Saturday February 20, 2016

Day # 4

Catchup on the week: Tues through Thursday evenings this week involved cold weather and little chance of anything running, ....nobody really took the time to look. Frying other fish. Bob spent most of his spare moments in the shop soldering the pinholes shut in the flu pan. He has had a chest cold and coughing made this a little trickier!! This task finished up about 1130pm Friday night. Muff and Gerri scraped out the top tank thursday evening with Lola's help. (camp and everything in it is way cleaner than usual.....postulating that the warmer winter kept the critters outside). There was not one nut (well edible nut) in the camp building. They managed to find 2 pick up trucks that would not start after their cleaning spree, and struggled a little with the whole "what do we do with the dirty dog thing", but survived.

Yesterday, Friday Feb. 19th, 2016, the weather took a sudden turn for the warmer and windier. If this winter in northern ohio seems to have been defined by anything.....it is wind. The wind howled during the night to the point it awoke you. The electric came on and off a few times, appears it was off on CR 34 for about 1.5 hours and some of neighbors to the south were out of power for about 3 hours .


Today began with quick cheerios and coffee followed by boots and a trip to the woods. Bob got wally pulled around back and with not much help from Gerri loaded the tank and put the brackets on (Evan did this last year, it was pointed out he was more help which Gerri is certain is true). We discovered that we did not remember to bring gathering buckets so Gerri ran home to get those.


There was a fresh fallen log across the path from the wind in the night, this involved the chain saw and a hitch from wallie to clear the path. Kaleb is wondering why he comes home from college to rest and has to get up at the crack of dawn and go to the neighbors to work...thanks Kaleb!

 It was still plenty windy this am, but not really prohibitive to being in the woods. Dean, The Oney family times four plus crazy bruce (who diminished the woods possum population by one during our morning walk--good work Bruce) , Muff, Bob , Dale, Gerri, Adam, Ted and yes SUSAN B (looking radiant before 9 am!) all arrived for our early morning walk. It was really nice out, everybody shed their coats by the end. There were many buckets laying down after the strong winds, but between 8 and 945 am we gathered about 600 gallons of sap. Given the number of hands on deck, Susan and Gerri scrubbed out the front pan with vinegar with supervision from Bob.

At 945 Bob took a handful of guys to the shop on 34 and moved the flu pan into the gmc and then gently into the camp. This project seemed a lot smoother than our last try at this, however we had more muscle this time.



Everyone scattered as promptly as they had arrived at 10am.  Bob and Gerri went to Sandusky to watch the Redmen compete in the sectional wrestling tournament. The team had a great day (they won the tournament!) and they bugged out at 520pm to head back to the woods. Bob sent out a text to gather at 530 and this was well under way by the time they arrived at 615 (the village really does not need us). The camp was full of sap so the crew did the south path getting about 80 gallons prior to darkness setting in. The moon did provide us with a little grace period tonight. We decided at 650pmish to just forget the rest as it was dark and not a tremendous amount in the buckets and we were not sure what we were going to do with the sap we had.

The first day is always a little "discombobulated" and today was no exception (the moon looks pretty full). Wallie had a small accident when a tree jumped out behind him, bob took this news amazingly well as he was already distracted by the fact that he could not find the float for the back pan...anywhere. We all looked , everywhere, aided by the fact that 85% of us had no idea what we were looking for! Bob concluded this was Cody or Brad's fault, but quick phone calls to them were not real helpful. It was eventually located clean and dry in the basement with other items that we would have been searching for in another 2 hours anyway.  Problem solved.


Chuck lit a fire after complaining that all of his equipment had not been provided, he complained pretty quietly for awhile as Bob was already "Lit Up" about his missing float. This is the day Sue has been waiting for....Chuck leaving the house. Sandhill Rd. provided about 15 gallons of sap today.


Two hours into boiling tonight , the pan appears to be holding sap ok. Cody's friends Dave and Justin stopped in for a surprise visit with their friend on their daylong tour of sugar camps (they are hard up for entertainment). Always a pleasure to see them! Thank you Ted for awesome taco soup and fixins....this was enjoyed by all.

Thanks to everybody who helped out today on our crazy schedule so we could be with Brad. Appreciate all of your enthusiasm and flexibility.

Total Sap: 600 am plus 80 pm; Sandhill Rd. 15 gallons
Total Syrup: not staying up late enough to find out!!

The view when we started gathering today.

 

The view when we ended gathering...for today.