Still No Maple Syrup

The reverse osmosis machine is finally fixed.  We ran our sap through and removed about 70% of the water.  Then we boiled and boiled the sap, but the it never quite thickened enough and got to the correct temperature (219.1-degrees) to be maple syrup.  

Worrying that we were doing something wrong, we called all of our maple producing friends and were told, "it just takes time." 

 I guess the first time you boil - before you're pushing condensed sap - it just takes a long time to get going. As our sap supplies got lower and the maple got thicker, but not quite thick enough, we decided we had to stop loading the evaporator with firewood and let it all cool down, because one of the worst things that can happen is you run out of sap, burn what's in your evaporator pans, and destroy the pans (a very expensive fix) in the process.  

Today, we have sap that's very close to being maple syrup and hopefully we'll collect more sap today and tomorrow and finally be able to finish it off.  

The learning curve is very high here!

We Fire Up The Maple Sap Evaporator

Yesterday was a banner day on Fitzgerald's Family Farm.  We worked on lines in the morning and in the afternoon we filled our evaporator with water and fired it up for the first time.

We started the day by going back to the area I had tapped and fixed all the damage I had marked.  Squirrels and chipmunks love to chew on maple sap lines!  They are a maple sap tappers nemesis.

Marked damaged line

Squirrel damage

Repairing the line

Fitz was very happy with this nice neat junction of sap lines.

We didn't see any bears or deer, but we found evidence that they'd been around!

Deer pooh

Bear pooh

Later that afternoon, we filled the evaporator with water, loaded and started the firebox, and heated the water up to boiling to clear up the impurities and oils that might be in the evaporator (it's brand new), and checked for leaks - none, thank goodness.  We drained off the dirty water after the fire went out.  This is the culmination of months and months of preparation.

Everything worked great!

Now, cross your fingers in hopes that today we'll get some sap to boil!