Sweetening the Pot

Mach is blowing in already and its only February.  The high temperature today will reach a whopping 41 degrees before plummeting back down to the teens, creating in its wake a high wind and a gloomy, rainy forecast.

In a week or so we'll start to take stock of our maple supplies, finish the cleaning we always say we'll do post season and never do, string up the line, fix the stove pipe, re-line the firebox, and finally, drill the holes and hope for the best.  It's almost sugaring season.  Who knows what this year's will bring?

Last year I took an entire week off work to sugar, gauging my time off of years past, when the last week of March was the week to beat.  But last year's sugar season was a little late, one week late to be exact, and my week off wasn't as productive as I'd hoped it would be.  This year I'm taking long weekends in the month of March, hoping to split the difference.  This is the dilemma of the part time homesteader--making the homesteading work around the day job, when ideally it would work the other way around.

Anyway, this is all ruminations and fantasy as of now, what with February still hovering over us, all malignant sky and dreary days.