Monday Feb 18, 2019 (President's Day)


Trying to slowly but surely head in the direction of making some syrup this year! Word has it that two of the neighbors have their trees tapped already.  Taxes and cleaning up supplies just a few of the necessary evils that need taken care of first! New buckets arrived today as we were running low. We also need to get some new lids and tubing sets made up before the end of the week. The weather has been very erratic this winter, lots of extreme shifts in temperature. The woods is always a little tough to walk in, but perhaps more so than typical. We will not say who hit the deck today...but all is well. 

We often refer to Wally.. recall that this is the whimsical name by which we call  our track dumper that we use to drive through the woods. 

A small but mighty crew headed out into the woods around 1 pm on Monday afternoon to set out buckets and lids. The weather was perfect outside today! 

We had pretty "big snowflake" snow this am. Maddie B came to help out today as many are at work or school. 




 Maddie learned to drive Wally while Bob, Katie ad Kelsey walked the paths to set buckets and lids next to the trees we want to tap later this week

. Adam arrived a little later to help .....way TOO LATE in the girls opinions. The crew  walked to the west end of the woods ...an area that we have not previously tapped as they were off of the beaten path.  The thought is that there may be enough time this year to make this worth our while. Bob is thinking we will need to reroute to gather these on big days. 

Bob is very proud of his new buckets...they are red. He was fired as a member of the aesthetics committee, everybody else not feeling as warm and fuzzy about his choice. Bob was quick to point out that Adam "seemed to like them". 











Icicles on the new barn.

Ran into a road block on the north path today. This is at the curve in the north path, there were three tress that fell in domino effect into the path. Wally had to reroute around this . Looks like a very hollow old maple tree hit an ash tree and splintered another young maple on the top. This has happened in the last week. Problem for another day. 

Katie took over driving when Maddie left for practice. 

Everyone (dogs included) are whipped. Nearly all lids were sat out today and all prior to sunset.Now we need to figure out WHEN to tap trees. 


Note from yesteryear.......

On Sunday Susan shared with us finding Clarence Rine's syrup sales log. this log book lists the annual price of syrup per gallon and the number of gallons sold each year and began in 1946!