Saturday Feb.17th, 2018

Taps are set!!! Seems to be the most half-hazard strange way we have ever tapped, but its done.
The morning started out finishing setting out buckets and lids, a process that began on Friday night. Bob worked all day on setting up tubing to run the sap from the new building into the evaporator. This was more of a thinking job than a doing job.

About a month ago we got the idea that it would be fun to take the old chore boy milking equipment from the Wilson family dairy and use that glass piping to gravity feed the sap from one barn to another. This would allow us to see the sap and keep on eye on the amount in the tank more easily. However, this brought with it some unique challenges including fittings, weight of the line and repurposing issues. Bob was focused on this essentially all day and the rest stumbled along in the woods. Except Evan, who helped Bob all weekend.

Big shout out to Adam and Katie who  were a huge factor in getting this done. They threw out buckets and lids in the morning and tapped most all of the north and east paths on their own. Kelsey did a few trees before she and Evan left to attend a wedding. Brad and Gerri did the north path
We are, for some reason ,unknown to any us,  missing lids. We did "cull a few from the herd" when we washed equipment last spring, but came up about 30 short.

Gerri ran to Sandhill rd and grabbed the Park's family stockpile and returned late afternoon when it began to snow. She and Brad loaded Wally and retracked through the East and South paths distributing lids where needed. Finished just prior to dark.


It was cold today...we did not  see one drop of sap. Although Adam did report that he tapped the trees in the church parsonage yard and he saw immediate return. Likely these have warmed more than the trees in the woods.

As part of our cleaning process, we sorted through some panels saved from the old sugar camp wall. The tradition of writing on the wall began a long time ago, we found signatures written as early as 1937. They wrote the word "opened" and the date...we found that 70 years ago today, they opened on Feb 17, 1948!!!

Sunday Feb. 18, 2018
Slow start today as recovering from yesterday. Bob and Evan back to working on their giant plumbing project. Kelsey continued with cleaning up. Given the recent construction, most would be stunned to know how much we HAVE cleaned up...just really hard to tell.

Don't worry Jack...we haven't thrown everything away!! We are trying hard to repurpose many things and keep things with particular significance to the farm etc. Brad and Gerri spent a couple of hours sandblasting and sanding the old walk in door to the sap barn. This door was already taken out of (what we would assume to be a Victorian house) and has spent many years at the camp. Dale took all of the hardware home and sandblasted and painted it. Gerri and Kelsey spent part of the afternoon attaching it to the wall. It is now our food table complete with wood jacks for legs...these brought over from the old sap storage barn. Not finished... but functional for the moment.



The guys got the tanks moved into place and most of the plumbing set up in that building today.

we checked buckets at about 230pm. there was only about 3/4 of an inch in each bucket so we decided rather early that given the amount of work left to be done in the camp and the fact that the temp was to drop tonight, that sap could wait for tomorrow!