Thursday March 14, 2013

The sun was a really nice site to see today after many cold gray days. The trees began to have a slow drip on Wednesday and picked up a little bit today. Chris, Kelsey, Gary, Muff, Dean, Bob, Dale & Karen gathered 370 gallons of sap tonight. It was decided not to boil today, Jack is cold. He has been busy canning syrup, a warm job at least. A new piece of farm equipment delivered today stole the show from the camp. There were as many estimates of total sap today as there were gatherers-so going with the one somebody wrote on the wall.

Total Sap: 3925.5

Friday March 15, 2013

 Nathan did a fair amount of trailer patrol Friday night.

 Never seems to be a shortage of MUD!

 Below right, Cody ran to the camp to get the lid as sap was sloshing out the top!

Someone returned unexpected from spring break today to get the old guys moving faster and earlier than usual. They started a fire about 3:15 which was a blessing as there was 505 gallons of sap tonight. A few of Muff's friends and the neighbor's stopped in to help in addition to Dean, Muff, Nathan, Kevin, Karen, Dale, Chris, Kelsey. & Mark.  Brad took the night off so his dad did the tractor driving. The soft maples are producing clear sap that has little taste at this point. Muff and Bob stopped and tipped a few up for a drink, the blogger wishes she would have thought quick enough to get a picture of them drinking out of the 5 gallon buckets or better yet, to have been a little closer to "help". The ants have arrived, always a bit of a worrisome sign.

We thank Pastor Cathy for the large quanity of leftover soup we had for dinner. We had fun trying to figure out how long it really takes to cook corn bread in the pie iron. From the appearance of the product, we still don't know. It really is good though. We enjoyed conversation about nothing in particular and Cody getting in trouble for forgetting the generator fuel, (it was a little romantic for awhile). Jack started his truck so the lights could shine in the window. Inventive. Reminds us how nice it is to NOT listen to the old generator any more! Thanks Parks family!
Kelsey drew the shortest straw of the evening and gave the dog her bath. Kelsey was VERY excited to find a new critter at the neighbors and had to tell us all about it, at length, Gerri was just excited it was NOT a skunk.

At 11:15 pm the fire was allowed to burn down and the project will be addressed again tomorrow!

Total Sap: 4431.0
Total Syrup:99 Gallons