It was cold over night: down to 13.  It froze so hard we could walk on top of the snow this morning.  When it warms you sink in.  There is still a lot of snow in the woods.  We just got the trail around the building open today for the tractor.  There is still one loop on the collecting trail that is not open.  We have to unhook the wagon and collecting tank from the tractor to manually turn it around so we can drive out forward.

It was sunny all day and warmed to the upper 30s.  The sap dripped.  We will collect tomorrow.   

We got all the remaining taps out this morning.  We are now at 400.  The tractor problems set up back.  The original plan was to have all the taps out by March 4th.  Oops.

This afternoon we worked on opening the tractor trail around the building.  There are two feet of snow in places yet.  Had to use the tractor bucket to dig it out.  Its quite a workout wrestling with the steering wheel with a bucket full of snow and snow under the wheels.  

About 3:45 PM the Pastor from church came to give a blessing of the maples.  Maple syrup is the first crop of the year.   Its proper that we acknowledge and give thanks to our Maker for the crop.