HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1975-04-10, Page 131 Dee,. 1 Q'9 0 7 6. 5 4
Pithlio library,
52 Montreal St, , ,
Goderich,.. Qnt,. , N7A 2G4
erub
NAL
1.28 YEAR..1
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' 'HURSDAY, APRIL, 10, 197 5 t , SEcOND 'SEp. 1t..:
he Sugar Bush -where
.' . Albert Schible checks his evaporator constantly
W
eetness c�mes by the gallon
The Iuist few weeks of winter that
struck the Goderich area recently was
a frustration to most residents but
Albert ,Schilbe, of ' R.R. 1 Bayfield,
welcomed the below freezing tem
pergtures for monetary reasons.
• Mr. Schilbe is a maple sugar
producer and the big freeze gives his
25 acre sugar bush second wind in its
sap production.
The' maple syrup season on the
Schilbe 'farm is timed around, OR
weather and cnn run from early in
March tolmid April. The ideal tem-
•^ perature rage for syrup production is
around 40 degrees during the day
followed by a brisk 20 degree frost at
'night. This year unseasonal tem-
peratures allowed Mr. Schilbe to•start
boiling his sap on February 22 and ups
until the recent freeze he had 450
u
gallons of rich syrup canned and
ready for sale.
The longer the temperatures remain
warm the lower the sugar content of
the sap gets. At the start of rhe season
it had d three percent sugar content
and as the run progressed the level.
dropped- to about one and a half per-
cent. The return of the cold weather
stops the flow of sap and the trees
build up the sugar in the sap making
the second flow sweeter.
The standard conception given. to
maple .sugar producers is . one that
conjures up the,picture of the farmer
trudging through his bush gathering
buckets of sap and pouring them into
a tank mounted on a horse drawn
sleigh. The •Schilbe operation has not
seen' that kind of work in the past four
years, not since Mr. Schilbe laid out
his p.^p!,peline.
The.pipeline;,..aver� seven rrailes in�_.
total 'length, winds and weaves
throughout the bush Tike a giant
der web and -tarries -the sap of 2,000 .
trees to the evaporator but without the
aid of man. When the temperatures
are right and the sap is flowing Mr.
Schilbe stcps out'sidf the sugar hut,
turns on theelectric vacuum. pump,
and waits for the clear, watery
solution to start running °into the
storage tank.
Laying' ou t the pipeline is the tricky '
part of the"operation. In early January
Mr. Schilbe, his wife Doris, their. son
Eric and his wife Cathy,'b-egin_ the tap-
ping of the bush.. They take 2,000 of
the srhall plastic spigots and drive
them into the trees that are of produc-
tion size.
Then using a color ccided system
they match up+ the correct length of
each tree, using small five -sixteenths
of an inch tubing,
This year 75 rolls. each one con-
taining 500 feet of tubing, were laid
out in the bush. ',The small tubes are.
then joined into the main Tines, .of
which there are two. These main two
inch lines stretch over one half mile of
the bush and run into the vacuum
'pump feeding the storage tanks.
The pump that draws the. sap out of
the Tines is the most recent addition to
the. modernization of the bush. It can
produce 30 inches of vacuum and
when it is operating the sap flows to
the sugar hut just as fast as the trees
L'r
can produce it. Mr. Schilbe timed the
flow of the liquid on a particularly
good day and filled ,a 100 gallon
storage "tank ih eight minutes and he.
had only 1800 trees tapped.
With this kind of production rate
the only worry Mr. .Schilbe has''is
where to put the sap when it is
flowing strong. He has space in the
hut for 2,000 gallons of storage but if
the flow kept up at the 100 gallons in
eight minutes level that space would
be filled in under three hours. ..
His current boiling'rate allows him
to produce three gallons of syrup in
one hour, boiling two gallons of 'sap
per minute, and at the rate of flow
suggested above it would .take 16
hours of boiling to turn the 2,000
gallons of sap;. into syrup.
The boiling • operation that tran-
sfoFms the sap to'syrup takes place in
1he...siig,.ar ha
Mr. Schilbe andhis family start the
huge oven under the evaporator in the
morning using Iogs.cut when the bush
is thinned annually.When the sap
begins to flow it runs to the storage
tank in the but and is fed directly into
the evaporator. Here the water con-
cr. tent of. ,the sap is boiled off and the
syrup that remains in the evaporator
is strained to remove the mineral
deposits andcooled into canned
syrup,
At the three percent sugar content
enjoyed early in the season it requires
30gallons of sap for one of syrup and
at the present rate the ratio is 67 to
one at one and. a 'half perteht.sugar
content. !
The market Mr. Schilbe uses for his
syrup is,his own sugar hut. Most of his
,product is bought by people travelling
-to his farm during the season to buy
the finished product..He had one man
in from London that picked up' 25
gallons of this marvellous nectar from
nature.
When spring finally does arrive in
Huron 'County and (he temperature
starts to rise Mr. Schilbe will be busy
foot. two weeks boiling more sap:-, He
hopes to produce another couple of
hundred gallons of syrup to bring .his
annual total to about 600 gallons.
' After that he will trim his bush,
check on the trees for their health and
sit around and listen to his two acres
of asparagus grow.
The vacuumpump must
be in top condition