Mar 8

Big day. In keeping with the theme of the winter, it snowed today. 50% chance of snow means beautiful white out snow. Not much accume, maybe 2 inches. Funny how that now is like nothing.

The guys worked on fixing up Walle's bed so we can gather sap into it. This involved bolting the collection tank to the bed and placing nonskid matts on the bed. They removed the end tailgait & Cody bolted on a staircase. (We are now handicap accessible!)

It is the first day. People still like us, so the turn out to gather was great. Cousin Steve, Mindy, Luke, Tate & kidnapped Collin visited for the afternoon. Jenny & Kevin came along with The Clark's times three, Muff, Cody's friend Justin, and Kelsey, Evan, Cody, Bob, Gerri,  Dale & Karen. Gary gave a tour to a friend.

Chuck showed up late. There was a great amount of concern expressed about his tardiness as we now collectively associate him with fire and it was cold. He complained something about not wanting to heat up an empty evaporator. Go figure, playing the logic card. The evaporator is so shiney clean!

Muff brought syrup from Vermont to taste test. We were not impressed but we may be biased!

Walle is a hit. Bob & Cody did most of the driving. Gerri tried it for a 100 yards,  Dale and Kevin practiced seeing how big American guys fit in little Japanese equipment :) Ted stayed on the bed and dumped buckets and helped to serve as a living rear view mirror.

Nancy got a little bored while it seemed to take forever for the guys to dump the first tank.So she made a snowman. (her snowman is directly in front of her feet bottom left) When Bob saw how tiny her snow man was he said he should have left her standing out there a little longer!

There is a good snow pack in most of the woods, the buckets were 3 inches on average. Kevin & Kelsey aren't bored, they appear happy to chat during downtime! We enjoyed really low quality hot dogs and ate the first s’mores of the season. Lola was thrilled her friend Bruce Oney visited. 310 gallons were collected.