff is, none the less, waking up. I've got the rig assembled and hopefully good to go.     Being able to shorten lines like this (see the U-bend I have isolated there) is a reason the stupid $250 2-handed tool is the most useful thing I own for this part. Snowshoe tracks. https://i.imgur.com/qGPe5mC.mp4 edit: figured out paths for 2 cables, have gripples and the loving $50 gripple tool to tension them. It looks like I can get mainline across the driveway, at a height that will prevent UPS/etc from getting up here but not our own use of the driveway, so we're gonna run with that plan because then I can tie taps on my neighbor's side into vacuum and collect everything at the same spot. next step is to go push the 55 hung taps in, now that we're above freezing, but I'm also trying to process 1.75oz of water cured Trainwreck into hash oil today. I need a loving week off, there's still decent skiing and I'm not seeing any of it this weekend, OTOH this is not a time to just random vacation week, I just got put on a new project and am feeling very sink or swim. I loving hate Adderall but I wish I had like 10-15 of them for this week :-p Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Feb 12, 2023 |
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Feb 12, 2023 13:55
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 my goofy rear end out Doing poo poo. My ski helmet has BT headphones, but more critically I bonk my head in the woods a lot. Eye pro is good, too. https://i.imgur.com/DKfTlQd.mp4 (sound on) -- this is the flow off 55 taps with no vacuum after things started going today. I fuckin got mainline over the driveway. UPS/FedEx will NOT be coming up here until April sometime :lauigh: but the Forester makes it under. Need to hang orange signs on itq and put up Strong Signage for delivery guys. I'm hoping to get a vacuum gauge and shutoff valve to get the vacuum going tomorrow or Tues; tomorrow morning I need to put up one last section of mainline on my neighbor's side of the line and then I am trying to do 2-3 taplines a morning for the rest of the week (adding 10-15 taps a day) which would put me close to full capacity by the end of next weekend. Looks like we're in run weather now, we'll see if it freezes hard again or if this is the shortest season ever, not unlike my skiing this year* * somehow I've still been out 15 times and dropped 150k vertical feet, but my marriage is suffering. Always does this time of year.
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Feb 13, 2023 00:38
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Cabbages and Kings posted:hey uncle lloyd or anyone else on vacuum -- as this is new to me -- when stuff is running or even dribbling and there's no freeze projected over night.... do you leave your pump spinning all night? I've got a diaphragm pump, so, running with any ice potential is a no no. The diaphragm pump we used for a season on what was and is again gravity we religiously fetched every night, which was one of the reasons we don't use it anymore. It was a sort of half assed way to try to get vacuum at the bottom of a sugarbush with no power, we used a little gas generator, but either it was undersized or the area was steep enough that gravity was enough already that it didn't increase production enough to be worth the headache. The conventional vacuum pump we run overnight as long as we expect sap to flow in the morning, freezing doesn't make a difference. We spent a while chasing vacuum leaks today, got it up from barely 10 inches to about 20. We also found that our high quality program of several different people tapping whenever they have a little time and totally half assing the communication led to missing a few dozen trees.
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Feb 13, 2023 21:03
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Uncle Lloyd posted:The diaphragm pump we used for a season on what was and is again gravity we religiously fetched every night, which was one of the reasons we don't use it anymore. It was a sort of half assed way to try to get vacuum at the bottom of a sugarbush with no power, we used a little gas generator, but either it was undersized or the area was steep enough that gravity was enough already that it didn't increase production enough to be worth the headache. quote:The conventional vacuum pump we run overnight as long as we expect sap to flow in the morning, freezing doesn't make a difference.  quote:We spent a while chasing vacuum leaks today, got it up from barely 10 inches to about 20. We also found that our high quality program of several different people tapping whenever they have a little time and totally half assing the communication led to missing a few dozen trees. hey at least you have a crew and the excuses it provides. I have been walking around, like, what the gently caress did I do, how did I miss that tree? Yet another trip to CDL tomorrow to get poo poo I need for vacuum, because I am close but one adapter short and also some of these metal screw in connections are not airtight and IDK if I need pipe tape, or what, generally my view on pipe tape is that it's bullshit, but there must be a way to make this work! 10 more taps pushed in this morning and there's some gallons of sap sitting out there in the tank, unsure how many but it's totally covering the bottom and starting to fill the volume so I'm gonna guess that's a minimum of 20-30. Still so much snow, I think I can pile up snow around the tank and not gently caress with boiling until the weekend. Weekend is a long way away, though, and if I get vac going tomorrow and it really starts just vomiting sap in there, might have to consider a work-from-sugarshack Thurs boil.
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Feb 13, 2023 23:49
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up to 70 taps in. Vacuum pieces are assembled, I am giving the loctite overnight to cure because I'd rather wait a day than pull loctite into the pump or my sap. The tank is filling at a rate of some gallons a day already. I piled snow around the base of it to keep it cool, hoping I can wait until Sat for a boil, we'll see.
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Feb 14, 2023 19:54
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I am doing a second sad boil today here in PA. I boiled two weeks ago and got about a gallon and expect to get half a gallon today. We had about two weeks of good weather in January but it was then too cold then too warm since with only a few days where it ran last week, and now the trees are starting to bud so the season is probably over as the weather outlook for the next two weeks doesn't look good. I'm glad I tapped as early as I did!
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Feb 15, 2023 15:06
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Arven posted:I am doing a second sad boil today here in PA. I boiled two weeks ago and got about a gallon and expect to get half a gallon today. We had about two weeks of good weather in January but it was then too cold then too warm since with only a few days where it ran last week, and now the trees are starting to bud so the season is probably over as the weather outlook for the next two weeks doesn't look good. I'm glad I tapped as early as I did! we'll see what happens up here, things are just starting and when I was at CDL I heard a couple Large Operators talking about still having X thousand taps to put in. I'm halfway tapped now, also got vacuum hooked up today. Initially was pulling 0hg (should get about 15 on a diaphragm pump like this), then I saw a tap I had spliced but not put in, so we tapped that in and instantly went to -5hg. I left it running, checked 20 mins later and we're at -16 and holding so it seems like my suction is good. Someone said that a video of this might be cool so here's my goofy rear end explaining the same poo poo that is probably in 412 other sugaring videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f11iU1uFtjE
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Feb 15, 2023 21:25
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Careful this season. The weather hosed up down south here. It was 1% and dandy then fell to .25% in a week and a half. Worst season in WV ive seen. I got maybe a gallon or two of decent stuff. The rest turned ropey. Really the winter wasnt cold enough and trees didnt produce enough sugar.
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Feb 15, 2023 21:30
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Gath posted:Careful this season. The weather hosed up down south here. It was 1% and dandy then fell to .25% in a week and a half. Worst season in WV ive seen. I got maybe a gallon or two of decent stuff. The rest turned ropey.  I'm at 1600', we still have significant snowpack, is going down to 8F on Friday and we're supposed to get another 8" of snow next week so I'm cautiously less pessimistic about maple and skiing, but for a decent season we'll need some decent freeze thaw after that, so we'll see. We also had an insanely bitter freeze recently, subzero F for days straight. Supposed to be 50 tomorrow, I have ice and snow piled around my tank but I might just dump a few pounds of ice right into it. When I disconnected the vacuum I heard a tremendous HISSSS of air being pulled back into the lines. Makes me think I've got ok seal?
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Feb 15, 2023 22:46
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Just finished making 35 more taps, so i have 60 ready to go. I have big ambitions for the day: * connect mainline sections with airtight joints and hose clamps to extend vacuum to my neighbors side * put up 11 lines on my neighbor's side, cut T's into them * figure out if I have enough hose length to get all the way down to the shack still (one hose got hosed up last year) * do a test boil with water in there * once we're over 32F, start drilling holes and push the taps on my neighbors side in * test vacuum, look for any leaks on the new side. If I can get all that done then I will be in an excellent position to do a first boil and just smoke weed and chill the gently caress out Sunday. I think a friend and his family is coming over (with pizzas!) to see a "real backwoods sugaring operation", so, that should be fun and hopefully everything goes well today!! We're due more snow next week and I'd really like to be all tapped in and done so I can just get out and rip more of this poo poo  If I tap everything I want to today, that will still leave 5-6 lines on the far end of my side to get up, but that's also not as productive an area of bush as my neighbors sweet-rear end giant fuckin trees so it's lower priority.
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Feb 18, 2023 12:24
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no pics because I'm just been too loving busy but, mainlines joined and hopefully made airtight, 10 new droplines up, 50 taps hung and tomorrow I will drill them in and then start boiling. I also did a test fire with water to validate the new setup.
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Feb 19, 2023 02:29
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https://i.imgur.com/JpYtqwQ.mp4 80 gals in, tested cold @ 2% on the dot. Didn't finish any off because I neglected to level the rig before starting and so my attempt to isolate the front pan and boil it down led to too-low levels in one side of the pan just means i'll start next boil by finishing some, I'd expect.New rig works great! A buddy stopped by and I think I have a reasonable workflow for jamming with cheapass poo poo in here (he noped out of bringing a decent guitar in here when he saw how foggy it was), but I will risk a $140 Oscar Shmidt backed by the awesome polysynthesis engine that is a 3 year old ipad with Korg Gadget2 and a beat to poo poo midi controller. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 20, 2023 00:20
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https://i.imgur.com/p9ZaK0G.mp4 Knocked 5 more taps in this morning bringing me to 125. Vacuum pump sounds in background...
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Feb 20, 2023 16:36
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Just more snow and cold! By virtue of vacuum mostly I added a couple more inches to the tank today, so that's 10-20gals-ish. I see a few more days where that looks possible, but on the 10-day there's no serious melts projected. We could certainly still have a normal season, it just depends on what the weather looks like on the other side of winter 3.0, but also if I keep adding 1-2" a day, at some point I'm going to have a 36x36 cube of ice and no space for more which would be a  -- not even at the halfway point, though, so I expect I'll find a way to boil it.I love snow and this is certainly giving us a real ski season that otherwise would have been fairly pathetic. My legs are somewhat hurt, though, and I feel like I've gotten my ski time in. Time to start pot seeds and think about spring. edit: 130 taps now? 135? I found a couple lines I'd counted but not actually cut taps into, so I corrected that. I'll probably put on snowshoes once more and put up a few more until i'm out of 5/16", but I think I'm done buying it for the year. I imagine the season proper has been underway at lower altitudes for a week or two now, and we're barely starting to see stuff wake up. That's normal and fine as long as it doesn't go to 50 instantly. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 08:43
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Well, I've been sick but also everything has been frozen and we got like 22" of snow so that worked out. This week looks like runs runs runs, and I should probably have my pump running today from the way the icicles look. My math is that I am at 125gals boiled down to ~15gal concentrate, with maybe another 125-150 sitting out there now, haven't looked since it froze. If I hit 600gals sap, I might loving untap and just be done early, this has been a hell of a challenging spring and I am so tired. We need like 6 gals (5 for us, 1 for gifts), then I'll probably try to sell 4 gals @ around $100 a pop and just be done. Or I'll stay in psycho mode and suck every last drop. we'll see. the new rig is awesome; needing to totally clean it down every boil is somewhat less awesome, but flued pans cannot be allowed to freeze with liquid.
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Mar 16, 2023 16:31
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Holy poo poo! I thought I could get away with waiting to boil on Sunday, I had 20" of empty tank at the lowest corner at 8 this morning. By 1pm I was down to 10 inches so that's ~30 gal plus over that timeframe, and I am boiling just to keep up and then try to get it low enough to not overrun tomorrow, when I am home alone with both kids and don't wanna deal with this poo poo. So I'm doing my long afternoon of meetings from the sugarhouse and I am glad I have cat6 and a 24" down here.
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Mar 17, 2023 21:21
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 bang 2 gallons. I've boiled 300 so I figure there's 3-4 more floating in my pans. Also I've boiled 307 gals in 3 boils. Last year I boiled 600 all season over ~12 boils or more. This thing fucks.
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Mar 19, 2023 01:23
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My season has officially started for the 2nd time. Hopefully it holds unlike that fake spring in February. The RO machine is rinsed of citric acid and now is washing with sodium hydroxide. I don't know how there's crap in it since the citric acid solution is supposed to prevent bacterial growth. But this is going to be the year I get that thing working satisfactorily. Hopefully.
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Mar 22, 2023 21:29
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DreadLlama posted:My season has officially started for the 2nd time. Hopefully it holds unlike that fake spring in February. The RO machine is rinsed of citric acid and now is washing with sodium hydroxide. I don't know how there's crap in it since the citric acid solution is supposed to prevent bacterial growth. But this is going to be the year I get that thing working satisfactorily. Good luck and godspeed. We're in the thick of it here, I have a 240gal tank that's as full as it's ever been and running low on ice inside, but I have enough snow that I expect to be able to pile snow around it for another solid week or two, rain be damned. The new rig does seem to reliably just blast through 100gals plus in a day and poop out 2 gals plus syrup; by the end of today I will have processed 500gals and if I stopped collecting now by the time I was through my tank I'dve blasted through more sap than any prior year. Vacuum fuckin' works, and I may elect to be done before the trees are because there's a limit to how much cash I need to recoup (enough to pay for supplies and a bucket RO and maybe a finishing pan next year, more or less) vs how much I want to deal with diminishing returns. Expenses this year were silly but I sold pandemic-spiked magic cards to more than cover the ($3500) rig, and I did all new lines plus the vacuum, on top of t's and taps. Next year should just be taps and a couple select upgrades.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:33
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Posted in the other thread but I'm loving lazy. I think we were over 100 gal for 2-2.5 yield. Total yee yee crack head stove setup. Next year we may give a poo poo more and tap more trees. Probably just me driving a snowmobile around. Way she goes.
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Mar 24, 2023 02:30
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