There are many signs that this winter has been a different rhythm for the plants and animals of our region. The ground is fully thawed and the deep mud ruts that usually mark the beginning of April are here a month early. The snow is completely gone except for dustings on the mountain tops in the distance. There is a family of woodchucks that love to dig around the barn every spring as the ground thaws, and I reinvigorate my campaign to gently and firmly convince them that just about anywhere else on the farm would be a preferable burrow…and yet they persist every year. Last week I used a hammer to put fence posts in the ground, this week I just pushed them in. And most significantly our neighbor Brad, and master of the maple syrup evaporator said to me this week: “the syrup went dark on us yesterday.”
Brad is referring to the change in sap that comes as the maple season moves towards spring. The balance of sugars in the sap changes, acidity and fermentation breaking down the sucrose into glucose and fructose. These sugars darken during the evaporation process, thus producing the “dark syrup.”
Brad’s foreboding tone was not because the syrup isn’t good, on the contrary dark syrup is a favorite in our house, rather because it marks the maple trees’ shift towards spring and the production of buds and eventually leaves. If we get a good cold week, where temperatures are below freezing continually, we might extend the season. The cold wet rain this weekend does not bode well for the maple season.
I made little progress on my video tour of how we make maple syrup. The latter half of this week was consumed with the discovery that our new “big freezer” had stopped working!!! So that project took priority.
Just a Fuse
If I were a country music artist I would write songs about the emotional upheaval of refrigeration.
On Wednesday morning Tully and I began a project in the barn shop moving a big lumber rack to the other side, which involved unplugging the ethernet cable that brings wifi/internet down to the barn. We use the internet mostly on Mondays and Fridays for packing orders, so it didn’t seem like a big deal to have the internet not work for a day or two.
I knew that my freezer monitoring system relied on the internet signal, but what are the chances that something happens during that time…(my foreshadowing is not subtle).
On Thursday morning I did a manual check on the freezers and sure enough discovered that the big freezer was not working! It is a special form of heartbreak and letdown to have a freezer full of your farm’s bounty stop working. The LED screen on the inside that sets the temp was not working, no fans running, no sounds. Nothing. I think the title of my country song will be “Warming on Thursday” since Thursday and Friday are worst days to have a breakdown, since you cannot get parts on Saturday or Sunday.
I called our local refrigeration company and they sent down a technician. We did some diagnostics, determined that most of the system was working correctly, but that there was some electronic problem inside the freezer. I had some parts on hand (what luck!) and I headed back down to the freezer after the kids were in bed to scratch my knuckles and test my memory for which wire goes where.
Here’s what it looks like inside the freezer evaporator. This may look daunting, but for me this is exciting. I was the kid who was always taking things apart, and trying to put them back together. So I replaced the main circuit board, counting and labeling wires (red wires #7 goes in slot “x”…) and flipped the power back on, waiting anxiously for the clunk and whir of fans coming back to life…but alas the first try was not successful.
So I took a step back and decided to start over with my diagnostics, forgetting the assumptions the technician had made in his initial suggestions. After some digging and testing I found a fuse that was not working, and was definitely contributing to if not responsible for the whole system not working.
Friday is a race to 5pm as businesses all want to close early on Fridays. I drove 2 hours to Rutland, VT to pick up a part I thought we might need and John grabbed a set of fuses in Plattsburg, and Friday afternoon I put in the new parts, turned the power back on and…clunk…whir.
I’m a little embarrassed to say I jumped in the air and yelled for joy. Then lay down on the ground and took a couple of deep breaths. I would not have to figure out how to keep all the contents of the huge freezer frozen over the weekend. Hallelujah.
Reber Rock Farm Blog 