The weather has slowed my progress. As the temperatures get warmer I find it difficult to bottle syrup, the exact opposite of my issues in cold weather. When it’s cold outside I try not to bottle if I can if bottling from a SS barrel, because I then need to use a barrel heater (a silicone band with heating elements in it) or the syrup is too dense to pump very fast. For example, if the syrup in the barrel is at 20F the pump takes about 2 hours to pump 40 gal from the barrel to the 2×6 finish pan. If the syrup is at 50F or above it pumps the 40 gal barrel in about 8-10 minutes. To heat a 40 gal barrel from 20F to 50F takes about 4 hours and lots of electricity.
On the hot side, I get over heated working over a 185 degree bottler and handling hot bottles after filling them. So with temperatures in the 80’s I’ve been doing other things. Most days when it wasn’t raining I cut the very large sugarmaple I had to take down into firewood lengths, which in our case is just 14″ long. While we can fit 18″ in the wood stove cross ways, we like to keep 2 pieces in front to back, then have the rest crossways. We find it far simpler to have all of our wood at 14″ so we don’t need to keep the 2 lengths seperated, Besides, our house is so well insulated we don’t need the extra fuel in there to keep the home warm. While I have 3 chainsaws, a 16″, 20″ and 24″ cut gas saws, even though it only cuts at about half the speed, I’ve been using my 18″ cut battery powered saw for the quiet. The others all require ear plugs and muffs, the electric requires neither. The saw is a 60V DeWalt and I have 2 batteries for it. I started using my 24″ cut saw but after 2 blocks cut I thought I’d try the DEWalt. In the past I’d only used it to cut about 12-14″ diameter logs. I found that if I start cutting as normal bar horizontal, but the keep lifting the handle to where it gets the cutting vertically, then pull the handle back to cutting horizontally the 18″ cut gets thru the part of the log I’ve been cutting. I started about 1/3 of the way up from the butt end mostly to be able to move the blocks out of the way, the tree was blocking one way around a circular drive. So far I’ve cut from there up to just past the first branch, which gave me 22 blocks @ 14″ long. Yesterday, after finishing those 22 blocks, I pushed enough blocks far enough away to pull the butt log onto the driveway where I can cut it. Then using my logging winch I lifted the end of the log and placed a 4×4 under it back far enough that I can cut 3 blocks, off the ground. I already have a logging chain aqround the log just past the 4×4, so I can lift the log again and move the 4×4 far enough to cut 2 or 3 more blocks, working towards the butt end. The diameter keeps getting bigger, it is 29″ at the butt. I’ll most likely need to use the 24″ gas sawvbefore i’m done, but I’ll use the electric as long as I can. Once I cut to the point the saw bar is vertical I think I’m in about 10-12″ into the face opposite where I’m standing, if it is in 12″ I might be able to do it all with the electric. I got 3-5 blocks on a battery charge on what I cut so far, but being larger diameter I might only get 2-3. I did sharpen the chain yesterday, for the first time since working on this tree, it should help the battery last longer (I have 2 batteries).
Today my wife and I are taking my older sister out to lunch, her birthday was last Saturday, but she had plans with her kids, so we scheduled it for today. Besides, today is a wash out, rain most of the day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll cut some more. According to the forecast, next Tuesday it will be cool enough (and rainy) so I might get the rest of that barrel of amber syrup packed, then I’ll bottle some dark, I have 2 or 3 jugs, 5 gal each of dark, all filtered and after final density verifying ready to bottle. Then maybe split the wood I’ve been bucking. Actually my kid brother’s going to help. He has a splitter on the front of his big skid steer. The splitter has the ram and wedge under the main beam so he just drives up to the block, lowers the splitter and splits it into 4 or 6 pieces, depending on which wedge he has on it. When he does his wood, he lifts the block with the skid steer, and splits it over his dump trailer then at his woodshed, he raises the dump with the tailgate closed and unloads each piece into his woodshed. Because he has an outdoor boiler he wants large pieces. When he splits mine it will just be onto the ground, then I’ll split it smaller for our woodstove using my log splitter, splitting pieces I can more easily lift, the blocks are so heavy now I can hardly roll them, sugar maple is very heavy.