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!!!!

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. 

Tuesday April 2, 2019

So Bob sent out a text on Sunday saying to plan on gathering on Monday April 1, guess that was an April's fools joke, ...honestly not sure what happened to that plan but that did not occur.

Today, Tuesday,  was a pretty day and warm, almost 60ish this afternoon. 

The sun was out a good bit of the day and a few of the trees had a nice sap run.There was still a snow cover on most of the grass this morning that melted slowly off over the course of the day.

Dale arrived to drive and Nancy, Melissa, Adam, Katie, Evan, Muff and Brad got started. Gerri arrived in time to start the north (early for her Nancy pointed out!) and they were later joined by Kelsey. We looked at the quality of the sap in the bucket and kept it or dumped it depending on the clarity...Brad always tastes the sap...but the rest of us used our noses and eyes in the hopes of not needing to live in the bathroom for the rest of the week.

We gathered 250 gallons and Adam brought about 30 gallons tonight..perhaps more than we thought.At 8 pm there was 11 inches in the upper storage tank...that is generally a good thing when you want to get bed on a "school" night.

The woods was muddy and difficult to walk tonight. Notice the jackets laying on the front of Wally by Dale's window, it was one of those nights when you were warm as long as you were moving, but quite cool out of the sun if you were not in high gear! Layers are always appropriate "woods attire". 

 We have decided however that the party is over and we pulled many of the taps while we walked tonight.

Discussion included confessions to Bob about what occurred here last Wednesday night when the 20 somethings were here alone. They were busy looking at the baseball game schedule tonight and talking about which games they would attend. Spring has sprung.





You can tell it is the end of the season due to the sharp deterioration in food quality and expectations. We had fried chicken tenders tonight with a side of licorice. And this seemed to satisfy everyone.






Each one of these sample bottles represents the contents of one storage unit of syrup (about 5 gallons), you can see how the quality changes as the season progresses. Generally, it darkens as the weather warms. The lighter syrup is more highly regarded and graded as the best. We do like the darker syrup however for cooking. 

The final gathering crew of 2019....Evan took the pic, Brad and Bob were uncooperative about attending the photo session. 

Total Sap Today: 250 plus 30 gallons

Total Sap To Date: 

Total Syrup Off Today:

TOtal Syrup Off To Date: