Wednesday February 21, 2018


Happy birthday Cody!




Today started out with rain and wet. Ended with sleet and cold (and wet-a theme this week)

The new item of the day is a level indicator for the top tank so we have some idea how much sap is up there yet. The tube on the right fills related to the depth of the tank and yard stick helps to gauge how much we have left and the rate of the evaporation.

There was a little sap running today, but not enough to warrant a trip through the woods. Bob, Adam and Curt boiled down 350 gallons of sap tonight. Mark S came for a visit tonight and took a quick tour.

Shut down went quickly...Bob was concerned we had too much fire so he dug some out and he and Adam transferred some of the bigger embers to a metal bucket. The magic number moving forward is no more wood after 4 inches in the upper tank, and no big wood after 5 inches. We started cool down with 3.5 inches left and that drained pretty quick. Adam brought some  Twp Rd 178 sap and we dumped that in the evaporator for a little more volume.

Today's quote of the day, by Adam taking off syrup, "I think it's done, but what do I know ?!"

Total Sap Today:
Total Syrup Today: 7.5 gallons
Total Syrup To Date: 13.5

Tuesday February 20, 2018

Wind kicked up to the point it woke us up this morning! Wind will sometimes shut down the sap but today also brought the first really warm day and some sun at intervals so the taps were dripping. It rained here midday, only about 0.05 inches to add to our wet week.

Brad and James came home from Columbus arriving at 4 and grabbed friends Ben and Cody and gathered 100 gallons off of the short north. Bob arrived soon after and got a fire going. Adam texted at noon and Susan B was phoning in sap run updates to Bob on his way home from school from her assessment of her yard taps. Teamwork :)


Dale, Curt, Erin and Tinleigh, with the four above and later Katie and Adam collected the rest getting 444 gallons of sap (24 Adam brought from 178). The guys said there was a wide variety of sap tonight : some buckets had 1 inch and some were three quarters full. Adam admits he did a flop in the mud and Brad states he saw both Erin and James nearly eat dirt (he seemed disappointed about their near misses). Everything really slippery tonight.


 Karen stayed at the camp and visited with Bob while he picked up where we quit last night.


Gerri ran to Clyde to get pizza for supper and fuel up the truck. The cleaning crew so far has thrown away two significant things...Bob much calmer about it today though. Gerri has no idea where his metal spatula is...but a good idea what she would do with it if she had it.


The camp felt like a nice maple sauna tonight. The wind began to pick up again later this evening.


The boys went to the basketball game (and yes Dale we are all sorry you missed it). Bob remembered to add Curt to the group text after several days of forgetting that in a row!

The plan is for Mark S to come tomorrow to move some dirt and stone around the camp. Curt and Brad took the tank off of Wally so Mark could haul stone.....one of those guys better be around to put it back on...they took it off in about a 10th the time and with far less swearing than it went on for Bob, Gerri and Dale.

 

The only person the appropriate size for Wally. Enjoy the contrast.

Adam, Brad and Bob were kinda milling around, nobody with a clear job .........trying to fire, take syrup off and re-organize for the night. Astounding lack of focus in one room. Guessing that won't end well...and it will be Brad's fault.

T found a leaf, NOT a maple leaf but a close try! According to the quiz from Bob that followed, this is a Sycamore leaf.

 
Most unquotable quote of the day came from Bob: "Gee this has been a long week". Gerri reminded him...it is Tuesday.


Total Sap Today: 444 (1114 to date)
Twp Rd 178: 24 ( 51 to date)
Total Syrup Today: 6 gallon
Total Syrup To Date: 8.5

Monday February 19, 2018

No amount of "spring training" can really prepare you for "opening day". This was a particularly strenuous one. 

It began with thunder and lightening at day break and rained most of the day. And of course rained while we gathered. But recall it snowed yesterday. 

Bob spent the morning finishing adjustments to the new pump and configuring the connection to the generator. He did not sleep well worried that he had no way to shut off the flow of sap so he put an extra fitting in and sent Dale shopping for a new garden hose as "plan B".

Gerri scrubbed the evaporator pans and Bob cleaned the lids on the lower milk tank and carried those in and set them. Dale, Bob and Gerri put the tank on Wally and bolted her down. Gerri votes that this ALWAYS be Evan and Brad's job because it is a genuine pain!! Lola finally figured out the straw is not so bad. 

Adam, Katie, Curt, Dale, and Gerri soon joined by Muff gathered 635 gallons plus 27 gallons from the TR 178 venue in about 2 hours. Better working conditions on 178 apparently. Cleaner.

We wondered if we would get everything ready on time and today we were down to the wire on everything. In the mid afternoon push to figure it all out we made a goof. Dale was driving Wally today...in rare form I might add making rodeo sounds that made everyone laugh.....and he turns around and says "hey did anybody empty the bleach water out of this tank before we started?" Woops. So we cocked Wally up on a little incline and opened the valve .

Adam, Katie and Curt were ahead a ways...adam asked if everything was ok..."just great". First 70 gallons of sap used for rinse water. And we forgot the filter. And Wally's door closed in this fiasco, no handle of course, this involves a stick through the window. Actually need to admit this happened twice, before the middle of the south path. Had it all together by the end of the first stretch of the south.!! 
 Dale did a little log rolling demonstration with Wally. Curt and Dale and Adam removed the log after we finished gathering. It is a real gift to get blamed for something Brad when your not even here. 

Bob missed the above adventures and stayed at the camp getting last things put together (we have the charlotte's web of extension cords going on). He sent Dan to get hi temp caulking and an electrical connection  which was not only delivered but came complete with installation. 

The new milk/sap line looks great, is fun to watch. Bob says it is like a squirrel though, can get lost paying attention to it. (This is our first attempt to insert a video). We think we have this figured out, but in some formats the above looks like a blurry rectangle, click in middle for video (we think! where is Brian H when you need him?)

Adam and Katie stuck around and fired for bit tonight. Gerri went to 4-H and returned with things that were missing. 

Bob summed up the day by saying "it works". He is VERY relieved. 

Thanks to all who helped (Karen for veggie soup too!)

Total sap today: 635 gallons

Total syrup today: tired, nobody cares tonight, lets say 2

Saturday Feb.17th, 2018

Taps are set!!! Seems to be the most half-hazard strange way we have ever tapped, but its done.
The morning started out finishing setting out buckets and lids, a process that began on Friday night. Bob worked all day on setting up tubing to run the sap from the new building into the evaporator. This was more of a thinking job than a doing job.

About a month ago we got the idea that it would be fun to take the old chore boy milking equipment from the Wilson family dairy and use that glass piping to gravity feed the sap from one barn to another. This would allow us to see the sap and keep on eye on the amount in the tank more easily. However, this brought with it some unique challenges including fittings, weight of the line and repurposing issues. Bob was focused on this essentially all day and the rest stumbled along in the woods. Except Evan, who helped Bob all weekend.

Big shout out to Adam and Katie who  were a huge factor in getting this done. They threw out buckets and lids in the morning and tapped most all of the north and east paths on their own. Kelsey did a few trees before she and Evan left to attend a wedding. Brad and Gerri did the north path
We are, for some reason ,unknown to any us,  missing lids. We did "cull a few from the herd" when we washed equipment last spring, but came up about 30 short.

Gerri ran to Sandhill rd and grabbed the Park's family stockpile and returned late afternoon when it began to snow. She and Brad loaded Wally and retracked through the East and South paths distributing lids where needed. Finished just prior to dark.


It was cold today...we did not  see one drop of sap. Although Adam did report that he tapped the trees in the church parsonage yard and he saw immediate return. Likely these have warmed more than the trees in the woods.

As part of our cleaning process, we sorted through some panels saved from the old sugar camp wall. The tradition of writing on the wall began a long time ago, we found signatures written as early as 1937. They wrote the word "opened" and the date...we found that 70 years ago today, they opened on Feb 17, 1948!!!

Sunday Feb. 18, 2018
Slow start today as recovering from yesterday. Bob and Evan back to working on their giant plumbing project. Kelsey continued with cleaning up. Given the recent construction, most would be stunned to know how much we HAVE cleaned up...just really hard to tell.

Don't worry Jack...we haven't thrown everything away!! We are trying hard to repurpose many things and keep things with particular significance to the farm etc. Brad and Gerri spent a couple of hours sandblasting and sanding the old walk in door to the sap barn. This door was already taken out of (what we would assume to be a Victorian house) and has spent many years at the camp. Dale took all of the hardware home and sandblasted and painted it. Gerri and Kelsey spent part of the afternoon attaching it to the wall. It is now our food table complete with wood jacks for legs...these brought over from the old sap storage barn. Not finished... but functional for the moment.



The guys got the tanks moved into place and most of the plumbing set up in that building today.

we checked buckets at about 230pm. there was only about 3/4 of an inch in each bucket so we decided rather early that given the amount of work left to be done in the camp and the fact that the temp was to drop tonight, that sap could wait for tomorrow!

Thursday February 15th and Friday February 16, 2018




Thursday was the first significantly warm day this week. It rained on and off in the afternoon so Bob went to Creston to pick up the supplies for the sap line. He is a bit nervous about how this is going to go together. He made a shopping list and went to a dairy supply to get odds and ends.

Susan B. was kind enough to help Gerri wash the glass tubing. Brad came home in time to help figure out how to scrub the inside. He found a piece of pvc pipe long enough to run scrubbers and cloths through the inside. They looked  pretty nice! Brad went to the farm before dark and ran wally the house for water to wash the milk tanks. Bob made it home by 6:30pm . He went over to the camp to see if the fittings he brought home would work out...the answer was "maybe".

On Friday Brad spent the day back at the sugar camp trying to get things organized before Bob and the crew got back after work. Brad managed to find more than one mud hole with the forklift, but he also managed to get out before Bob got home. The first group text message of the season went out today. Bob, Brad, Dale and Don headed to the woods to set out buckets along the outside of the south path. Don later let us know that boots taller than 6in up your leg are necessary to navigate the woods without getting wet! It started to get dark outside so the crew headed back up to the sugar camp and then began to clean out the holding tanks which will be installed in the loft Bob built this past week. Evan and Kelsey arrived in time to finish the last tank and make a plan for Saturday morning. Bob tested out the fittings from Thursday to be sure they would indeed fit (they do!) before calling it a day. Gerri had dinner ready for everyone at the house, and they family ended the night watching a documentary about the Canadian Maple Syrup scandal so that Bob would be prepared to answer Katie's questions!

Saturday Feb. 10, 2018 through Tuesday Feb. 13, 2018

If we are not ready to go on time, it is not because we didn't try.

There is a really pretty snow pack in the woods. This picture was taken on Saturday the 10th.

Friday evening Feb. 9th, Brad and Bob cut yet another tree for

the floor joist of the loft.

This is one of our "old faithful" maple trees,....Bob says this tree has many pics on the blog. He says that this is one of the first trees that we tried putting 3 single taps on instead of 2 doubles increasing our sap collection.

Below is the inside cut of the above tree. The guys have gotten a little soft hearted, the log below was supposed to be a floor joist, seemed like the grain was too cool to do that so plans changed.

 

Saturday brought both time and help to work on the loft some more. Most of this day was spent in planning, measuring and engineering the loft. Evan , Brad and Bob worked on that while Kelsey and Gerri did some cleaning in the camp. Deep cleaning, the kind that involves a shovel, a large magnet, a trash dumpster and small fire. Dale and Karen came to visit after Kelsey and Evan headed back to Mansfield.

Bob contacted friend Rob Wilson to shed some light on the "dark ring". He thinks this is either wind shake that created the dark ring OR Bob counted back the rings, the dark ring would land about 1988 (major drought). Either way a pretty cool looking cross section! This 23 inch log turned into only 12 inches of usable log. the black layer went from the ground to the first crotch which was 30 feet. Win some, lose some.

Saturday am they got the vertical beams set in place and began to place the joists by late afternoon.

It was plenty cold and a bit breezy today. Today's fun fact .....the out house door is frozen shut. Bad situation!

 Sunday the guys set the joists and cut up a couple more logs to make planking for the top of the roof. Dale came over and helped Bob put up about half of the decking on Tuesday late afternoon. We marvel at this picture.....doesn't Wally (our tracker in the corner) look small!

Bob is like a small child who cannot wait to see what the new tank will look like, he lifted the tank up with the forklift and Gerri crawled up and took pics so he could see the approximate size of the space we have on each side.

The woods is beginning to come alive. Gerri saw a squirrel on Saturday afternoon. There are bunny tracks everywhere.

More fun to follow this week we are certain!

Sunday January 28, 2018




A simply gorgeous sunny day. An oasis between a wet and windy last week and what sounds like a return to cold and snow tomorrow! The project goal for today was to install what we call door number three. We expected this would be a challenge. We base our trepidation about this installation on the fact that the door is 15 feet wide, the heaviest of the doors and some possible engineering foresight of trouble regarding the angle of the hip roof above the west door corner...trouble was anticipated and we were not disappointed.

The doorway of straw, which worked beautifully by the way, was torn down and the tarp covering that came down with ease. (The concrete appears to be curing nicely...sweated about that a little a few weeks ago!)The rails on either side of the new door needed to be recessed into the wall. Brad used the router to make these indents, keeping them even on both sides was a bit tricky.

The forklift was used this time, we are trainable haha, to lift the door up . Dale showed up to manage setting the bearings/bar on the west end while Brad did the East and Bob managed the lift. Brad had only done the LEFT side of the other two doors...so he was riding the struggle bus a bit with the different housing on the right side. This took some finessing but the door was placed rather quickly.

 Catching the track to unroll did not go so well. Something on the west side is tight ......several adjustments were made, meanwhile the door started to unroll itself into a bigger coil, Bob held this up with his head for awhile, was not the moment to take pictures...just imagine it. This problem was improved by an hour of adjustments, not resolved.




The door is closed, looks nice. There  is a metal cover for this door, the only one mounted on the outside. There was some debate about putting that up, but it was getting dark and they decided to perhaps enhance the strength of the hangers before mounting them on the barn. The panels X 2 are 108 inches long, with 2 end pieces and one 90 degree angle bracket that were sent with sheet metal screws and NO directions.

Brad ran the lift up and down, shot screws while balancing with one leg on a ladder . removed 8 inch bolts with the impact driver, used the router to cut two different depths of lines for the track and yet somehow, .....struggled to cover the ends with shrink wrap at the end of the day. How you can do all that mechanical stuff and not apply saran wrap without getting tangled, wriping it off, swearing and throwing the wrap 10 feet is just beyond comprehension. (decided to cover the bearings at the ends with this for now as 70% chance of precip tomorrow!)

May need to call one of those safety meetings before we do too much more.

Hey Aunt Dorothy, this may be what happens to some of Brad's pants you have to mend!
















JC and James showed up to haul away the straw so the barn is a little cleaner now!

We spied the neighbors across the road working on their camp today as well!