Thursday April 18, 2019

Happy birthday Evan !

 The woods changes so quickly! There is a carpet of small flowers covering the majority of the woods and the birds are busy making nests and a lot of noise. Much more of an alive  atmosphere than 2 weeks ago!












Responsibilities at church, work and school took some precedence over closing up the camp. There has been a nice break in the weather allowing the guys to apply fertilizer on more than half of the farm in the last couple of weeks. 

Katie and Adam worked at pulling the taps and placing the lids and buckets next to the path a couple of weeks ago. 

Bob is off on spring break this week so we  are trying to work on the clean up process. 

Kelsey and Bob have been busy taking orders and canning off syrup. They made some sample bottle holders this week also. 

Gerri was off work Thursday afternoon so she and Bob headed to the camp to start tidying up a bit. The dogs were glad to have the field trip as well! 













We filled the tank on Wally with water at the house and rinsed out the two stainless milk tanks that we store sap in during the season. This was the easy part. 













The evaporator was a little trickier to clean. When we sense the last day of the season has arrived, we typically chase the last of the sap through with water, but this did not happen this time....so....... 520 gallons of water, 2 brushes, multiple scratch pads and 3 hours later, the pans look pretty good.

 We built a small fire in the box to warm and help to loosen the scum. We bucketed about half of the water out...... 4 gallons at time. Basically decided to quit when we argued about who would have to drive home... turning the steering wheel sounded like a miserable task...arms were like jello.