Thursday March 26, 2020

What a difference a couple of weeks can make. In so many ways. The woods is looking and smelling and sounding like spring. Moss is abundant and you hear a lot of chirping in the trees that was not evident a couple of weeks ago. We generally go to the woods in "gangs" of people...who are noisy and run equipment etc..so it is no surprise that we very rarely see squirrels or deer. They hear us coming. However , we made a few quiet bucket checks in the last couple of weeks and got a glimpse of the squirrels around the camp...they are enormous!! No wonder they move enormous piles of nuts around the camp in the off season. 

Gerri is always waiting for this tree to talk or reach out and grab her when she walks by....perhaps we have watched too much Harry Potter lately?











Amidst the concerns of the coming pandemic..we have been asked to remain at home.....we are practicing social distancing and have sadly put an end to dinners in the camp. (We laughed that we always start strong, with maple glazed pork loin and end with take out chicken!) They did boil sap in a couple of nights around the 
 9th and 10th of the month...but this was done pretty quietly by a couple of people.....in contrast to the festive atmosphere the weekend prior).

We spent some time learning to cook with our syrup....that was fun and more to come on that down the road. Bob has spent some time testing the invert sugars in various batches of syrup. We are quickly learning that all syrup, even our own syrup, is not created equal!

Brad has been on a mission to clean up the camp and has had a couple of successful fires this week cleaning up scraps. 

Canning takes quite a bit of time. We spent an entire weekend whittling away at this....a few people at a time.

There has been some dissension among the ranks about pulling taps, but Bob won this argument and we remained tapped until today. To his credit there were a dozen or  so buckets full with pretty decent looking sap. But.....the fat lady is singing and it appears mother nature has moved on...big buds on the trees, ants and moths have discovered the nectar...time to close camp.


Its pretty easy to maintain your assured clear 6 feet in the woods, our family walked the woods tonight and pulled the taps and stacked the buckets by the paths. We kept 120 gallons of the sap to end our season. Bob planned ahead and had a couple hundred gallons of water in the camp to push through the evaporator. 

The woods seems like a very peaceful, good smelling, quiet place tonight. We all appreciate being outdoors and away from the screens for a bit. 


Adam came to help boil one last time and sent a picture poking a bit of fun at somebody...he sends the subtitle....."somebody forgot gas for the generator".

We are very thankful for a great season....far more than we anticipated given the warm winter.

Now for the fun of cleaning up! 

Total sap today: 120 gallons
Total sap To Date: 
Total Syrup off Today: 
Total Syrup To Date:

More proud than usual this week to be Buckeyes!