Monday Feb. 27th

A breezy but sunny day again today. Naturally the high was at noon today and not when everyone was out in the woods. Chuck picked up Brad after school and headed to the woods early. Brad, Kevin and Gus got started with Dale and Karen soon joining them. Buckets were much fuller today so this was quite the workout for this crew! A gang showed up in time to help finish (Ted, Nancy, Dan, Chris & Susan B). Chuck started a fire at 415pm so that gave us a nice head start at boiling in the 550 gallons of sap collected today. Dorothy sent a crockpot of chicken for supper that was devoured. Thankfully the only excitement tonight was a small chimney fire. The picture below shows the pink out the stack and the glow at the seam that apparently has melted and is no longer a seam! We may have shoved a little too much in the old fire box (Chris took the heat for this! ). Bob held the ladder while Brad took a bucket of water up on the roof and extinguished the flame on the stack seam and coated the roof in the immediate area. This was actually Brad's second trip to the roof in the dark this week (he apparently hasn't covered pulleys in science yet- found he had to go up and give the steam door a little push shut). Both were exciting trips. There is very little variation in the color of the syrup from day one (Feb. 16th) until now. We think today's syrup tastes better though!

There was an article that seemed to be well written in Sunday's USA Today that is worth a look if you have time. ( http://usat.ly/wu4Tln)

Total sap: 3129 gallons
Total syrup: 70.5