Around noon yesterday, during the last break in the rain, I brought in 24 more gallons of sap. We then spent the day watching rain and the night listening to wind.
Today was cold and very windy. We fired up the evaporator first thing after breakfast and ran it till about 6:30 We boiled 75 gallons of sap down to about 15. Allowing for Friday’s boiling, I figure that’s roughly 2.5 gallons of syrup. However, we ran out of sap and daylight at about the same time and the firewood is low. We’re now going back and forth over finishing on the stove versus using the evaporator. (Minerva discovered that the warmest spot around is right next to the evaporator, plus there’s mud there! Hog heaven.)
One of the things we did for some dry firewood was to go out and drop some dead trees. There’s no other use for them, and they are guaranteed dry wood. It worked like a charm. I just need to find more. Next year, we’ll have slab from the sawmill stacked up properly, but this year we are definitely scrambling to find enough to feed the beast.
We won’t use the evaporator tomorrow. Now that we have some idea of what we’re doing, it’s not worth firing it up with less than 50 gallons of sap on hand. I didn’t even bother going out today, and doubt I’ll bring in more that 25 gallons tomorrow. Allowing for bridge on Tuesday, we’re looking at boiling again on Wednesday, which is the rationale for using the stove tomorrow.