March 8, 2015

The year began with quite a snow pack that is a lot of fun to walk through !! There is about a 15 inch thick layer at this point.


Brad and Dale made a run to our friends at JES foods in Cleveland to pick up 384 brand new yellow buckets on Feb. 10th (a snow day for Brad!).

The year officially began with Bob clearing the lane on March 1st.

 

Saturday March 7th Evan came to help Bob move logs to clear paths. They got off to a good start in the morning and this actually went better than expected. Neighbors were having a "worse than expected day" so Evan did some sewing with 4-H kids in the afternoon while Bob ran some errands. Dale joined Brad (home from FFA judging) , Gary, Evan, Bob and Gerri to put some buckets out. This process came to a halt on the north path with onset of darkness and muscle pain.

Sunday morning the Cleveland family (Bret, Melissa & Mighty Morgan) showed up at the crack of dawn to help put the rest of buckets out and place lids on them.

Melissa brought chili that was popular (sorry you missed that Muff...looking for it too late!). About 1 pm Kevin and Jenny headed to the south path on the south side with Bob and Muff on the north side of the south path tapping. Brad, Evan, Gerri, Bret, Melissa, and Morgan finished lids on the east path. The Clarks X3 arrived in time to run after the two drills on the south path and Brad tapped at lightning speed on the east path.
  The entire woods was tapped by 3 pmish. The sun was warm and still today. Everyone laughed possibly the most pleasant weather EVER to tap in!!

The sap ran immediately after the holes were drilled. There was about an inch in the buckets by the end of the afternoon.

After completion of the tapping there was a brief water and visiting break followed by the very fun job of cleaning out the upper and lower holding tanks. Gerri and Muff should have taken a selfie as their dust masks were not pretty at the end of this project. Dale would not have approved of the job on the lower tank, ...Gerri laughed we did almost everything wrong--if you were washing a milk tank,..... started at the wrong end, used too little water, hung over the tank while brushing it etc etc. But it is ready for SAP! (If you were the person in charge of cleaning the upper tank out last spring you should be thankful that Bob does not remember which one you were and Muff and Gerri advise you to keep your mouth shut! They already took one for the team.)

Muff scrubbed the evaporator out on Saturday so we simply ran water through it to rinse out the vinegar today. The final fun project was loading Wallie with the tank and he is ready to go!

Who is driving? (Today's trivia question.)

 

Everyone is sapped tonight! Thanks for all the great help!

We have been told that Sandhill Road is also tapped as of today.