Want to find America’s most successful entrepreneurs? Skip Silicon Valley and Manhattan; head to the rural Amish enclaves.Amish businesses have an eye-popping 95% success rate at staying open at least five years, according to author Erik Wesner’s new book, Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive.

via Why Amish businesses don’t fail – May. 4, 2010.

Amy called a repair guy to come out, but he only has a voicemail that he checks once a day. I’m not a patient man when my food is spoiling.

A few trips to the stinky basement fridge with the perishables later I considered waiting it out. I had plans for the night (needed to make some beehives). But my friend Jason convinced me to at least take a look. I’m glad I took his advice.

It was pretty easy to figure out what was wrong. There are two fuses on the circuit board that runs the fridge. The main one had blown from an electrical surge. My house seems to get these regularly. I’ve already lost a couple computers.

The thing is, they put the damn fuses on the board by soldering them in. I can hear the repair tech now, “Sorry sir, it’s a bad computer board. I can have one ordered in three days. They cost about $200.”

It’s not that I know how to solder really. I’ve done it on a totally different scale doing stained glass, but never on a circuit board that I can remember. But I figured it was worth trying (carefully). If I couldn’t do it I’d bow out to the repair guy’s expertise and cringe while writing the check.

It was rather easy. I just heated up the pins while gently pulling on the fuse (with J’s assistance). It slid right out. Today I took it in to an electronics shop (Ken’s Electronics on Lake Street in Kalamazoo) and he fixed me right up with a replacement fuse. Grand total was $4.24 or so. He was a beekeeper too! He started back in the 40′s and at his height he maintained a few hundred hives. He said he has three now.

I didn’t need to add any more solder. Heated up the pins and they slid back in and held strong. I’m currently freezing the 5 gallons of chicken stock that Amy made out of our rooster in it. More to come on Amy’s first butchering job in another post.

Dr. Suzanne Simard is a professor with the UBC Faculty of Forestry, where she lectures on and researches the role of mycorrhizae and mycorrhizal networks in tree species migrations with climate change disturbance. Networks of mycorrhizal fungal mycelium have recently been discovered by Professor Suzanne Simard and her graduate students to connect the roots of trees and facilitate the sharing of resources in Douglas-fir forests of interior British Columbia, thereby bolstering their resilience against disturbance or stress and facilitating the establishment of new regeneration.

via Botany Photo of the Day: Mycorrhizal Networks.

One of the taps I put in today.

Got’s me a sugar bush tapped.

Sounds dirty. Let’s rephrase that. I put taps in a bunch of sugar maple trees today.

Da tapping a tree.

The sap was flowing nicely. Seems like winter still, but the trees always know what’s going on. And they were acting like it’s spring.

The snow is still pretty deep out at my folk’s house. It’s wet and tough going when you are slogging through it. It’s melting though and evaporating away. Hopefully the cement pad that we set up with a tarp will be cleared off by next weekend. As long as I can get the van to at least the edge of the woods we’ll be good. We keep fantasizing about getting a four-wheel-drive quad or something. One of these years I hope we break down and get one.

I still have to cut, haul and split a bunch of wood; clear out the ole evaporator and get the jugs on the trees. I’m also going to have to come up with a food grade barrel to hold the sap in. Two would probably be better.

We tried to keep the taps closer to the main path that winds through the woods and on the fence row on the south edge of the treeline. A tree that grows on the north side of a field will have a bigger crown and produce a lot more sap.

The corn field to the south of the woods.

You’ll often see long lines of big old maple trees growing on the north side of the east-west roads around here. People planted them to harvest the sap back in the old days. They get big crowns that way.

Aside from my muffler falling off, it was a very good day. Getting out in the woods always does that for me.

Well, I got an incubator made today too. At least I can say that I got some things accomplished. I even posted an entry in the ole blog. Woot.

The Leader WSE Evaporator is designed for the hobby maple syrup producer that is serious about turning sap into syrup quickly and efficiently. The WSE Maple Sap Evaporator is a combination of two stainless steel, tig welded pans sold as a set, and a Fire Box called the Arch. Each Leader WSE Evaporator is customized to fit the needs of your maple operation.

via Leader 2×4 and 2×6 WSE Wood Fired Maple Syrup Evaporator.

I’m amazed at the complexity that the professional maple syrup evaporators exhibit. Makes me want to build a sugar shack, buy a pick-up, 4-wheeler and a serious set-up and do this for profit. But eeh gads, the expense!

Anyone want to invest in a syrup business? haha.

If you just want to build yourself a relatively cheap set-up, check out Homemade Maple Equipment topic on Mapletrader.com. Amazing ingenuity there.

A TBH in the Michigan winter.

OK. Uncle. I give. Enough already!

I am hereby extra-ready for spring. I know it’s just around the corner (or at least the weather guys at work keep assuring me so), but I’m becoming a little impatient.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean hey, I did move back to Michigan from Florida, so I can only blame myself for having to put up with winter. But I’ve had enough this year. I need some sunshine and some green. The monochrome thing is stale.

At least winter is a time to plan. Big stuff will be happening in the garden. The chicken moat will be finished. Some raised beds will be made. And we have sugarin just around the corner in the next couple of weeks. Gotta get the seeds started soon too and get the lights set up.

I can’t help feeling sorry for the chickens though. They sure to look cold, even if they have “down coats” on. They rarely venture out of the coop. Every so often I see one poke its head out and peck at the snow, as if it hopes to scare it away.

Apparently the snow is not scared by chickens. Go figure.

Image from the post by Randy C. Morgan

Myrmecologists, naturalists and bugwatchers have long been fascinated by honey ants. Colonies of these amazing insects develop specialized workers, called repletes or honeypots, with tremendously swollen abdomens for nectar storage.

via Honey Ants.

One weekend down, more to go. We’ve been sugaring.

I was able to work from home last Friday (woohoo) because the Internet was wonky at the office, so I snuck off to start boiling (in all honesty, I did work while I was there – yeah for wireless). We ended up getting just over a gallon of syrup. Yummy stuff.

OK, remember the taps we put out last time? Those have been filling up and we’ve collected them into 32 gallon barrels. Those have been kept out of the sun in a cool place for a couple of days.

Our evaporator, which is pretty primitive (although it gets the job done), is a set of pans at two levels. The first, higher pan is used to preheat the sap (and reduce it slightly). That is then ladled into the main reducing pan which is at a higher heat on the back of the firebox right by the stovepipe. The key is to keep the hot pan at a rolling boil. Things really get steamy when it’s gets going.

Your job, when you are tending the evaporator, is to keep the fire fed and roaring, and making sure that the pans are kept full. It keeps you busy.

We are thinking through a new design for our next evaporator. I’m itching to get our evaporation rate up. I need to get some thermal brinks to insulate and build a better set up for the firebox. A dedicated blower hose that feeds the bottom of the firebox would be a good idea. Something you could hook a squirrelcage fan to that was on a speed regulator.

Sapping

It’s early March in Michigan. The temperature is starting to get above freezing during the day before dropping back down to the low 30′s at night. The snow is starting to burn away in the spots that are getting sunlight.

It’s the season for making maple syrup!

This past weekend we went out to my folk’s house to set up the sugarbush. For the uninitiated, a sugarbush is the group of sugar maple trees that you tap for making syrup.

During the early spring the trees start pushing sap up their trunks as they prepare to produce leaves and flower buds. The sap of the sugar maple has a high sugar content to get those cells singing and ready to shoot outward.

First off, before you get into this you need to know that it is a TON of work. Good work, but lots of work nonetheless. We have found that it fits our personalities, because by this time of year we are looking for any excuse to get out of the house, even if it’s cold outside. By now I’m so starved for sunlight that my alabaster complexion can be quite blinding in direct sunlight. It’s time to get out before people start calling me Edward.

I’ve lucked out with making maple syrup. Didn’t cost me more than the three plastic cans that I bought to keep the sap in until we have enough to start evaporating. My parents made syrup back in the 70′s, so the two evaporators that my da had built still work great.

Most of the commercial syrup producers use hoses that empty into big 55 gallon barrels. They take all of their sap to big, super efficient three stage boilers.

We keep it simple. Artisan if we are putting on airs. I like country ingenuity. We have simple metal taps that empty into recycled milk and vinegar jugs.

090301 sap tapping