More Pictures.

Here are more pictures from the neighbor's sugar bush. I worked there yesterday re-taping the trees and helping with the boiling down of the sap. the sap is running good now and one of the water troughs ran over and created a small stream of sap!

Pumping sap from the truck to the bulk tank

3 of 1200 taps

The miles of sap lines

Helping neighbors

To day I went to work in the neighbors sugar bush. With the warm wether we had last week the tap holes dried up especially on the south slopes.So I had to re drill and put the spiles on the north side of the maple trees. Marilla Hills Maple Syrup is owned by the Howes brothers,Rich and Roll. Roll was in a car crash this winter, and Rich had back surgery. So me and others have been helping them out this season with their maple syrup business.

This is their sap evaporator it is wood fired

This is inside one of the two pump houses that house the pump and separators. The pumps pump sap over the hills and into the holding tanks at the sugar house. The separator keeps the sap out of the vacuum line. The vacuum is generated by the same vacuum pump they use in commercial dairies to milk the cows. This helps the sap flow better through the miles of sap lines that criss-cross up and down the hills of the sugar bush.

One of the thing I had to do was go inside the bulk tank to hose it out!

This is the out side of the tank it is an old milk truck tank.

Sap being pumped into a water trough down at the pump house. Usually we hook this line to the main line that goes to the the bulk tank. Since the lines are black the sap heats up and starts to ferment on a warm day. So we had it hooked up so it would go in to the water tank and then pump the sap in to a tank on the back of Roll's truck.

This is the R O(revers osmosis) device, it takes some of the water out of the sap before it is boiled down into syrup

This is the concentrated sap that comes out of the R O

From there the sap goes to the evaporator. You can't see much of what is going under all that stainless steal. All the steam is put to good use be for for it goes out the stack. It preheats the sap and any steam that condenses be comes hot water and is used to keep the finished syrup hot while filtering. The pans in front are called finishing pans and there is an electronic probe that can be set at the right temperature. When it is right it automatically draws off some syrup and into a pot on the right side in the picture.

The sugar house with steam coming out the stacks

I went to the top of the hill to have lunch and took this picture. It is looking down on our farm. The snow covered peak in the dissidence is Caberfae peaks ski resort it is 1545 feet above sea level with a 485 foot vertical drop. I've never skied here but have went to another ski hill near by called Crystal mountain.

When I got home I did the animal chores and watered the plants in the hot bed.

The wether today is mild and windy. Most of the snow is gone there might be some still on the north slopes and back in the woods. Normally I would be boiling maple sap,but it is to warm for the sap to flow. It needs to get down below 32 at night and up in the 40's in the day to get a good run. I have only made six gallons of maple syrup so far, so I hope we get some cold wether soon. In a ''good'' year I can make close to 60 gallons.I put good in quotes because it dose not seem right to call a year good or bad. Maybe it will stay warm and the grass will start growing. This could give us an extra month of grazing. God works every thing out for good.