I was going to process more firewood today but it started to rain too hard to want to work in it Then I decided to go finish off the remainder of the 40 gal barrel of syrup (about 26 more gallons) in the finisher. I got ready to leave and the rain was extremely hard. I decided to process an invoice on an order I placed yesterday for Gorilla and O’Keeffe’s products (Locally only I carry a fairly complete line of both products which I only sell at The Eclectic Chic. I don’t offer them online because I’d never have time for anything else, including maple syrup) however the invoice has not arrived yet. I request a copy of the invoice as soon as it’s generated simply to update prices. Unfortunately so many of the products have frequent price increases and I neede to update my retails as a result. Back after I started selling those products about 4-5 yrs ago I checked the cost compared to what it had been about a year earlier and I found I was selling too many at a loss. I then started checking with each order and updating my retails. Unlike how most retailers do it, I only raise the prices on the new shipments. The items I had that were bought at a lower cost remain at a retail reflecting that cost.
I sell a lot of those product lines and need to reorder every 3-5 weeks just to keep the racks filled. As I get a new cost on an invoice I multiply that to maintain my necessary markup %. A method that has served me well since I started carrying those products. If any of you are in the vacinity of Oneida, NY I heartily suggest you check out The Eclectic Chic in Glenwood Plaza just south of the Rt 5 intersection with Rt 46 (Main Street). It’s truly a fun store to shop. It’s a vendor mall with well over 200 venders and there is something to interest everyone. I started selling syrup with them about 6-7 yrs ago, when they were in an old 4 room school house. About 18 mos later they had to move to a much larger location, an old full line home center. Just 2 yrs later they outgrew that location and moved to their current location into a former Army Navy Store. Then about a year ago they expanded by knocking out a wall between that store and a former large drug store. Even with all of that expansion they still have a waiting list of new vendors looking to get in. As far as I know they don’t have anyplace to expand to now unless they force out a Fittness business or an Auto Parts store. Time will tell.
For now, with no invoice yet to update my retails I just need to wait for the rain to taper some so I can make a dash for the truck and head to the sugarhouse. It will slow soon according to radar.
Ouch, That didn’t go as planned. The rain did let up a little so I went to process the syrup. As the syrup got close to proper density, I drew some off into the draw off tank and set it to recirculate back into the finisher to better blend or mix thesyrup in the finisher. Then things went very wrong. The filter pump set up had not been altered for about 9 years, when I changed the pump from a Brass gear pump to an air powered diaphragm pump. The gear pump was getting old enough and warn so it needed replacing. Rather than replace it with another gear pump I chose an air powered diaphragm pump which is far better. The fittings connecting the lines had not had any leaks, until all at once a fitting blew apart. All of a sudden syrup was shooting out onto the sugarhouse floor. I had to be careful not to get burned avoiding the 195 degree syrup shooting out. I managed to shut the air valve and the leak stopped. While I had not gotten burned my clothes were covered in syrup, as well as my shoes. I managed to reconnect the fitting that had failed and I pumped the hot syrup back into the finisher. I then shut everything down, shut off and drained the tanhkless water heater. Covered everything that was open and I shut off the water jacketed bottler, as well as the power to the shop where the compressor that operates the diaphragm pump is located, about 90′ away from the sugarhouse. I shut off the lights , locked the door and drove home to change my syrup soaked clothes. After changing the clothes I washed the syrup soaked clothes and sat to relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll need to clean the sugarhouse floor and nearby equipment and then figure out about how much syrup was lost. While over the years since I started making maple syrup for sale I did have a few spills, but today’s leak topped the total of lost syrup in previouse years combined. At this point, I’m guessing I likely lost 14-16 gal of syrup. I’ll know better tomorrow or the next day. I’ve never had such a big leak in all of the years since 2003 when I started. I never had a fitting blow apart before. This loss will certainly set me back, but I didn’t get burned, the rest is just unfortunate but I will do OK. The cleanup will take 3-4 hrs and I may need to go get more water. I don’t have water at the sugarhouse. In the off season I haul full IBC totes with up to 280 gal of municiple water from home. In season I use the permeate (the pure water removed from the sap by the Reverse Osmosis machine (RO). For this job I’ll only haul maybe 100 gal because with freezing temperatures in the not too distant future I don’t want to pump 280 gal of water into the tank that I keep it in, just to drain out to keep it from freezing. Once I get the mess all cleaned up I’ll finish heating the syrup and as the density tests right, I’ll fill the bottler and pack more into retail containers. Then I’ll pump the last of this batch into the bottler at which time I’ll finally know how much was lost in the spill.
Then as I need more to pack I have just one barrel remaining, that barrel is only a 26.5 gal SS barrel. What I packed earlier from the 40 gal barrel, 14.5 gal, plus what ever is still in the finisher, left after the spill and that 26.5 gal other barrel is the last of my syrup (plus what I had already packed from my previous 40 gal barrel) which I haven’t yet inventoried but I can tomorrow, because I have it all lined up on a counter ready to haul to my local store to restock. I may run out , time will tell.