Thursday
Linda
Last night Sonny and I dropped off fifty- five gallons of sap to TwoLynn’s Farm. That combined with the thirteen gallons we dropped off the other day gives us sixty-eight gallons. We poured them into the evaporator and Lynn will begin to process them today. So we will get a little over a gallon of syrup, but remember Lynn and Sandy will get half of that for their services. Boiling down the maple sap takes hours and requires constant observation, feeding the fire and monitoring the temperature. Excellent maple syrup can’t be rushed.
The temps didn’t drop enough last night to cause the sap to go back down into the tree roots which has made the sap slow to flow today. I am hoping to get at least one five gallon bucket filled or possibly one and half. Nature has its own plan and way of doing things. We all just have to stand by and patiently wait.
Sonny wants to tap more trees, but the sun is already starting to slip down behind the hills by the time he gets home from work. Hopefully he will get a chance to do that this weekend. Maybe he can tap a few Saturday morning before we head off to a pruning class we signed up for. We are going to learn how to prune fruit trees and berry bushes. Should be fun. The class will be held at a nearby farm so I will try to get a few pics and let you all know what we learned.
I know I promised that Sonny would do a blog on the solar hot water heater install but he has been spread pretty thin. We did have a small mishap when he first turned it on. There is antifreeze (non-toxic) that flows through lines attached to the solar panel. When he turned on the pump for the heater and when the very very hot fliud hit the pressure relief valve all the antifreeze blew out and ran down the roof into our rain water barrel. I am not really sure what went wrong, but sometimes good ‘ol Murphy likes to throw his law at us. As a matter of fact he often sends his brother Mayhem over to check in on us. The only problem is Mayhem leaves his gremlin children behind and we end up with a mess. Maybe they turned on a valve or something, but anyway we’ve ordered another batch of antifreeze from the company and it should arrive sometime tomorrow. I have no doubt that Sonny will have it reinstalled and working in no time. Thats if he has time and the gremlin children get lost in the woods.
Off-Grid in West Virginia 
Turns out that the anti-freeze was around 300 degrees in the panels and when I turned on the pump the pressure relief valve could not take the temp. The manufacturer recommended that I leave the pump on to allow the heat transfer to the cooler water in the hot water holding tank. Lesson learned.