Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble

We fired the old girl up yesterday; finally!

Gone are the days when we put in taps and expected gallons of sap to boil the next day.  We've become experts at this and realize it takes at least a week, maybe two, to store up enough of the stuff to make it worth hauling down to the sugar house.  Still-- we didn't get a-boiling until around 2pm yesterday, and by the time I was ready to light the fire we were both falling over ourselves trying to get there first.

Once started, the fire and the day go by fast.  The level in the collector drops inexorably as the water evaporates, which is both a good and bad thing; good because it gets us to the sweet stuff, bad because it means that soon we will run out of sap and we'll have to wait for the trees to catch up again. 

Somehow we managed to feed the Bundle and put her to bed amidst all the chaos.  She'll learn soon enough that during sugaring season all bets are off.   But it's okay because the geese are coming back, the coyotes are howling, and the propane lamps still shine brightly into the night.

tags: maple