When the sap is ready to run, it will run. Today was rain, drizzle and fog. But it did get up to 37 degrees. Yesterday after the snow storm the sap started to dip a little because it was sunny. It did not get very cold over night and the sap must have run over night. We collected 450 gallons of sap. And we were not expecting to collect.

We did not check the woods in the morning. We went out for a leisure lunch and did not get back until about 3:00 pm. Went to look at the buckets, but did not expect there would be sap to collect. Wrong. Half to three quarters full with some running over. So get the tractor and head into the woods. It was still drizzling and foggy. No sun, but it was about 37. The snow we had on Sunday made walking in the woods very difficult. While walking from one tree to the next there were a lot of places we encountered knee deep snow. Now carry two five gallons pails of sap. It gets real difficult. We were able to get one person to come help which was wonderful.

Night was approaching and we still had trees to visit. But the collecting tank was full again so we had to go back to empty it. While waiting for the collecting tank we filled all the five gallon pails we had so when the tractor came back we would have another section of woods collected. It was about 8:00 pm and dark when we finished collecting from the last tree. But we still had to empty the collecting tank. We topped off the storage tanks then filled four milk cans yet.

And finally we had to prepare for colder weather moving in. By morning its forecast to be 20 degrees or even colder. We had to setup heating tapes and heat lamps on the pipes from the storage tanks to keep them from freezing. It was about 9:00 pm when we finally got back into the house. That was a hard six hours.

 

Today’s Count

450 Gallons of sap