Sales have been good, I already had to bottle more syrup, all sizes, but as usual, mostly half gallons. Today and tomorrow it’s amber, rich. When that’s done I’ll do more dark, robust.
While i sell most in my one local outlet, I’ll also be adding more inventory to my online store soon. Until about a year ago I had one continuous add on a forum that did very well, but as my production got lower (I got too old to handle over 1300 taps, cut back to about 350-400), I dropped that advertisement. Now my online orders are mostly return customers or customer referals. Back when I had 1300+ taps and bought sap from up to another 1000 taps I had 3 part time college kids who helped considerably. After they graduated I hired 2 young kids, 14 and 15, they weren’t very interested and after one season my brother in law helpd for a couple of years, but it became too much for him. Now I occassionally get help from one grandson, but during the school year he works 30 hrs after school, and this summer he has a full time job. He helps when he can but I’m lucky if I can get 2-3 hrs a month.
So I have now sold my 3×8 wood fired evaporator and bought a 2×6 evaporator. I’ve sold much of the syrup I had in SS barrels, by next Jan or Feb I’ll be out and waiting for the 2026 crop. This new evaporator is wood fired, but I’m converting it to oil fired, I burned wood for 23 seasons, but cutting and splitting enough firewood to wrist size takes a lot of time. Oil will cut out many hours of wood preperation. I kept most of my other equipment or replaced it. I sold my RO, but later bought another the same size, it does 250 gal per hour, removing enough water that it reduces the sap to 25% of what it was. It can also make a second pass to reduce it to 10-12% of the volume it was. I can’t go further because the syrup needs the time in the syrup pan to develope the great flavor. I sold 4 of my sap tanks, I still have 3, a 200 gal, a 300 gal and an 850 gal, plus a 100 gal head tank to feed the evaporator. I sold a larger vacuum pump and bought the next size smaller but certainly large enough for up to 900 taps, I’ll eventually have 450 around my sugarhouse, all flowing directly to the sugarhouse, plus if I need more, my neighbor has enough trees to add another 200 taps approximately, I i can work out a deal that’s good for both of us.
I bought the oil burner a couple of weeks ago, and this week I ordered a new door, to mount the oil gun on. I will then mostly need to fix leaks on the mainlines and then replace all of the lateral lines (they go from tree to tree, then to a mainline). I have an oil tank to use, it’s 150 gal size. Besides not needing to process firewood, oil will boil faster, with wood it got fired every 9 minutes. Every time the door was open, the boil stopped, then it took 20-30 seconds once the door was closed before it was at full boil again. On the back end, the boil slowed slightly before the door was opened, with oil the fire will be at 100% all the time starting at about 5-6 minutes in, until all sap is gone, then just turn the burner off and the boil stops instantly. When shutting down with wood, on my 3×8 I had a mark on the site level tube to tell me to stop adding wood when I was down to 18 gal in the head tank, then it took about 70-90 minutes for the coals to burn out before I could cover everything , drain the tankless water heater and go home. Now, with oil, shutdown will be about 8-10 minutes. and my boil rate should be about 40 gal/hr instead of 65-70 GPH. Being 78 now and 79 before next maple season, that’s a win in my book!