Much warmer overnight: 30.  No wintery mix at 6:00 AM.  By 6:45 AM it started to snow.  Hard.  By 9:00 AM we had 2” of wet, heavy snow.  Snow changed to drizzle.   By 11:00 AM precipitation stopped.  Stayed  cloudy the rest of the day.  Sun was forecast.  Warmed to mid-30s.  The trees did start to drip and ice in the buckets started melting.

At Noon we headed into the woods to thaw out the evaporator. With a week of cold weather it was all ice.  We need to use a low fire to slowly melt the ice otherwise the lack of liquid will scorch the pans.

By 3:00 PM we started collecting.  Wanted sap for the open house tomorrow.  We knew there was sap in the buckets, but there was also lots of ice.   Usually we dump ice but with such big blocks we saved it in the buckets after pouring out the liquid that had already melted from the ice.  Picked up 210 gallons.  Te sap was 3.4 Brix.  Ice is natures R/O.

Tomorrow is warmer: 40s, but the forecast changed to cloudy.  Sun would have been nicer.   Tomorrow is day one of the open house for season 100.