We continue to experience record warmth for February and meteorologists predict the warmest February since the start of record keeping. The days have included considerable sunshine and warmups in the 40s occur before noon! We find the sap flowing beginning about 10 am and continuing until after sunset.
We try to get our vacuum system reaching 25 inches but have thus far been unsuccessful. We have gotten it to 20 , however we know that every 5 inches of vacuum pressure,increases yield by 25% over gravity systems. Therefore, we achieve a 100% increase at 20 inches vacuum but still are giving up another 25%. We occasionally find a leaking line due to squirrel bites or a loose spile. Every repair helps but they seem to continue!
We have fired up the evaporator 4 times so far , and nearly 100 gallons of delectable syrup has been made. And this is still before we historically even see the sap run!
We have collected 1500 gallons of sap in the last 24 hrs and are concentrating it through our RO. Our sap is running 2.2 % sugar ( rather typical for our sugarbush). The RO is concentrating this to 10-11% which means we only need about 8.5 gallons of this concentrated sap to make a gallon of finished syrup. If we didn’t use the RO, it would take about 40 gallons of sap! A great savings of time and energy consumption!
Check back in a few days to see how we did!