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!

Monday March 9, 2020

Awoke to a beautiful full moon !! Awoke might be a strong verb, we arose....not sure how awake we were...Cody, Amy and Bob left for the airport at 4am to catch a 6am flight to Chicago and then on to Wichita to be at work by mid-day. This all went smoothly as far as we know with the exception of TSA not being fond of Amy's bulk spice purchase...we will have to get the details on that!! That just sounds like a fun story. Bob fell asleep in the parking lot at school and was awakened a second time by grounds staff considering calling the police. It may be too soon for that to be funny. He forgot to take K cups to make coffee. Rough start. The time change seems to be harder to navigate as ya age.....

Gerri's phone kept buzzing as she drove home with pictures and captions and tales of the evening. The tired volunteers are getting passive aggressive with pictures and captions...here is what happened as best I can piece together...





Bob stayed at the camp and started the evaporator fire and dinner. Muff, Adam, Katie, Tinleigh, Curt, Erin, Bryan, Brad, Dean gathered with Dave and Cheryl coming a bit later. 

Muff is clearly not familiar with the rationale behind this whole set up.....green beans by Bob

Workforce retention efforts.....bring your pet to work......Katie wanted everybody to see Teddy's paws on the ground...

Muff and Dean and Bob discuss how to cut bologna.......

According to sources this is a retelling of the freezer acquisition story....again, Bryan is clearly captivated by the 10th telling of this adventure.....

People have to move faster when they talk and don't pay attention to the temperature.......

Two inches left in the upper tank....a little close Bob!!!


How much longer til we quit this adventure?.......... the major topic of discussion. No real answers to this question.


Thanks to everyone who sent things we could use here...and thanks for the stuff we laughed at and promptly edited out....

Total sap Today:250 plus 15 gallons
Total Sap To Date:7,494 gallons
Total Syrup Off Today: 4 gallons
Total Syrup Off To Date: 155 gallons

Sunday March 8, 2009


Attendance was way down from yesterday, only 30 people today haha!!


Gracing us with their presence today were Karen, Dale, Dorothy, Adam, Katie, Bryan, Elizabeth, Braxton, Dan B., Cheryl, Dave M. , Melissa, Bret, Molly, Morgan, Michael, Gary, Susan R., Muff, Erin, Tinleigh, Curtis, Bob, Gerri, Amy, Cody, Brad, Kelsey, Evan, and John S. (apologies if we missed anyone!!)

Thinking that spring is really coming!!

 Most buckets have about 4 inches today. 

The sun was gorgeous today but a bit deceiving as there was a rather stiff breeze out of the SW. The trees continue to drip clear high quality sap. 

The time at the woods prior to the fire was borderline comfortable given the breeze. Bob and Brad moved a maple log from the back of the camp to the log pile in front with the forklift. 

It was really a great day to walk through the woods....once you got past the first strip where the wind blew a bit! Brad drove today and we started out with Dan B. and Dave M. dumping buckets. Dan B. pointed out that he has not been invited out in 14 years. Brad explained that we just started doing this recently and he just got his phone number. 

There was about 100 gallons on the south path. They dumped this at the camp though so we could get started boiling (and get to bed at a more reasonable time given the time change). 

 Tinleigh busied herself collecting moss today!

No worries Erin....Brad said to assure you he would not mention to Bob that you took a bucket home to carry these treasures. Brad said to prepare however for a bill for $3.49 ........why do you volunteer here??

Kelsey and Muff made pancakes!

Bob promised Tinleigh that he would get her a big leaf today. Bigger and better than the one she had yesterday. Perhaps Bob's plan foiled when she did not forget..the sycamore tree he was referring to was on the far NW corner of the woods ...so Bob and T loaded up for a ride and came back with a bucket full. Brad was stunned that T was not crushed as this is not an ideal seat for Bob riding solo. Kelsey and Erin wanted to be a fly on the wall to hear the conversation in that cab. 

Total Sap Today 355 plus 24 gallons

Total Sap To Date:7,229 gallons

Total Syrup Off Today: 8.5 gallons

Total Syrup Off To Date: 151 gallons

Burn count: # 10 today...Adam, again (to be clear we did buy him new gloves, apparently needs a body suit)

Sapped out.......

Saturday March 7, 2020

Beautiful sunny day, in contrast to the snow flurries of yesterday. 
















Busy day for everyone. The family project for this morning was emptying our refrigeration project off of Dale's trailer and into a reefer box. This allowed everybody to flex their muscles. 

We pretty clearly exceeded the fire code in the camp tonight! But even the introverts admitted it was good to get out and see everyone.....we think we counted 36 at one point. 

A quick run around the middle path by Adam, Cody, Amy and Kelsey,  gathered about 160 gallons with Gerri driving and Evan dumping buckets. Bob started a fire as we grabbed this sap. This early pass was designed to get the evaporator running to ensure "we do not need to stay up until midnight".....hilarious to hear the 20 somethings say this but they are apparently getting tired.

We appreciated the help of Katie,  Michael, Sadielynn, Wyatt, Ryan, Scott, Shana,Quinn, Bret Megan, Molly, Erin, Curt, Tinleigh, Dave G. , Muff, Michelle, Nathan, Emmalene, Elias, Simon, and Drew. We had so many people we made a one bucket rule for gathering buckets. Dave M and Cheryl stopped in as did Dale and Karen and Mark and Susan. 

Five hundred and eighty gallons (plus 24 from Adam's route) was our grand total tonight. This is a guess. Late night crowd voted unanimously that not knowing exactly was the fault of Curtis. 

We were happy to have the Bishop family with us this evening. Sadly, they were in town for the funeral of Sylvia Bishop....our heart felt condolences to them. We also apologize to Drew, who flew in from San Francisco and we offered him a pair of size 10 boots...while a pair of 14's sat on the other side of the camp...he had to be extracted from them!!  Lee would have enjoyed this !! 

Michelle offered to take the aluminum cans off our hands for a fundraiser in Maryland. Brad noted that they felt better about finishing their drinks they were helping a charity. 

Fun fact....Nathan knows a little Japanese...turns out the writing on Walle says Marooka Rubber Track 800...we have have had some fun guessing what those words say..did try to "google it" without much sucess.....turned out pretty exotic stuff....haha!!

Elias is not afraid of heights, for the sake of everyone's nerves...did not crop out Brad's hand holding the log at 90 degrees!






Nathan and Michelle extracting a boot Simon lost in the mud! (His boots came off easier than Uncle Drew's)

Amy, with her able assistants Susan, Erin and Kelsey made a lot of grilled Italian sandwiches on the blackstone on the back patio. Pretty sure we ate far more tonight with the dessert buffet than we worked off. 

Kelsey commented to Cody at 0800 today (they started expressing sibling love early today)...that he was NUTS for making marshmallows by hand...but she seemed to appreciate them 12 hours later!

Evan worked on the perfect browning technique. 

One wrong move and that is mine!!

The kids ran at top speed in the dark around the camp playing hide and seek. Dave G. listened to the Buckeye Central BB game on the radio followed by some pleasantly strange music that Dave seems to know well. Bob passed out samples of syrup. Brad tapped a walnut tree...he wants to be clear on purpose....so he passed out some samples of his experimental sap. Scott explained to Cody that he might want to take some wood splitting notes from Brad and Adam ...and he retorted that he just needed better quality wood. 

The best part of this picture is the smile on Adam's face.

We had fun playing Otrio...Tinleigh kept this lively!

Piper telling Cody about all of the mistreatment and sorrow she endures here!

I collect sample cups off the floor. It's what I do here. They call me a two fisted drinker.

Total Sap Today: 580 plus 24 gallons

Total Sap To Date: 6,850 gallons

Total Syrup off Today: 10 gallons

Total Syrup off To Date: 142.5 gallons