Moving In!

Is that a locomotive or maple syrup evaporator? I hope its an evaporator because this spring I'm going to need something to boil sap.

Our new Hurricane Force 5 arrived a few weeks ago and last week my dad and I spent the day moving the silver bullet from the Hardwood Mall warehouse over to our sugarhouse. The big challenge of the day was installing the 24ft of chimney. I talking about 15" diameter 304 stainless steel. This stuff is heavy. By 3 o'clock we had all 24' installed and after I got down off the roof and looked at the building from a distance I realized I will have to mount a light on the top of the chimney to warn low flying aircraft. We still have two steam chimneys to install but they are not nearly as tall. Once the rig is ready to fire, the man who developed the technology behind the gasification chamber will come to our sugar house and train me how to operate the evaporator. The leaves are changing and the air is cooler, soon the ground will be white with snow. Hopefully we will have a few nice days before winter sets in. I need to spend a few more hours on the roof and would prefer that it not be raining or snowing.

New Force 5

Out with the old and in with the new. We've taken the plunge. 10 years ago we started with a used evaporator, when we built our new sugar house in 2007 we bought a bigger but still used evaporator. Later this summer we will be bring home a brand new Lapierre Force 5 (do a youtube search and see what this rig can do). The Force 5 is an innovation in wood fired evaporators. A conventional wood fired evaporator needs fired (filled with wood) every 5-7 minutes. Do this for about 12 hours and you can barely muster the strength to close your eyelids and fall asleep. The Force 5 uses gasification technology to achieve 90%+ efficiency. What does this mean? 45-60 minute between firebox reloads. 40% decrease in wood consumption. A carbon neutral evaporation process, the wood burned gives off less carbon than if it were left to decay in the woods. Not to mention this evaporator looks like a stainless steel rocket ship, cool! After the exceptional production year we decided that it would be best to put as much back into the business as possible to help build infrastructure for the years ahead. We are building a business we hope our grandchildren will have the opportunity to participate in.

10th Anniversay Trip

June 2nd my wife and I will celebrate ten years of marriage. After 6 babies (one of whom is in heaven), countless loads of laundry, birthday parties, homework and all the rest that goes with raising a family we decided this anniversary was going to be special. I'm not sure how we decided on California but I think it had something to do with a few days of below zero temperatures and over a foot of snow this January. Wherever we were going it was going to be warm and sunny, we were not disappointed. To fund the trip we cashed in points on a credit card and saved for a few months. We shipped our older four children to my parents house (3 month old Helena made the trip with us) and headed for the Pittsburgh airport. We spent two days in San Fransisco and 2 days at Yosemite national park. The photo is of the three of us at the top of Yosemite Falls, it took 4 hours of steep climbing to get there but the view from the top was breath taking. Helena was the youngest to reach the summit that day! In the hustle and bustle of daily life you can lose track of one another and sometimes it takes leaving it all behind, if only for a few days, to just enjoy being with the one you love. Sitting together on the plane, resting along the trial on our way to the falls or watching the sunset over Yosemite Valley, are the moments I will remember most. Not so much because of where I was going or what I was watching but because of who I was doing it with. One thing is for sure I'm not waiting 10 more years to fall in love again.

2011 Season Under Way

Despite a few set backs last week all four sugar bushes are on line and collecting sap. We finished tapping a few days ago and were waiting for some warmer weather to wake the trees up well today it was in the low 40's and the sap is a flow'n. My brother came in to set up the remote sap flow recording hardware but we are not getting a strong enough signal in the woods for the text messages to send. We are going to try moving the phone to a different location to see if that helps. We should be boiling in a day or two if all goes well. This first couple of days of the season is always hard on my nerves, so many things can go wrong. Once that first batch is in the jugs and everything is working I relax and start enjoying being a sugar maker again. No matter what happens Spring is right around the corner and that is always a cause for rejoicing.

Ready for a New Year

2011 is hear and we are excited about the upcoming syrup season. Since November we have been working in the woods updating our tubing system. During the 2010 syrup season we did a small test with Leader Evaporators new Check Valve taps and we recorded dramatic sap flow increases over the rest of our non check valve taps. The check valve keeps sap from back flowing into the tap hole during cooling cycles which prevents micro organism growth from sealing off the pores in the tap hole. We just finished installing 1500 check valves at our largest sugar bush.

Another really exciting project we are working on is device that will send hourly text messages with data from the woods (this year it will tell us temperature and sap volume). After this season's test run we plan to have it turn our vacuum pumps on and off, and measure vacuum. My brother is a researcher in Penn States Seismic Geology dept. (or something like that) He designs and builds equipment to collect field data from ice sheets and volcanic regions around the world (literally he has been to China, Hawaii, Greenland, Ecuador, Portugal and is making his 3rd trip to Antarctica in a few weeks).

Thanks for another sucsessful year and we look forward to hearing from you in 2011.

Joseph

Our Week at Jennings Environmental Center

For the past four years we have spent the third week of March at the Jennings Environmental Center's maple sugaring program. The center invites traditional schools, home schoolers and scout troops to sign up for a 1 hour maple sugaring crash course. The tour begins in the classroom where one of the rangers gives a talk about the biology, chemistry and physical make up of the beautiful maple tree. Students learn about the variety of maple species, how to identify a maple and what makes sap flow in trees. After the talk they go out on the maple trail and have first hand experience of tapping a tree and if the weather is right they see sap dripping into a bucket from a real sugar maple. Jennings has a small sugar bush and throughout the week have the evaporator boiling for the students to see and smell the sap boiling. After the last stop at the evaporator and a taste of the real thing (many of these students and adults think Mrs. Butterworths and Log Cabin is pure maple syrup) they can stop by our booth to purchase a variety of maple products. One of our best sellers in my wife's maple popcorn, and this year we made maple cotton candy (we made a few extra bags and are saving them for Easter). The staff at Jennings are very knowledgeable and provide seminars and classes throughout the year in on a variety of topics. One upcoming seminar thats sounds fun is about the benefits of bats and how to build your own bat house. As always we had a great year and plan to be back next year.

Is the season over?

Due to unseasonably warm weather (we have not had a night below freezing in over a week) we are wondering if the 2010 season could be over. Yesterday it was beautiful and 70F, great for cleaning up the yard and getting the garden ready but not ideal for maple syrup producers. The 7 day forecast is predicting cooler temperatures by mid week but now the question becomes are the tap holes sealing off? As the season goes on the trees begin to seal the holes we drilled in the tree at the end of February, the warmer the weather the faster that process happens. Our hope is they can hang on for another 10 days but we can only wait and see. If the season ended today our crop would be about half what we usually produce. As any farmer can tell you, much depends on circumstances that are out of our control so the best you can do is prepare and hope for the best.