Mar 2

So glad to see march on the calendar! We have been blessed with a long cold winter. We have had snow cover pretty consistently since new year’s day this year! Bob and Gerri walked the woods on Saturday Feb 26th and found an 8 inch snow pack , deeper on the south side of the woods this year. Pretty icey walk! However the woods is also somewhat dry.

Our Sunday morning started early at church. We enjoyed jambalaya and conversation with our friends and neighbors. We were sad the Bishop family was all visiting to honor the passing of Jacob Bishop earlier in the week, but glad to see many of the family.

Bob sent out a text to get some help around 1 pm. Bob, Brad, and Gerri have been washing buckets and lids for the last couple of weeks and loaded them onto the trailer.

The big project prepping for the woods this year was getting Walle (the name of our track dumper with which we haul sap) new tracks. Replacing tracks was on nobody’s resume previously, so this took the guys about a week. There were several YouTube videos involved, the goal was eventually met. Gerri got to make the first drive through the woods, so whatever is not working correctly will be her fault.

We walked through the woods throwing out lids and buckets. Muff, Brad, Bob, Gerri, Jake, Noah, Adam, and Melissa set out lids and buckets. Meeting back at the camp was cold with no fire! Evan and Kelsey brought tacos to share. After some conversation, at 4 pm on a Sunday, we decided to “go tap a few trees” to lighten the load on Monday. Brad and Gerri headed south, Melissa and Evan went north, and Jake went with Bob, somewhere. This goes faster in teams of two, and with the lids and buckets out we made pretty quick work of this! By 7:15 pm the woods were tapped! Although it was not on our agenda, but so thankful this is done. The wind died down and it was warmer at the end of the day than midday today. Saw little to no drips of sap today! There was a little debate on whether Gerri had been left in the cold and dark to fend for herself as she was trailing behind the group.

Jake wins the award for volunteer of the day. Brad gasped hearing in the pitch dark, his father asking jake to pick a lid with blue tubing. It was both too cold and too dark and too far into a long day to make that request. We have apologized to jake that he had to endure this.