Saturday and Sunday April 27th and 28th

Lola's face hidden by her paw says how we all feel about cleaning buckets...... washing up buckets and lids is hands down the least fascinating part of syrup making, but clearly is a necessary evil!!

Mother nature provided a surprisingly beautiful morning for a walk in the woods. After running a few errands, Brad , Bob and Gerri fired up Wally and went to pick up buckets with the two happiest dogs ever! 


The buckets are easiest to clean up if you address that issue immediately when you are done collecting sap....but there were responsibilities at church and school that have taken us away for a few weekends....not to mention that we have had a lot of rainy weather in the April. 

So...we are rarely in the woods much in the of April at all, much less this late. We took a few minutes to enjoy the floral display that we often miss. The floor of the woods carpeted in a wondrous variety of white, yellow and purple flowers.

According to Nancy (our educational dinner conversation) the white flowers above and below are trillium, Ohio's state wildflower! We are thinking it may be illegal to pick them in Ohio! While they may be endangered, Bob laughed that we have a solid acre of them!

We are thankful that Adam and Katie piled the buckets and lids in piles along the paths in the week following quitting,  making bucket pick up this am much easier..thanks!

T

The primary wildlife we saw in these bucket piles was snails! Some even with hard shells! 

We made three trips back to the camp and loaded the buckets and lids into the truck and trailer and hauled them to the heated shop. The weather forecast was spot on today, the afternoon was gloomy, overcast and raining by late afternoon. 

 Saturday was bucket day .......we scrubbed up all but 80 of the buckets! Adam and Jack helped in the afternoon as well.  We quit about 5:30 pm and explained to Bob that he was going to take us out somewhere warm for dinner! We enjoyed a late supper at Twin Lake's tonight.

 Jack came for lunch.....doing dishes for your lunch has a wicked twist sometimes!

 Our accomplishment for the day 428ish...nobody really cared to count by the end...scrubbed in warm water with Dawn and then rinsed in bleach water.

Sunday...Bob and Gerri went to the shop about 7 am to finish the 80 buckets before church. We borrowed the pressure washer from Dale and needed to heat up the water so this felt like a bit of a slow start. (realize we should not be doing this on Sunday...not sure we have choices this week however so we plod on).Brad and Bob flipped all of the buckets over to drain in the opposite direction today.

Bob was following Gerri to church..unsure what happened to that...saw a squirrel I guess...leaving almost 2 year old Braxton to say "where is Bob?"...unknown....

Bob , Jack and the 20 somethings made there way to Green Springs for breakfast however!!

They met back by 1230 or so and started washing lids. Kelsey and Evan returned from a trip to Cincinnati for Evan's work today and helped out. We laughed today that we are going to text Cody and Amy that we are gonna leave them a hundred to finish!! Lids are perhaps faster to wash in some ways...but each piece of tubing and spile is rinsed with a power spray of bleach water ...Bob did this job today. Brad busied himself hanging the lids, as his drainage tower got taller, Katie moved over to help him. 

We play some tunes and make smalltalk while scrubbing!

The groaning started today.....people looking for ibuprofen. This is hard work....at an awkward angle! 

 It is important to hang the lids and tubing so they drain and dry out..this is always a tricky , Brad set up a pallet rack to use as a giant hanger...first try for this and it looks like a "do again".

 Amen!!!!