26 overnight.  Sunny and 45 today.  The last three days have been the idyllic weather associated with maple syrup season:   freezing nights, sunny days, the snow sill in the woods but melting.  We seldom get that.

Into the woods by 6:30 AM to wash the finishing pan.  Had help at 7:30 to dump in a milk can syrup.  We needed to bottle to free up milk cans for more syrup.  We had two full milk cans of syrup and started on a third.  We knew we would collect today and that meant more syrup coming.  Bottled 27 quarts.  Grade A Robust.  The first syrup is usually lighter.

Trees started dripping by 10:00 AM.  The sap from yesterday was already in the buckets so we knew there would be a big haul.  Set out collecting at 3:00 PM.   Many full or overflowing pails.  We had storage for 600 gallons.  Had a spare 100 gallon tank at the yet that we setup.  We ended up with 700 gallons of sap.

Our new pump and hoses with quick connect finally worked as envisioned.  This was a good to get the pump and hoses figured out..  The pump problem was a bad extension cord that didn’t deliver the volts or amps the pump needed to turn over.  It takes about 12 minutes to empty the collecting tank.

Tomorrow we cook.  Most likely we won’t cook through all 700 gallons.   Need to check if we have to collect tomorrow again.  But the dripping did slow down by 5:00 PM which is good.  Forecast is 33 overnight with clouds and snow showered tomorrow.