Hurricane Farm

Last weekend we started to put the roof together for our sugar shack.  It will ultimately be an open-walled pole structure to house our maple syrup evaporator.  We'll be able to make much more syrup once we're able to get a roof overhead the whole operation.  No more standing around in the cold drizzle!

The first task in getting up the roof was to set the ridge pole over the center of the framing.  I got the longest 2 x 8 available, but I still wish it was a few feet longer so I could have an nice overhang on the end.  I have an idea as to how to make an overhang in a slightly different way, so it will still probably work out.

Next we had to measure out the angles for the rafters.  I personally do not enjoy doing math, so we measured out the first rafter while holding it in place.  We got the perfect angle on the second try.  Not too bad.  This rafter became the "cookie cutter" by which we measured and cut all the others.

Measuring out the first rafter was a two person job.  Luckily, we have enough ladders.

As a side note, the weather is starting to become hat-weather...Nice.  My favorite time of the year!

A cluster of turkeys watches our progress from the background, while their constant gobbling urges Erica further up the ladder.

The first rafter is measured and set.  We ended up completing 1/2 of the rafters.  Today the plan is to finish up the roof and get ready to put on some covering and make a cupola from which the steam from the evaporation process will escape later in the week.

Did you know?  Rafters make great race-car ramps!

With the end of the maple sugarin' season come and gone, it is time to start cleaning up the pails and buckets and taps.  There is lots of equipment to dismantle, carry in from the woods, and clean.

Yesterday, Erica spent 6 hours at least scrubbing, washing, and rinsing the buckets, pails, spouts, tubing, and holding tanks.  We'll have some photos of that later.  For now, here are some shots taken by Liev and Violet of Mom out in the woods gathering all the maple gear.

Not bad shots for a four and five year old!

Yuck!  Look at those critters in that bucket.  Always a sign that the spring is really here and the winter is gone.

It sure looks different out in the woods without the snow and ice.  I almost forgot what it looked like out there.  Actually, we moved in here last May, so we never experience the "naked" spring woods without all the growth of the late spring...

Check out the size of that oak tree! 

The sugarin' season is just about up, but here are some photos of last week's late night boil.

The whole family was out there working on making the sweet stuff, and we managed to even rig up some lights so we could see what we were doing.

We had a "warming" fire going as it was starting to get pretty cold again that night.  It hit about 20 degrees, but the sugaring season is so short that one must take advantage of every possible moment!

We had a pretty yummy dinner out there!

We even set up a little serving table!  We're so lucky that the kids enjoy this sort of thing...

In the past, I mentioned that we have the fire so hot in the evaporator that you can sometimes see flames licking out of the smokestack...In the next picture you can sort of see them shooting out a little bit.  Watch out!  Hot fire!

We still have a few more gallons left to boil, but it looks like we'll be topping 11 gallons of pure maple syrup this year!  Quite an improvement from our make-shift efforts with Hotel pans over an open fire...

Gallons of our finished syrup ready to be bottled into glass jars...Yummy!

Every since we started farming--with four chickens and a rabbit--our family has been keen on lending a hand.  From my dad, who chops wood, gathers sap, and gives tractor rides, to my Mom who brings really tasty spinach salads, to Erica's Mom who makes us custom "Hurricane Farm" T-Shirts, to her Dad who allowed us to have a "farm" when renting out his house.

Then there is my brother:

Above please note how he is examining the power cord that I am currently using to illuminate my sugarin' operation.  He's a fire-fighter and a consummate stickler for details.  Thanks to his unceasing vigilance, we have yet to burn anything down (accidentally) here at the farm.

There's my  Dad and brother working hard keeping the boil going.  I have to say that my dad split a ton of wood and we were able to boil for three days on the stack that he left us with.

One of the greatest things about this new evaporator is that we make so much syrup that we need to draw some off while boiling...We made over 5 gallons of syrup from that last boil!  Above see my Dad using his new gloves to hold the hot pan.  Look really closely...I labeled them "Left" and "Right."  Heh heh.
 
We have a good time here from time to time!

Thanks for the help throughout the sugarin' season, Dad!

Love,
Chris

It's time for an update on the maple sugarin' here in Connecticut.  It's been a really busy week--with a brief trip to our favorite Phishing hole last weekend (more on this later)--but we're full scale on our maple syrup operation right now.  We've got a great system to allow us to boil sap during the week as well as on the weekends.  Erica fires up the evaporator during the day, and then it's my turn as the daylight slips away.

We will be running the evaporator almost non-stop Friday through Sunday this weekend.  We have a few hundred gallons of raw sap to boil with more to collect as it continues to flow.  Weather conditions are perfect!

So here is our set up in full operation.  We've been cutting the slab-wood and splitting it into small, almost kindling-sized pieces in order to get the fire raging inside of the evaporator.  While cutting and chopping, we take a break every 5-10 minutes to add more wood to the fire.  It's a fluid process that needs constant attention.  Leave the fire unattended for 5 minutes too long and it's almost out!  The slab-wood (mostly spruce) burns quickly.

Here is a pile of split spruce and some pine.  Imagine putting 2 x 4 scrap into a fire.  That's quite close to the effect we get with the split spruce.  At times it seems like a race as Erica feeds the fire and I split wood to replenish the pile.  My brother is coming tomorrow for a visit, so perhaps I can get him on the splitting task for a while.  This miight make for a good trade for a trunk load of firewood for his fireplace.



In addition to always adding wood to the fire and splitting some reserve wood, we must keep a constant eye on the level of sap inside of the evaporator.  We need to refill the 5 gallon reservoir of the "SD 3000" every 15 minutes when we're really boiling.  Here Erica is adding more sap.

It looks like I've momentarily caught up with the splitting!  That pile, though it looks impressive in this shot, will only last a few hours while we're at peak boiling.  Luckily, the softwoods split readily and I can use my axe instead of a maul.  Aside from 5 gallon buckets, the axe is the most important tool on our farm.

On Monday we got a surprise snowfall!  That didn't keep us from boiling, though.  You can begin to see how much heat is generated by this process by noting the large circle of melted snow (the ground in that area is actually DRY from the heat) around the evaporator.  The heat radiates for several feet.  (Hey look!  The tractor moved.)

While it's rather hard to make out, you can begin to see the color of the syrup as it forms in each of the chambers within the evaporator pan.  The raw sap enters into the channel on the bottom of the photo and moves along to the channel at the top of the photo as it becomes more concentrated.  We then draw off the "near-syrup" using the spigot and finish it off on our kitchen stove where we have much more control over the intensity of the heat.  Check out the coloring of the liquid in the top-most channel.  Almost syrup!

Update on the sap flow here in Scotland, CT.  (How come they did away with the old Conn. abbreviation, by the way?  I was always partial to that.)

We added 10 more taps in our new sugarbush up the road and collected the sap that ran over the past 24 hours...100 gallons came in from the new taps.  This is prime time for maple sugarin'!  At this rate, we will have to be gathering in the morning and the afternoon.  The trees here in our woods have also picked up and we gathered another 30 or so gallons.  Since we're in a valley, our temperatures are always about 10 degrees below the rest of the area.  Not so good for the early sap run, but great for extending the sugarin' season!

Did I mention how useful these things are?

We'll be sugaring in earnest now for the next several weeks it looks like.  If you are in the area, give a call and stop on by to taste some warm maple syrup.  It looks like some snow for the next few days, so we can serve it up "sugar on snow," the good old fashioned way!

We fired up our new evaporator and worked on our first batch of maple syrup yesterday.  We'll be finishing off a little over a gallon of syrup this morning!

We were warned by several people--both in books and in person--to NEVER let the level of the sap get too low.  Otherwise, we might scorth the pan and ruin it!  (Psst...I actually did this to one of my little pans last year, don't tell anyone.)  So to avoid this devastating mistake, we designed a measuring tool.  Note its fine wood grain, robust coloring, and tightly hewn edges.  With a little practice, we were able to keep the sap level just above that bottom line.  This meant 2" of sap in the pan.  Perfect for evaporating.

Here is a picture of the steam rolling off the top of the pan.  It took some adjustments, but we eventually learned the correct amount of wood to put in and the frequency of feeding the fire.  It needs the hottest fire imaginable! 

Here you can really see the fire cranking.  We were planning to use some of last season's left over--and really dry--hardwood for sugaring.  That is what I used to do.  However, the folks at the maple sugar making store suggested that we use pine, as it burns hotter and quicker and is more desirable for use in one of these units.  We had about 1/2 cord of slabwood from the local lumber mill left over from our summer parties and we used most of that yesterday.  Erica called the mill and they delivered a little more than 3 cords of slabwood yesterday morning.  That should be enough to hold us for the sugaring season, but the mill has plenty more and is more than happy to deliver.  That's a relief as we were a bit concerned about our truck when they loaded that first bundle in back in the summer.  The truck was riding LOW...

Back to the issue of keeping the sap level constant.  When in full blaze, the evaporator is supposed to handle 8-10 gallons per hour.  We did a little measuring and timing and it seems that we were close to 10 at our peak yesterday.  Lots of improvement from my exploits in previous years.  Below is a my "S.D. 3000."  We like Wallace and Gromit here on the farm and tend to name our inventions the way they do.  (Anyone recall the B.V. 6000?)  I used--that's right!--a five gallon pail and added some plumbing.  It takes a little patience to get the valve dripping just right, but the old "Sap Dripper" is doing its job.  I might switch over to a ball valve as they seem to be easier to adjust than the gate valve that I am currently using.

The "S.D. 3000" attaches to the evaporator via a hose and is able to supply fresh sap on demand.  Once I move the evaporator into the sugarhouse, I will be making the "S.D. 4000" which will not only drip sap into the pan but will preheat the sap.  I will be running some coils of copper tubing around the lower portion of the chimney pipe where it exits the firebox...That should heat up the sap as it drips from the bucket and help speed up the evaporation rate even more.  Who knows, maybe I'll work on that sooner...

My Dad came down again this weekend to lend a hand.  This photo finds him skimming the top of the sap to remove some undesirable content (a little ash still gets in from time to time as we are still boiling out-of-doors). 

Of course, there is lots of waiting while sugaring, so we decided to work on some other farm tasks.  We have a batch of replacement laying hens--about 45 or so--that need leg bands so we can identify their age.  My Dad figured out the banding tool right away.  Glad I didn't try this by myself.  I probably would have ended up banding my thumb to my index finger!

And then, of course, there is the tasting of the syrup...

Both Violet and Dad agree...it's not done yet.  This was Violet's third or fourth tasting.  She was out there with her wooden spoon just about the time that I finally got the fire going!

We'll post some photos of the finishing and bottling process as it progresses.

The new evaporator is here!  Erica went up to New Hampshire Friday evening--returning at midnight--to pick up the supplies. 

With the help of my father, who put in some solid work while keeping strong hold of his advisory role, we assembled the evaporator.  It is supposed to use 40 firebricks.  We managed to use 48 of them.  We got it all together, ready to try out, and.....The doors did not fit!  Someone at the old evaporator makin' factory drilled the holes in the front doors incorrectly.  The doors DO fit upside down and backwards...Hmm...too much Moosehead up there in the Canadian factory, perchance.

The good news is that Chris, one of the guys at The Maple Guys, where we bought the unit, is sending a new set of doors to us today.  We should be up and running tomorrow making our first batch. 

We'll be posting photos of the tapping of the trees later on today...