What an amazing five days to really kick off the season! We made almost 2000 gallons of syrup this week and had three different record breaking days (525 and 665 gallons of syrup made, 25,000 gallons of sap hauled). During this period one of our Busch vacuum pumps sucked sap, seized up, and had to rebuilt at 4AM. One of our pumphouse doors was inadvertently left open during the previous cold spell leaving ~150 gallons of ice that had to be removed manually before collecting new sap. A separate Busch pump also had to be exchanged right before the run due to a worn bearing and gearbox seal leak, but the replacement purred and maintained 95% of its rated vacuum level all week. Today is a well earned day off before next weeks runs, tonight’s freeze should re-energize more sap flow!

In honor of Jake’s birthday today, I made a maple cheesecake with graham cracker base, a recipe I found in one of our several maple cookbooks. It was a hit!

What a day we had yesterday, we made 525 gallons of syrup! We had to call it quits with 15,000 gallons of unprocessed sap left, we were just too exhausted to haul, concentrate, and boil another 250 gallons worth of syrup. Fortunately it froze overnight and the sap won’t run much today, giving us a breather to catchup since Wednesday/Thursday/Friday should bring in even more sap!