We finally boiled down the black walnut sap from February/March! Approximately two and a half gallons turned into six ounces of delicious syrup, a similar ratio of maple sap/syrup. Walnut syrup has a slightly different taste, and while we all found it pleasant we do not think that it will be replacing maple syrup any time soon!

Last fall we posted twice about our new pumphouse and new vacuum pumps. Here are a few pictures of the double pumps installed at our Roemer and Brass road properties.

We ended up running dual pumps while tapping. This doubled our vacuum from ~5-10 to 10-20″ on the days we were drilling. We then left all of the pumps on for the initial leak check pass, taking our vacuum from ~18 to 23″. After most of the leaks were plugged we found that we could turn one pump off and still maintain 24-26″.

In addition to the improved vacuum levels, having the extra pumps ready to go completely eliminated downtime due to equipment failures. This year we had two burnt out motors (they were initially bought used and in unknown condition), a bad bearing, plus we overfilled a gearbox with oil, yet we always had a pump running!