The day broke cold, but sunny. It warmed up to 40 quickly. With the warm sun the trees responded and starting dripping. By 1:00 pm the weather changed. It got cloudy. The wind shifted to the North and snow squalls moved in. The temperature dropped quickly to below 32: freezing. We checked the buckets about 3:00 pm. Many were full. That was unexpected. They must have dripped like crazy in the morning. So we went to collect. And set off a change of events that took much longer then expected and left sap uncollected.

When we got the tractor, we did not check the fuel level before leaving for collecting. That would come back to bite us.

We set out in the snow squalls to collect. We lost track of how many buckets were over flowing.  Ice was already forming in the buckets too so we hoped to get everything collected. No point letting it freeze in the buckets. If we get it picked up we can boil it down. By 4:30 we have 200 gallons and head back to transfer to the storage tanks. The temperature continued drop. After emptying the collecting tank we head back out to continue collecting. The snow squalls stopped, the skies cleared and we saw sunset. We had about 170 gallons of sap in the collecting tank, but had to head back because our storage tanks only hold 350 gallons. We were not done collecting. There is easily 100 gallons still in the woods.  (Let’s hope the buckets don’t burst from the freezing sap. A full bucket that freezes expands and can break the seams on a bucket.)  We were heading back the building to empty the collecting tank when the tractor stopped. Out of gas. Walk back to get gas. Full up. Start the tractor. Nope. Engine does not turn over. Dead battery. Back to the house to get jumper cables and a vehicle to jump us. We get the tractor started. But now its getting dark and much colder. We start the pump to empty the collecting tank into the storage tanks. Nothing comes through. Ice in the lines. With a torch we heat the pipe and are able to get it going, but it runs slowly. Several times it stopped and we used the torch on the pipe again. But we are fighting a losing battle. Once ice starts forming in the pipes the race against the ice is on. Its only a matter of time until we can’t get any more sap pumped through. By 8:30 pm we have to give up. Our pipes are iced up. About 60 gallons remains in the collecting tank. Its OK there, but we have to get it out before we can finish collecting tomorrow.

The chain of events: if we had not run out of gas, we would have made it to the building to empty the collecting tank. A dead battery would not have mattered once we were at the building. It would have been several degrees warmer and our pipes would not have iced up. We would have been done by about 6:00 pm.

Today’s count.
350 gallons of sap collected
100 gallons of sap still in the woods.
1 empty gas tank
1 dead battery