Getting Ready for the Fall

Fall is here and with it is the cooler air! At Red Gate Farm wood is the sole source of heat which means we have lots and lots of wood to chop. We use wood for two important sources: to heat the farmhouse and program buildings; and for maple sugaring! We use chunky, split logs of firewood in our furnace. For maple sugaring, we need thin, flat pieces of slab wood to feed into our evaporator. All summer we have splitting and stacking wood to prepare for winter. In total we need over 60 pallets of firewood and about 30 pallets of slab wood to get us through the cold season - that’s a lot of wood!

Split firewood ready to be stacked and dried. We’ll use this wood in our furnace to heat the farmhouse and program building.

Pallets of stacked slab wood we’ll use this Spring in our evaporator to make maple syrup. The relatively small, thin pieces help us keep the fire at an even temperature and the sap boiling steadily.

We’ve already stacked quite a few pallets of slab wood for our sugaring season.

A small sea of slab wood is all that’s left to stack and should get us what we need for the sugaring season!

Spring Photos with Jody

Jody Hopp, our amazing program manager, has been taking some beautiful pictures around the farm lately. She’s noticed the farm cats venturing outside more frequently as temperatures warm. The lambs are being born and snuggling up with their moms. The first snow drops are blooming and the willow buds are opening up!

Maple Sugaring Apprentice - Week Four

This week was very similar to last. I spent the majority of my time in the sugar house, feeding the fire, and making sure that all was well with the pan and the sap levels. We boiled every day this week except on Tuesday, because of the weather. We had started the fire, and had just gotten things setup, but then it got really windy and Ben explained to me that in years past they have had trouble with the wind. In order for the draft to move the evaporator steam out of the sugar house, the door must stay partly open at all times, and if it gets very windy out, salt and sand off the road can blow in and contaminate the syrup which would ruin the entire batch. So that is why we were not able to continue on Thursday.

Something I noticed was that the front pan, which does most of the evaporation, has gotten much darker since last week. The sap has turned a more caramel color. There are two main reasons for this: one is that the more the pan is used throughout the season, the more heating and reheating of sap goes on, and now that we are midway through the season, the pan has been stained with burnt sugars and a mineral substance called “sugar sand.”  The other reason is that the later in the season, the darker the sap becomes as it matures in the trees. The sap gets a green tinge to it. So that is why I noticed the darker color that has formed.

I was able to get a lot of progress on my tree mapping project this week, and I am in a place, where I can easily finish next week, which is my last week on the farm.  I am excited to get another week of collecting and boiling.

Maple Sugaring Apprentice - Week Three

This week was very eventful. It started with the first sap collection of the year. Ben taught me how to pump the sap from the large collecting tanks into the back of the truck. We then unloaded the sap into a large silver tank next to the sugar house. In the first collection, I made a huge mistake, where I turned the valve on the tank the wrong way, and we lost 250 gallons of sap. So I definitely learned from that one, and won’t make that mistake again. Because we lost that much sap, we were not able to boil until Thursday.  However, there was plenty more sap to collect and the first boil was very exciting. I learned most of what is to be learned about the evaporation process.             

I got the chance to tend the fire.  It needs feeding every 8 minutes to make sure that the fire stays at a consistent hot temperature. I learned about how we know when it is time to draw off, and how to use the hydrometer to test density. We drew off periodically and finished the syrup in a propane fueled finishing pan before bottling the syrup into mason jars. We have a main boiling pan, and a smaller pan.  The smaller pan is for the sap that is closer to syrup and ready to be drawn off. The current of the pans flow in such a way that where the sap enters the system is where the sugar content is lowest. The liquid flows across pan where it changes density as the sugar content is concentrated through evaporation.

This week we collected roughly 1,100 gallons of sap, including what was lost in the accident.  From that have so far made about 11 gallons of syrup. However there is still sap in the evaporator that remains to boiled in subsequent days.