Maple Syrup 2007

Olde Fashioned Maple Syrup - 2008

Too Much Fun & Then Some...

This all started about a week and a half prior to the date of posting.

On average there is 2 ft of snow through the bush with spots drifted to over 4 ft.

The boiler has been patiently waiting for spring to arrive and it looks like it finally may be here.

Some shovel-work gained a spot to stand and load wood in through the door.

I busted the PTO universal on the snow blower in the 30cm dump in early March just days before the 52cm dump.

Since I didn't want to bust the new Loader (given that I finally scrapped out the IH504 tractor back in January) I scabbed together a temporary fix that should get the bush roads done.

The yoke shown to the right was pulled from the rear-end of the GMC Jimmy that has been donating to theworkshop.ca in the form of spare parts for over 10 years now.

The square shaft lasted about 20ft when it snapped and was beefed-up with a 8" length of 1" solid splined steel that as pulled from a Dodge 727 tranny that similarly has been a wealth of material over the years.

The road is down to the "Hard-Pack" that formed over the last thaw-freeze cycle.

The remaining Ice & Snow is about a foot thick but supports the tractor ok for now.

The road will be cleared of slush as it forms twice more before the ground is hit.

The buckets were washed, stacked and stored in a dry storage location last spring and brought out for installation.

The batteries from the Bush-Buggy have been stored and float charged through the winter and are ready to go...

The Inverter and 2 (two) of the group 24 (larger flooded lead acids cells) are used to drill all the 1/2" holes for the spiles (which I'd previously called spouts till I was corrected).

This is less than 10 cents of hydro to drill 40 or 50 holes in about an hour (including hanging the buckets)...

But seriously, the idea is not to be as lazy a fuck as possible but rather to integrate portable AC and power tools into my work-flow.

Ultimately as theworkshop.ca migrates to electric burden carriers, inverters will be standard fixtures if they prove to be handy.

In this case it certainly was...

We added 10 buckets last year, and another 10 this year, so a new section of road is added and will be cleaned-up over the summer.

The idea is to "Dollar-Cost-Average" our investment of equipment as the capital markets collapse under the weight of global monetary expansion.

Regardless of which bank collapses next, we will still be able to make maple syrup...

I'm sure that there are least 40 buckets, though their not easy to spot as many are gray and silver, or hidden behind trees.

This sort of thing went on for about 2 days as the sun gathered strength on cool clear days.

I can't stress enough the 10 degree Celsius differential with a zero crossing as a prerequisite of sap production.

The freezing of the wood at night has a capillary function that draws the sap up into the tree and releases it during the day as it thaws.

(the above may be an oversimplification, but is a ringer when making small-talk around the boiler and some-one looks like they may not have heard this nugget of lore yet...)

At this point it's all just grunt work that is best attended with an MP3 player full of books and recorded radio programs.

Top Picks for Spring 2008

Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert

(Not that soft chalk n' talk, bullshit, feel good, aroma-therapy, ear-candling, massage bunk, but rather lots of case-studies, stats, objective measures and concepts that deal with cognitive function.)

KarmaBanque Radio - for an irreverent look at the markets and summary of the top headlines in geopolitics that puts our local and national media outlets to shame - good clean fun.

A close second for radio is the Financial Sense News Hour with Jim Puplava - If you're like me and despise that cock-sucker John Maynard Keynes, Jim and his guests put a "Contrarian Spin" on the markets that is at minimum entertaining and informative if you have an Austrian Economics outlook.

Since every thing was hooked up, I figured I'd drain the batteries right down to the Inverter "Low Voltage Cut-off" point.

The image to right shows that there wasn't much juice left, though in fairness the electric chain saw that I used is sub-optimal...

(Note: Electric chain saws are a loser compared to a quality Stihl Gas Unit)

The concrete blocks have stood-up well over the last year...

The fire is just starting to get the first load of sap up to a boil, it's taken about 5 days to get to this point. Lots of fresh air, and I sleep like a baby at night...

Hotter and Hottest are the 2 (two) descriptors that come to mind with the images above, to the right we're probably boiling at better than 20 liters per hour. This past Saturday was our best day yet as we reduced 400 liters of sap down to 10 one liter bottles of finished product.

Since I had about 3 days to just veg by the boiler prior to the weekend I thought I'd play around with a 1984 Honda XL-100 frame that I recently received.

My buddy Steve commented that theworkshop.ca is akin to the Island of Dr. Morreau, where disparate parts from non-related mechanical items are grafted in an unholy union that even Darwin would dis-approve of.

The rear-end that will actually be used is still on the back of a Massey Ferguson garden tractor behind the foundry.

Over the last few days the snow has been going fast, so I thought that with kids and folks coming out for a visit I may as well load up the batteries into the Dirt-E Bike and prep it for some "Durability Testing".

No GPS, speedometers or distance requirements, all I want to see is reactions to the bike in general and note how well it holds up to a variety of riders.

After a few riders put it through it's paces I thought to start taking pictures...

My daughter Britt, this is early on while later she migrated to a more aggressive style that she called "Extreme Dirt-Biking"...

She was the third person to dump the bike and it was still working fine.

Britt's boyfriend Scott, who is a fairly skilled mountain biker, but is currently in the market for a racing-class 4-wheeler, so the Dirt-E is under-powered within his frame of reference.

My buddy Ted, who despite being under the weather and adamantly protesting that he doesn't care for motorcycles, was cajoled into going for a short rip with a level of indifference that would be expected from someone that just wants to sit in the first warm days and enjoy a cool beverage.

But this kid, just couldn't get enough of that bloody bike...

Over the course of a full day of fairly steady usage, the blower assembly was completely busted off the motor, so we resorted to 5 minute runs that would top the scale of the temp sensor embedded in the brush plate of the motor.

10 to 15 minutes to cool and off he'd go again.

"Suck it up you little baby"

"Now get back on that bike, I need some hours logged"

Just kidding, there were no children hurt in the making of this webpage...

Additional riders, Steve, Sandy, Ralph and myself...

Over the course of the weekend, this was the main activity, with folks dropping out and a feed of "Back-Ribs" that were finished on a grill that was placed over the boiler opening.

The last load of wood fired in the boiler was Maple, while the ribs were marinated in maple sauce...

I'm not sure whether the above is closer to incest or cannibalism, but I can't help but feel that we crossed a social taboo in our culinary exuberance.

Readers who enjoyed "Olde Fashioned Maple Syrup - 2008" may also like Maple Syrup , 2006, 2007...

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