This spring was more like, well, winter!
We had snow up until May 10th and the last snowfall occurred on May 7th I think it was. In any case winter held on for a very long time this year which resulted in a difficult birch season. With such heavy snow this winter all our main sap lines were buried prior to the sap run which meant we had to hang about 1000' of new lines to transport sap from the back of our bush.
Tapping day was particularly memorable as May 5-6th were very warm but we still had two to three feet of snow on the ground. T-shirts and snowshoes those days and boy was it a slog! I was happy with how smoothly the tapping went with my new drill. I finally decided to upgrade from a brace and bit to a new 20V Dewalt drill. I charged the batteries with a 700W Eliminator throughout the two days and the system worked perfectly.
Tapping each tree took a fraction of the time and with Paul and Mike placing buckets ahead of me we were able to do 645 trees in two days.
Back in 2011 we had a lot of snow as well which forced us to collect sap in a different way. Previous to that year we used the ATV and a sap trailer to collect from all over the bush. But with so much snow on the ground we couldn't use the ATV at all and ended up carrying our sap tank around and pumping from various locations into the main sap line. This winter I made a sap tank sled that I've dubbed the sap rickshaw/rickski. It's made of a pressure treated wood frame, downhill skis from the Sally Ann, a couple old hockey sticks and a Krazy Karpet. It worked wonderfully for hauling buckets as well.
This year saw a number of technological advancements aside from the drill and sap hauler. We also started using reverse osmosis this year which meant we needed a power source from a generator.
The generator then allowed for the use of a refrigerator, pressure washer and wet-vac for cleaning the evaporator and sap tanks. It also let us charge two Eliminator battery packs throughout the day which then meant we had LED lights in the sugar shack and an HD TV that picked up the hockey playoffs!
The sap run was brief this season. After tapping we had four solid days of flow then the temperature dropped again freezing the whole bush, stopping flow and freezing our sap lines. We lost two days like this then resumed the season for another 6 days. The last few days of the sap run were very warm and as a result the sap changed and was no longer good for syrup production.
In the end I can't say the season was a tremendous success but certainly not a failure. We tweaked all the new systems and I think we'll be very prepared for next season. The reverse osmosis was amazing this season and it significantly reduced boiling time which made the end product lighter and better tasting. Time to prepare for next year!
