Maple syrup 2020

[Ryan Browne]

@Firewood Bandit came over this morning and helped turn some wood into ash and sap into syrup. We cooked a little while after Ron left. Ended up making 38 gallons of syrup and burning about 1.5 cords of firewood. Mostly pretty soft lightweight stuff. Maybe he'll chime in with a couple pics, my phone camera is still broke.

 

[beaglebriar]

We just wrapped up tonight's boil, it's gonna be dark stuff. Killed another pile of blue light. Fridays gonna suck...but we're caught up.

 

[beaglebriar]

All caught up, if my math is right we're about 75:1. That's BAD even for my trees!! Lol

 

[Firewood Bandit]

@Firewood Bandit came over this morning and helped turn some wood into ash and sap into syrup. We cooked a little while after Ron left. Ended up making 38 gallons of syrup and burning about 1.5 cords of firewood. Mostly pretty soft lightweight stuff. Maybe he'll chime in with a couple pics, my phone camera is still broke.

Gotta say Ryan, that stove is a wood eating monster. Can't believe how fast it consumes a face cord. Quite the operation.

 

[Firewood Bandit]

more

 

[Ryan Browne]

Thanks for posting those pics Ron. That cooker has been working me pretty good for the last week! We're up to 265 gallons of syrup, which is about 30 more than last year and we're not finished yet. Edited to add: we've burned right about 13-14 full cords of wood since we fired up for the first time March 6th.

I was gonna cook on Sunday but we called it off because of strong winds from the south which really blows right where we cook. Then we bottled yesterday, which means I couldn't cook during the day. Meanwhile, the sap never quit running! When we finished bottling at 5:00 I realized I had about 1850 gallons of sap on hand, leaving me only 100 gallons of capacity remaining. So I went up, ate dinner, and went back out there and cooked until 12:30 this morning.

Well, when I got back out to the woods this morning, the tank in the lower pictures was full again! Close to a gallon of sap per tap from 12:30-9:00am. And the guys bringing me sap are knocking down my door trying to get their trucks empty too. Cooked all day today and I'll be doing it again tomorrow.

The ten day forecast only shows one freezing night (tomorrow) and then a bunch of warm weather. Looking at the calendar, it's possible we'll get more freezing nights later, but frankly I'd be happy to see it wrap up. Hopefully the guys up north get a couple more weeks.

 

[Firewood Bandit]

@Ryan Browne How is the firewood holding up?

 

[Ryan Browne]

@Ryan Browne How is the firewood holding up?

Not so good, unfortunately. I've got some good wood at the other corner of the property up by the driveway, but without any freezing nights, unless I want to tear the place to shreds with the tractor, I can't get it down there. Maybe a helicopter...

So, I'm burning some less than ideal stuff right now. My wife, Lindsey is gonna come down tomorrow morning and cook for a couple hours so I can run the splitter and hopefully make enough to cook until we finish. I decided tomorrow and Friday will be my last days of cooking. Weather looks wet again this weekend, and I'm ready to be done slogging in the mud.

Luckily, we happened to finish our airflow upgrade to the cooker just in time for the wood quality to worsen. I yanked a big squirrel cage blower out of an old furnace and had our local furnace shop build me a plenum. We cut some holes in the back side of the firebox.

And then we fit this in place.

It makes a nice difference. The wood I'm burning is mostly dead standing elm, ash, and box elder. It's not super green, but not dry either. But with this blower, the firebox still looks good and the boil keeps humming. I'm kinda hoping that with this blower I can use more hardwood and bigger chunks in future years, which would let us fire every 6-7 minutes maybe instead of every 3-4. And, as I do every year, I'll try to get more wood ready for the 2021 season by early summer.