From the inside of a sap tank



Ever wondered what it's like to be inside a sap tank?  

 

Today, Kern was the lucky one picked to squeeze his way down into the 1,000 gallon sap tank, used to hold the water that exits the reverse osmosis machine.  For many years, it's been a task-and-a-half to clean all our plastic sap tanks, especially the smaller ones- wriggling down inside, dragging the hose in after you, scrubbing, and coming out sopping wet.  For someone that is even semi-claustrophobic, this is definitely not a pleasant job.  The only opening in these types of tanks are about a foot & a half in diameter, so when you're inside the tank, this opening seems mighty small and one might find themselves wanting a little more air!   Fortunately for Kern, today he was just checking to make sure everything was in perfect working order, as we are selling this big tank and replacing it with a brand new, shiny stainless steel one.

Summer side dish

 

All ingredients, including maple sugar on top, ready to be mixed

This classic bean salad is an easy dish to make for the summer, or all year through! Instead of using regular white sugar, though, we make it with our granulated pure maple sugar.  Give it a try....even those who don't like maple will like this!





Three Bean Salad

15 or 16 oz. green beans
15 or 16 oz. kidney beans
15 or 16 oz. garbanzo beans
1/3 of a large sweet onion, chopped fine
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup granulated maple sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 - 1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper

Put all beans (use whatever kind of beans you want) and onion in large bowl.  Add vinegar, olive oil, maple sugar, salt and pepper, then mix together.  Chill in refrigerator.

All done!

What happens to all that water?

Maple sap is comprised of sugar and water.  Each day we test the sugar content of the sap with a hydrometer because the amount of sugar in the sap varies from day to day.  Sap consists of mostly water (ex: 98%), and a small amount of sugar (ex: 2%).

In our sugaring operation, we use a reverse osmosis machine (R.O.) to remove approximately 90% of the water out of the sap.  So, for every 1,000 gallons of sap we collect, we end up with about 100 gallons of concentrated sap.

The use of a R.O. allows us to boil for less time, thus saving energy.   If we didn't use a R.O., we would be boiling all night long, every single day!
  

Reverse osmosis machine

 

So, you may wonder: what happens to all that water that comes out of the sap?  Usually, if you didn't employ a R.O., all the water would evaporate into the air.  But, since the R.O. directly removes the water out of the sap, we have a large tank that the water flows into after exiting the reverse osmosis machine.  From there, we not only reuse the water to clean the R.O., but to clean our syrup pans as well.

When it gets to a certain point in the season, we must clean our pans from the evaporator every day.  The sugar sand accumulates and a thick coating of it is left on the bottom.  If we didn't clean them thoroughly, they would burn during the boiling process and the syrup would not taste good.  We reuse the crystal clear water from the R.O. to clean these pans, saving a lot of water!

 

A sugar sand coated syrup pan

  

Water from R.O. makes it's way through each section

Almost done!

 

Clean syrup pan

Sugaring Season Begins

Derek, Kern, and Sue tapping

Sue puts the spout on a drop line

Kern drills the hole

Derek taps in the spout

We are always on the lookout for damage.  Here, Derek fixes a bite in the tubing.

Big ol' maple

Sue, in her cold weather gear

This past Sunday, we plodded through the snow and began tapping the beautiful, bare maple trees.  The amount of snow on the ground during tapping is always something we keep in mind.  In previous years, we’ve had to drudge through deep snow, several feet high, making hard work of an important task.  Climbing through snow up to your hips gets tiring!  

After Sunday, though, the temperature increased and we had some rain, melting a lot of the snow and making it easier to get around the woods.  Since then, the temperatures have been frigid and ice-cold (which might be an understatement!), but tapping has continued during the warmest parts of the day. 

As of now, it looks like there will be a warm-up tomorrow, so hopefully the sweet sap will start to flow!