Cloudy and 38 today.  Drizzle around 4:00 PM.  Cold wind from the north.

Into the woods by 7:00 AM to cook yesterday’s sap.  R/O started at 8:15 AM and finished processing 415 gallons by 1:30 PM.  Five batches into the milk can.  Back at the farmhouse by 5:00 PM.

Put a can of syrup into the finishing pan at 10:45 AM.  It was ready for bottling by 1:15 PM.  24 quarts and 12 pints.

The trees dripped overnight.  About a quart in pails.  The question was when to collect.  With rain and warmer weather we didn’t want to leave sap in the buckets.  Tomorrow, Sunday, its forecast to rain harder so we set out collecting at 3:00 PM.  Came back with 170 gallons.  Tested the sugar content:  1.25 °Bx.  Quite low.  Without the R/O that’s not feasible to cook.  Its 69:1.    We’ll run it through the R/O tomorrow and should end up with about 2 ½ gallons of finished syrup.  With such low Brix we are close to the end of the season.

Next freezing nights are forecast for Tuesday.  We’ll see what that gives us.