A late start to the day.  Into the woods by 10:00 AM.   Today we were going to take down the taps.   There is always a hesitation to get started with that task.  Removing the taps really does bring an end to the season.   Its a sad task to get started. 

By 11:00 AM we started.  Usually we dump to the ground any remaining sap in the buckets.  There is not much and what is there is quite bad.  But today things were different.    It was cold again last night: down to 25.   Quite a few buckets had a quart or more of sap.  And good quality sap.  We started dumping but changed our mind.  Went back to get a milk can and collecting pail.  We emptied the bucket first, then pulled the tap.    By the end of the day we had about 80 gallons of sap.   We emptied into the evaporator as the day progressed so we got it boiled down right away. 

All the taps are off now.  Tomorrow or the next day we will collect the pails from the woods.  We have to boil down and finish the sap remaining in the evaporator so we don’t know final numbers yet.   Clean up  remains too.   But we certainly did try to get every last drop of sap for the season.