Nearing the Finish Line

We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves; this year our sugar wood had been split early in the summer and was beautifully dry, we organized our time so that we could maximize the sap, we put in another line, bringing our total to more than 70 taps, and so far we've made 6 gallons of various grades of A.  It's promising to be a good year.

But this weekend, the last weekend in March--always the largest weekend in terms of sap production-- we began to run into problems. Because the beautifully dry wood we'd stacked up and left to dry all summer had had placed over it a not-so beautiful, old blue tarp which apparently was not opposed to letting a little moisture in here and there.  We've been lucky weather wise, stacking up the wood to bake in the warm March sun, but today it is still cloudy and last night we were already playing Musical Wood.  

I hate it when the whole production grinds to a halt simply because of the weather .

Fortunately there's a big pile of slab in our orchard left over from a milling project last summer, dry as a bone.  Also heavy as hell.  But we'll drag it down to the sugar house, crack it up, and feed it to our fire so that we can move that hydrometer up to the finish line.  We're nothing if not stubborn.

tags: maple