The average adult needs 2000-2500 calories per day to maintain their body weight. There are approximately 12,800 calories in a gallon of maple syrup, almost a weeks worth of energy. Yesterday we bottled 552 gallons fresh off the evaporator, roughly ten years worth of calories. We definitely don’t recommend living off only maple syrup for the next decade, maybe a gallon every two weeks is more realistic?

What a year it’s been already. Between favorable weather, some incredible employees, all of the experience gained over the last few seasons, and a little luck with equipment not breaking (mostly), we’re on pace for a record year. As of Friday’s boil (1206 gallons made) we’re at 66% of last years crop. With the sap hauled today plus what’s in our tanks/evaporator we estimate we have another 900 gallons worth, which would put us at 85%. Let’s hope this March is like last years and the sap keeps flowing!

We never had a chance to post pictures of our new Reverse Osmosis (RO) room! Our previous room was 65 square feet with a 7′ ceiling, our new one is 200 square feet with 11′ ceilings. Everything about the new setup is an improvement from before, much easier to run/modify and clean. We’ve also added a ninth vessel and replaced three aging membranes with high brix ones. Our sap has been coming in around 1.3-1.5% sugar so far this year, we’ve been sweetening it up to 20% on one pass with the old eight membranes before chilling. This week we’ll experiment going to 25%+ with the extra vessel and new membranes. Next up we may replace one or two more of the other aging membranes and potentially reconfigure the high pressure pumps for more throughput.