Woke this morning to snow.   We got about 3” overnight.  That was unexpected.   Everything is snow covered and a nice white replaces the browns.   It was down to about 29 overnight and up to 34 during the day.  Cloudy all day.

Checked on the R/O shipment.  Its still in transit.  It should arrive at the dealer on Monday and arrive here by Wednesday or Thursday. 

After lunch started cleaning up the syrup building.  Swept the floor and cleaned the cobwebs.  Assembled the burners on the finishing pan and bottling pan.  We should have almost a full tank of propane gas left from last season.

About 2:00 PM we checked some buckets.  We were expecting some sap as the trees were running after we tapped.  And ice since it was down to 15 the other night.  What we found was quite a few full buckets from the first 200 taps we put out on Tuesday and Wednesday.  So now we had to quickly prepare the collecting tank.  It needed washing after sitting for a year.    About 3:00 PM we went out collecting.  By 5:30 PM we had 200 gallons.  We covered about half the woods with the first taps from Tuesday and Wednesday.   There is more sap in the 200 taps we put out yesterday but we don’t have any place to put it  and it was getting dark.  So that will stay in the buckets until Saturday or even Sunday if the ice does not melt. 

Since the storage tanks are not setup the sap is staying in the collecting tank overnight.  We tried to wrap in plastic to hold in some heat to keep it from freezing overnight.  It has to get pretty cold to freeze 200 gallons.  The forecast is for a low of 23.

Tomorrow we prepare the storage tanks and evaporator and start boiling.