Sugar Season

Since I stopped working on the ice cuts I've taken up a small maple syrup operation in my front yard. I have two decent sized red maples and few sugar maples, three of which I've tapped. I purchased the taps for $3 at the Dexter mill and cut holes in milk jugs as collection buckets. Tapping the trees was pretty straight forward, drill a 2 inch deep hole at a slight upward angle into the trunk of the tree about 3 feet from the ground. Next, pound the tap into the hole and attach the collection jug, and the sap literally starts flowing (or dripping) at the rate of leaky faucet.



The most peculiar thing about this process is that the temperature must get down to freezing at night and go above freezing in the day. If only one happens without the other, ie: all freezing, or all thawing, nothing happens.



The first week I started it was pretty good, and I collected about 2 gallons, then it got cold, and nothing flowed for a few days. The weather snapped again, getting very warm during the day, and I was flowing about a gallon and half at its peak. So far I think I've collected 8 + gallons. Last weekend I boiled down a batch on a makeshift fire pit in my yard. Apparently an open fire imbues a smoky flavor in the syrup that is said to be the best. Okay, wood fire it is.



This took a very a long time, and required constant maintenance -lots of little pieces of wood were added to keep the flame hot. Luckily my roommate Erik chopped lots of wood throughout the day keeping a steady supply on hand. If the fire got down to just coals, the sap would only simmer. The sugar content in sap is about 2-6 % depending on who you ask. Boiling down 4 gallons took almost 12 hours, which is hideous compared to the rate at which small syrup operations evaporate their sap (hundreds of gallons per hour). By 10:30p the sap was getting darker colored and was quickly reducing down into syrup. I brought it inside to 'finish' it on the stove, which requires monitoring the temperature with a candy thermometer until it reaches 104 C, which is above the boiling point of water. This number tells you that your sugar content is correct and the syrup is done. One could continue boiling it, and would end up with maple sugar.





The syrup tasted very good, and you could definitely pick up a smoky flavor, which was actually quite nice. To be methodical, the next day I boiled down the other half of my sap on the stove, just to be sure there was a difference between open fired syrup. This was way easier because you could forget about monitoring the flame, although it took nearly the same amount of time. This batch came out a little lighter amber color and didn't have a smoky flavor, but nonetheless was very good.



For now, I'm using calder's dairy half&half bottles, but I have some real syrup bottles coming in the mail. I actually don't like the shape of a traditional syrup bottle, but they only cost about $1 each. Shipping was more expensive than the bottles. I'm going to design some labels for the bottles, and begin speculating on this project at the scale of a neighborhood, and then the city of ann arbor, which by the way maps every single tree on every street, and all the trees in the parks thanks to the forestry department. Of these trees, 37% are maples. Ann Arbor could create a multi-million dollar sugar industry without planting anything!

Report from the Meltdown

I had not been out to the gravel pit since my last post in February when I disassembled the gantry crane and hauled it onto dry land, but I made a trip down there this morning. For the past two weeks the temperature has been going above freezing in the day and below freezing at night, and the last few days have been well into the fifties.



The ice on the pond is still walkable, but a little slushy. The snow has completely melted away, and the surface of the ice is now pocked with hotspots where a warm current of water has melted an open hole. The last remaining cut is still projecting out of the ice, but has melted in a weird way. The ice became very fractured under the sun as internal bubbles pressurized and escaped. Now the ice is melting along the fractures and has taken on a lumpy, jagged look. I imagined that the protruding ice slabs would melt down like a stick butter or a popsicle, smoothly and almost plastic-like, but this is much more degenerative and abrupt.



We're supposed to get three days of rain next, and I think that will be the last the remaining ice slab. Although the weather isn't ideal for this project anymore, I'm running it through a class I'm taking called the F-word for an assignment to theorize objects through the lens of different thinkers, like Adorno, Eisenmann, Krauss, etc.

The Fate of #6 and Warm Weather

The day after cut #6 was a sunny day in the mid 40's, not very good for ice, but great for maple syrup. (I tapped three of the trees in my front yard and collected over a gallon of sap that day). Then the next day it dumped about 10 inches of snow. The combination of these two days basically ended the ice season for me.



I went back to the nudie pond to check on the cut #6 after the snow, which was so deep the justy literally plowed through it, leaving a nice wake. The piece had fallen at some point during the past 48hrs, and there was a bout 3-4 inches of slush on top of the whole pond. I don't think it will get cold enough to freeze that mushy layer. The temperatures are hoovering around freezing in the day and only getting down to the 20's at night.



I took apart the big gantry crane, and hauled it on dry land. I'll leave it down there just in case, but with all the snow that has fallen I don't think the odds are in my favor.

But not all is lost. I still have plenty of work to do on the ice saw design, and I just tried waterJET cutting a couple slabs of ice I cut from some of the older ice-cuts that are still standing.





The waterJET cut through the ice effortlessly, but overall the process didn't work very well. When the waterJET would begin to cut by piercing the material the ice would usually fracture from the force of the jet. I tried adjusting the pressure from 60,000 psi to 15,000 psi, but the results were basically the same. All in all, it does work, however melting is of course a huge factor. The water coming out of the jet nozzle is very hot from the intense pressure. That and the room temperature quickly works against you. Routing the ice would probably be a better option, but I wouldn't be allowed to put a big, melting block of ice on the router table.

Ice Cut #6

A video to meditate on....

Lock Mechanism 2.0

This is the new lock mechanism I made using 1/2" thick steel, cut on the waterJET, and TIG-welded together. It's about 3 times as thick as my last lock, which failed under heavy load (see image below). This set up also is external to the winch, so that the moving parts aren't subjected to the same stresses as the winch (which caused lots of problems on the last setup.)



Below is the old set up...

Cut #5

I made another cut yesterday using a new shape-strategy: instead of a rectangle, I made a key-shape with the hope that I could get the ice to sit on top of the surface and have part of submerged into the water. Nothing very impressive happened, for the following reasons:

-the lock mechanism is mangled from the last cut
-the piece of ice broke....almost the same way one would snap a key off in a lock

However I did take some interesting photos of the effects that occur with the water and ice as it toggles between 2D and 3D. And for whatever reason there was lots of pressure under the ice this time, which spewed about 2-1/2 inches of water on the surface once I drilled through to connect the chain. This made a nice glassy surface between the the top of the ice, the hole, and the floating pieces.





My plan now is to spend some time making a new lock that will work consistently.