Thursday March 13, 2014

No school again today for most due to the cold temps (wind chill this am negative 10). Taking awhile to get everything cleaned out. Bob and Cody ventured into the woods. Tubing & buckets frozen. Lots of pretty snow. Trees actually trying to run.

 Lola having a great time!

 

Hey Nancy look at the Holy-Spirit-Like Snowman!

 

Blow this picture up if you can and look at the cut wood on the left, cool pic. Snow holding some buckets in place.

 

View of the trees looking north.

                 View of the trees looking south.

 

Tomorrow will involve snow boots for sure. Gonna work those quads Friday (maybe as always)

Wednesday March 12, 2014

Winter storm, 6-7 inches of snow and wind preceeded by rain. Buckets are frozen in place. Nobody ventured into the woods on Wednesday. Zero degrees temp overnight. No school anywhere in the neighborhood. This pic is at 1023 am.

 

 

Best excuse ever for a day off!

Tuesday March 11, 2014

Sunny and a beautiful day ( well the first half anyway!) Cody and Chuck went to Michigan to pick up bottles, jugs and new grates for the fire box. It is almost 3 hours up there so this was a big trip but they seemed pretty chipper & apparently had a great time. They did not have everything we ordered so this excursion may have to be repeated. 

Love the time change!

These are the new grates!

First mix of mud and snow. Dale and Karen riding Walle in the distance.

They returned home to open up the camp and we collected with help from Dave and a friend of his, Nancy, Adam, Dale, Karen Gerri, Bob, Muff, Dean, Brad and Cody. Chuck returned to the boilermaker job. Sue made pizza spaghetti for supper. Gerri brought salad and Karen cookies. It was nice to eat without being rushed!

The clouds rolled in but it was a really nice night for a walk in the woods. There was a fine rain before the end of the night. 

Sorry the blog is behind! I'm gonna attempt to add pics I missed. So you may need to revisit the previous entry. I will also try to correct the sap count I screwed up. I am not too swift after 10 pm!

On a bizarre note, we tested the sugar content of the sap. Rine woods is 1.5% and Sanhill Rd is 2.0%. We question if this is related to the damage on the leaves in the storm last summer in the woods?

 

Sap today: 250 & 15 Sandhill Rd.

Syrup today: 4.5 gallons

Total sap to date: 950 Gallons + 33 Gallons S.H.

Total syrup to date: 15   Gallons

Monday March 10, 2014 (gathering #2)

Gorgeous day with sun and warm breezes! We believe it hit 53 today! The only down side of tonight was a creeking, groan of limbs hanging precariously above your head as you walk through the woods on this windy evening.

Cody grabbed Chuck (who showed up EARLY) and Brad and had them help him gather the south path a little early so they could get a fire started. Chuck rode in Walle and dumped buckets! (The administration fears he may ask for a raise, although we've already decided he can have a % more than what he makes now.) He told Bob the woods "is a real mess" with all the downed trees, however Bob just laughed and retorted "he should have seen it before we cleaned up!":)

He noticed that the buckets get heavier as you go. Called the "sap" principle of physics.

Brad and Grandpa Dale emptied buckets on the later half of the trip!We have no idea what Brad is doing in the lower picture!

Apparently a lot of thinking going on!

 

Muff, Bob, Dale, Gerri, Ted, Adam  & Dave joined in to help finish the middle and east ends. Some buckets were 90% full, some only 4 inches.

The lane is a mess for gathering day # 2! We enjoyed the recent grocery market run on asparagus for supper! Thank you Aunt Dorothy for the crock pot of soup that warmed nicely on the steamer.

The nider (substance that is filtered out that is comprised of sugar, minerals and lot of etc) is almost black. Bob says this is very unusual early in the season. He spoke with Brian tonight who agrees the sap has a different flavor right now.

Taps dripping late tonight, might get to do this again tomorrow.

Total Sap: 390  (+ Sandhill 14) gallons
Total Syrup today: 9 gallons
Total Sap to date:  700 _+ 18 Sandhill
Total Syrup to date: 11 gallons

Saturday March 8, 2014 (Gathering #1)

Big day. In keeping with the theme of the winter, it snowed today. 50% chance of snow means beautiful white out snow. Not much accume, maybe 2 inches. Funny how that now is like nothing.

The guys worked on fixing up Walle's bed so we can gather sap into it. This involved bolting the collection tank to the bed and placing nonskid matts on the bed. They removed the end tailgait & Cody bolted on a staircase. (We are now handicap accessible!)

It is the first day. People still like us, so the turn out to gather was great. Cousin Steve, Mindy, Luke, Tate & kidnapped Collin visited for the afternoon. Jenny & Kevin came along with The Clark's times three, Muff, Cody's friend Justin, and Kelsey, Evan, Cody, Bob, Gerri,  Dale & Karen. Gary gave a tour to a friend.

Chuck showed up late. There was a great amount of concern expressed about his tardiness as we now collectively associate him with fire and it was cold. He complained something about not wanting to heat up an empty evaporator. Go figure, playing the logic card. The evaporator is so shiney clean!

Muff brought syrup from Vermont to taste test. We were not impressed but we may be biased!

Walle is a hit. Bob & Cody did most of the driving. Gerri tried it for a 100 yards,  Dale and Kevin practiced seeing how big American guys fit in little Japanese equipment:)

Ted stayed on the bed and dumped buckets and helped to serve as living rear view mirror.

There is a good snow pack in most of the woods, the buckets were 3 inches on average. 310 gallons were collected.

Nancy got a little bored while it seemed to take forever for the guys to dump the first tank.So she made a snowman. (her snowman is directly in front of her feet bottom left) When Bob saw how tiny her snow man was he said he should have left her standing out there a little longer!

What it lacks in height, it makes up for in style:)

 

Kevin & Kelsey aren't bored, they appear happy to chat during downtime!

We enjoyed really low quality hot dogs and ate the first smores of the season. Lola was thrilled her friend Bruce Oney visited.

Total Sap:310 + 4 from Sandhill Rd
Total Syrup: 2 gallons

The Memorable, White Windy & Wild Winter of 2014!

76 inches of snow thus far! The snow blanket has provided a nice working environment to remove the trees. Cody stated that he wished we would have kept track of all the man hours involved in clearing the paths in the woods. We have been very blessed in comparison with neighbors, but the woods does appear to be quite a mess in places!

We are very excited to have a new mechanical friend, Walle. He is from Japan. He has done a LOT of work since arriving in late December.

We have made multiple cords of wood trying to clear the paths.

We have removed approximately 24 trees from the woods that were damaged/down from the July 10, 2013 storm. They are currently stacked in a large "ker plunk"style mess outside of the camp. Walle pulls an amazing amount of weight and has not made ruts in the paths. Brad is hoping that our days of getting stuck are over!

The entire woods is passible with the exception of the soft maple grove!! This is a major accomplishment.

March 1st found the college kids home and they distributed the lids and buckets throughout the woods. This gave us time to survey the trees once more.

March 6th we began to tap. Muff, Bob & Brad got about 70% of the woods tapped after work/school. Brad thinks his fingers will never be the same! They were quite cold.

March 7th Cody arrived home for spring break and went to the woods at 1:30 and finished tapping.

The boilermaker showed up to see what was going on  (says the wife threw him out for a while!) He and Brad collected some buckets for the ever expanding Sandhill Rd. taps.

Cody & Gerri took a nice sunset walk and checked the taps finding that most buckets have 3 inches or so in them. Very peaceful, still, evening tonight. This is a blessing as there are some limbs that need to be watched overhead!

Bob & Brad loaded Walle on a trailer we have named Eve (in keeping with our movie theme). We took him home stopping at the Metzger farm to load the plastic gathering tank. Cody is working on welding up a platform to make the sap loading easier. It is clear we are going to work different muscle groups this year!

The texts & phone calls are coming, so we have a plan to gather tomorrow.......see if mother nature cooperates!

Wednesday April 3, 2013

A nice day today, perhaps not as warm as it looked out though! There is sporadic sap running. Karen noted a high variability between the trees in the Sandhill Forest. (She is pinch hitting for Chuck who is "sapped out" this week, quite ill and very missed.) We admit we had a good laugh tonight that Chuck would not have approved of Brad's wood splitting technique and he will not be happy when he finds out Gerri broke the air intake door handle (woops!). Jack took the news well, but he is tired.

Yes that is SUN shining in the steam doors!


 The yield is down to about 50:1 now.

The grates are in need of repair! Of course we said that last year!

The handle on the bottom door is what broke off Chuck.Can you weld?

Kevin had the day off of work so he and Bob and Muff started out earlier than usual. Family friends (Shane & family) came to help. Gerri & Brad showed up late and got to help finish the 175 gallons tonight. It is a little more yellow and the ants are here!

Today would be Clarence Rine's 100th birthday. We wonder what he would think of the quiet generator or Bob taking picture's on the IPAD for the blog? OR 183 gallons of syrup?
 
?

Total sap:7517.5
Total syrup: 183 gallons