Sunday February 21, 2016

Day #5

(Sorry about the texting snafu today, we will try to be more careful in the future! Hope there were not too many naps ruined)

Beautiful day with some sun and warmer than most feb 21st's , but the northeast wind kinda dampened the effect a little.

Yesterday ended at the stroke of midnight. Today began early by chasing Brad and James off the couch and into the big bad day at 0610-hate it when that happens to you on a sunday! Gave Bob's car a swift cleaning and loaded up a list of items most wanted in Kansas....weed wacker, bull/air horn, dental records....we don't ask just try to comply with requests. Picked up Muff and Karen and headed to Columbus for breakfast . Had a great two hour visit with Cody and Amy who drove in from Kansas for a wedding saturday evening and had to head back today.  So glad Kelsey made it up from campus to Dublin, but no Evan today as he was off with Farmhouse duties ...missed you Ev! Home from this adventure by 1:30. We called and passed the phone around the sugar camp tonight so they got to visit to pass some time on their voyage. As of 9:35 pm (eastern time) the brown VW had made its way to within 175 miles of home.  

Happy Birthday Cody!!

Wally got a couple of new bolts thrown in the stair hinges to resolve his injuries from yesterdays mishap. There seemed to be more laughter than usual with this repair job (Brad says this is because he was in charge making this process easier for all and not Bob so he's clearly the better leader).

 

The Bishops brought their friends the Proctor family to visit today. The woods is relatively dry and the weather about as pleasant as it ever gets in Feb so they picked a good day to come.

 Despite having mentioned the woods being the dryest it has been in recent memory, Susan B managed to get her self suctioned into a mud hole. We did help her, but not until we took her picture first. Priorities. Gotta try some video, would make the Bishop boys proud.  Noah, trusting that she knew what she was doing was also in quick sand behind her. Same number of people returned that went out so all is well.

There really was not a lot of sap today, about 200 gallons, but unsure what we would have done with more. Everyone enjoyed the outing anyway! 4 buckets with ants...agh.

So much more fun than reading Mark!!

 

Dinner was a potluck affair tonight, thanks to all who brought something. The boiling process started off well and about 6 pm suddenly became frustratingly slow. Bob thinks may have been the clinkers plugging the air flow off to the bottom of the pan. Having school work to finish and clearly not making progress, Chuck and Bob decided at 715 pm this could be addressed tomorrow. Bob cannot understand why he is tired. Everyone agrees we need a weekend to recover from the weekend!

Lola got a bath and called it a day! Was a borderline call whether she really needed one or not.


Total sap today: 200 gallons plus ? from Sandhill Rd. (bob too tired to check)
Total sap to date: 880 gallons
Syrup off today: 9 gallon
Syrup off to date: 9 gallon

Saturday February 20, 2016

Day # 4

Catchup on the week: Tues through Thursday evenings this week involved cold weather and little chance of anything running, ....nobody really took the time to look. Frying other fish. Bob spent most of his spare moments in the shop soldering the pinholes shut in the flu pan. He has had a chest cold and coughing made this a little trickier!! This task finished up about 1130pm Friday night. Muff and Gerri scraped out the top tank thursday evening with Lola's help. (camp and everything in it is way cleaner than usual.....postulating that the warmer winter kept the critters outside). There was not one nut (well edible nut) in the camp building. They managed to find 2 pick up trucks that would not start after their cleaning spree, and struggled a little with the whole "what do we do with the dirty dog thing", but survived.

Yesterday, Friday Feb. 19th, 2016, the weather took a sudden turn for the warmer and windier. If this winter in northern ohio seems to have been defined by anything.....it is wind. The wind howled during the night to the point it awoke you. The electric came on and off a few times, appears it was off on CR 34 for about 1.5 hours and some of neighbors to the south were out of power for about 3 hours .


Today began with quick cheerios and coffee followed by boots and a trip to the woods. Bob got wally pulled around back and with not much help from Gerri loaded the tank and put the brackets on (Evan did this last year, it was pointed out he was more help which Gerri is certain is true). We discovered that we did not remember to bring gathering buckets so Gerri ran home to get those.


There was a fresh fallen log across the path from the wind in the night, this involved the chain saw and a hitch from wallie to clear the path. Kaleb is wondering why he comes home from college to rest and has to get up at the crack of dawn and go to the neighbors to work...thanks Kaleb!

 It was still plenty windy this am, but not really prohibitive to being in the woods. Dean, The Oney family times four plus crazy bruce (who diminished the woods possum population by one during our morning walk--good work Bruce) , Muff, Bob , Dale, Gerri, Adam, Ted and yes SUSAN B (looking radiant before 9 am!) all arrived for our early morning walk. It was really nice out, everybody shed their coats by the end. There were many buckets laying down after the strong winds, but between 8 and 945 am we gathered about 600 gallons of sap. Given the number of hands on deck, Susan and Gerri scrubbed out the front pan with vinegar with supervision from Bob.

At 945 Bob took a handful of guys to the shop on 34 and moved the flu pan into the gmc and then gently into the camp. This project seemed a lot smoother than our last try at this, however we had more muscle this time.



Everyone scattered as promptly as they had arrived at 10am.  Bob and Gerri went to Sandusky to watch the Redmen compete in the sectional wrestling tournament. The team had a great day (they won the tournament!) and they bugged out at 520pm to head back to the woods. Bob sent out a text to gather at 530 and this was well under way by the time they arrived at 615 (the village really does not need us). The camp was full of sap so the crew did the south path getting about 80 gallons prior to darkness setting in. The moon did provide us with a little grace period tonight. We decided at 650pmish to just forget the rest as it was dark and not a tremendous amount in the buckets and we were not sure what we were going to do with the sap we had.

The first day is always a little "discombobulated" and today was no exception (the moon looks pretty full). Wallie had a small accident when a tree jumped out behind him, bob took this news amazingly well as he was already distracted by the fact that he could not find the float for the back pan...anywhere. We all looked , everywhere, aided by the fact that 85% of us had no idea what we were looking for! Bob concluded this was Cody or Brad's fault, but quick phone calls to them were not real helpful. It was eventually located clean and dry in the basement with other items that we would have been searching for in another 2 hours anyway.  Problem solved.


Chuck lit a fire after complaining that all of his equipment had not been provided, he complained pretty quietly for awhile as Bob was already "Lit Up" about his missing float. This is the day Sue has been waiting for....Chuck leaving the house. Sandhill Rd. provided about 15 gallons of sap today.


Two hours into boiling tonight , the pan appears to be holding sap ok. Cody's friends Dave and Justin stopped in for a surprise visit with their friend on their daylong tour of sugar camps (they are hard up for entertainment). Always a pleasure to see them! Thank you Ted for awesome taco soup and fixins....this was enjoyed by all.

Thanks to everybody who helped out today on our crazy schedule so we could be with Brad. Appreciate all of your enthusiasm and flexibility.

Total Sap: 600 am plus 80 pm; Sandhill Rd. 15 gallons
Total Syrup: not staying up late enough to find out!!

The view when we started gathering today.

 

The view when we ended gathering...for today.

Tuesday February 16, 2016

Day #3

Even bankers and teachers had to go to work today....students at Bellevue had a 2 hour fog delay though!. Fog was fairly wide spread in the state this am.

Bob returned home to check the "stump fire". Stillsmoldering & the stump did burn farther than he expected. Woods cold but there are a few drops of sap in the tubes, nothing to get excited about. No sun again today.

The evaporator project is going to be a little bigger than expected. So, for a change of pace, we sorted through the change jar, the car change stash and sorted out pre-1982 pennies. (Google tells us that they started adding zinc to pennies in 1982, although we think they look like this happened in 1983)......so the old ones have the purest copper for our repair job. This was clearly the warmest project thus far :). If anybody cares, apparently 1969 was a popular year to be a penny! Anyway, the master plan is to plug the giant holes in the evaporator with soldered in pennies. Never a dull day here at the ranch. 


The picture shows the drain bar that loosened from the bottom of the flu. The bar is now going to be history and the holes will be plugged, if all goes well.

 Pictures of the maple tree removal from yesterday.

Monday February 15, 2016

Day #2

Spent a good 2 hours trying to figure the blog situation out, setting up new email etc etc. Warmer today, whopping 30 with mist of rain. At 0900 Bob, Brad & Adam began to tap trees, 2 drills and walked at a wicked clip, done with the whole woods by 1 pm. Chose NOT to tap any soft maples as the buds look too far gone. They say the chips coming out of the tree were dry but sweet (not sure how they know that...don't want to know...it's all fiber I guess).

So...on a positive note all the trees are tapped. On a second positive note.......Katie got to drive Adams truck today!! This was the best laugh of our day!!  Go girl!

On a more somber note , minor issue ......haha, the back evaporator pan looks like  a giant collander. It is full of small holes!!! These appear to be too many to fix...yes he actually said that....so Bob called to see about just purchasing a new one and sending somebody north on a field trip. There is a 3 week wait for a new one, they do not have a spare to loan out. So.....he will begin tomorrow to solder as many of these closed as possible. He has about 72 hours before the weather breaks to plug these suckers up. Should be fun.

No sap. No syrup. No sun.

Sunday February 14, 2016

Start the year with an apology that last year ended very abruptly secondary to a trip to Biloxi Mississippi to Back Bay Mission...very fun...but cut syrup season short, thanks to all who kept the home fires burning while we were gone!

Secondly, the blog has been slow to start this year secondary to I.T. issues. We are rather committed to keeping our blog fun and historical, but have had some issues with changes in the ownership of blogspot. This has been a great venue and we intend to use it as long as we can! Share with others as you like! We have set up a new email account if you would like to forward pictures for the blog, send them to sugarwoodfarmsrine@gmail.com.


Happy Valentines Day!!! Day #1

Winter has been almost nonexistant, and then this week out of nowhere....ice cold. 5 degrees this morning. Gorgeous morning.......everything covered in sparkling ice!


The first project of the year was to burn a pile of sticks directly in front of the camp...."no better time than now with no wind" said Bob at 0700. The fire was pretty welcome as walking around and picture taking was fun, but Bob and Gerri soon found you can't have your glove off to take pics for more than about 2 minutes without pain!!










Bob popped off the first group text of the season on his way to church.

















Adam and Ted showed up early to assist with tree removal. The large maple at the bend of the east corridor path and the south path , likely more than 150 years old, was laying across the path. the logs were very nice so they did some work to preserve some length. Wallie ran out of horses so they had to cut this log in half. the remainder of the tree removal for the day was really nothing in comparison to this initial monster that took about 2 hours times 4 guys (plus one Wallie and one Lola).

Muff and Gerri drove Adam's new truck....(yahoo!!!!.......never over 60 MPH Adam )to the barnyard to fill with clean buckets while Adam and Brad transferred totes of lids unto  

 Wallie.

The bucket brigade went pretty quickly with plenty of hands. Mike and Heath came halfway through and helped with the north and east paths.

All buckets and lids are out minus about 20 by 4:30pm. Big afternoon. Overcast. Never really warmed up. Lola and Gerri both whined the last hour....a little too cold.

 Spent the last 20 minutes cutting the stump off with the ground. Chuck and Sue came to be sure everybody was working....he straightened up the campfire before he left haha.

Nothing ran but everyone's noses today :(

March 9, 2015

The first gathering of the year occurred today at 5:15pm in the light of day! We are enjoying the evening portion of daylight savings time, the morning not so much!! Dale, Karen, Brad, Bob and Adam gathered 310 gallons. Bob noticed that the first gathering last year was the same number of gallons plus the same 4 gallon contribution from the far east.

 Today 's trivia question is what is Dale reading about?

The answer to yesterday's trivia question is : Morgan C. (the implied trivia question is who needs a new phone....that would be her dad). Unable to blow it up despite lots of effort!

The first light of the season after much complaining about waiting on Bob.

Gerri and Muff enjoyed the prints (below) from a winter time visitor!

Brad told Bob he would wash the dog. After some time sitting in the kitchen, Bob asked Brad how that was going....he said he had her on the pre-soak cycle. She seems too tired to care.

Total Sap Today:310 gallons + 4 Sandhill

Total Sap To Date: 310 gallons +4 Sandhill

Total Syrup To Date: 2 gallons

March 8, 2015

The year began with quite a snow pack that is a lot of fun to walk through !! There is about a 15 inch thick layer at this point.


Brad and Dale made a run to our friends at JES foods in Cleveland to pick up 384 brand new yellow buckets on Feb. 10th (a snow day for Brad!).

The year officially began with Bob clearing the lane on March 1st.

 

Saturday March 7th Evan came to help Bob move logs to clear paths. They got off to a good start in the morning and this actually went better than expected. Neighbors were having a "worse than expected day" so Evan did some sewing with 4-H kids in the afternoon while Bob ran some errands. Dale joined Brad (home from FFA judging) , Gary, Evan, Bob and Gerri to put some buckets out. This process came to a halt on the north path with onset of darkness and muscle pain.

Sunday morning the Cleveland family (Bret, Melissa & Mighty Morgan) showed up at the crack of dawn to help put the rest of buckets out and place lids on them.

Melissa brought chili that was popular (sorry you missed that Muff...looking for it too late!). About 1 pm Kevin and Jenny headed to the south path on the south side with Bob and Muff on the north side of the south path tapping. Brad, Evan, Gerri, Bret, Melissa, and Morgan finished lids on the east path. The Clarks X3 arrived in time to run after the two drills on the south path and Brad tapped at lightning speed on the east path.
  The entire woods was tapped by 3 pmish. The sun was warm and still today. Everyone laughed possibly the most pleasant weather EVER to tap in!!

The sap ran immediately after the holes were drilled. There was about an inch in the buckets by the end of the afternoon.

After completion of the tapping there was a brief water and visiting break followed by the very fun job of cleaning out the upper and lower holding tanks. Gerri and Muff should have taken a selfie as their dust masks were not pretty at the end of this project. Dale would not have approved of the job on the lower tank, ...Gerri laughed we did almost everything wrong--if you were washing a milk tank,..... started at the wrong end, used too little water, hung over the tank while brushing it etc etc. But it is ready for SAP! (If you were the person in charge of cleaning the upper tank out last spring you should be thankful that Bob does not remember which one you were and Muff and Gerri advise you to keep your mouth shut! They already took one for the team.)

Muff scrubbed the evaporator out on Saturday so we simply ran water through it to rinse out the vinegar today. The final fun project was loading Wallie with the tank and he is ready to go!

Who is driving? (Today's trivia question.)

 

Everyone is sapped tonight! Thanks for all the great help!

We have been told that Sandhill Road is also tapped as of today.