By 9:00AM this morning, I had a fire in the evaporator and started work on the 100 or more gallons of sap remaining from yesterday. I finished that portion of the process by 3:00PM. Rick and I then finished and bottled 11 1/4 gallons of syrup. That is our production to date for the 2011 season. We started with almost 500 gallons of sap to produce that amount of syrup. The syrup looks very good in the jar--a rich red amber color and very clean, that is, without visible suspended sediment.

With help from two adult kids and one small grandson, we collected 200 gallons of sap from today's flow. Ah yes! There is work to be done tomorrow. But I will be back at my day job tomorrow morning.

We decided to call it a day at 6:30PM. Time to clean up, make myself supper, and do a load of laundry of syrup making clothes.

Rick and his son collected 200 gallons of sap this afternoon and then left for Rick's 65th birthday supper with family. I went out to the sugarbush around 5:00PM after a day at the office and ran half of those 200 gallons through the evaporator. I called it a day at 10:30PM. I plan to be back out in the sugarhouse around 10:00AM to run the remaining sap through the evaporator in anticipation of a collection late in the afternoon tomorrow. When the sap is running, it can make for some long days, which stretch into late nights, to keep up with the evaporating. In five and a half hours this evening, I put approximately 100 gallons of sap through the evaporator. With the size of evaporator we are using, that is about the best rate we can expect. It takes "tending to the business" to achieve that rate--keeping the fire stoked, regulating the levels of sap in the two pans, and defoaming as needed. Starting up the evaporator and shutting it down at the end of the day or night both take some extra time. We now have a nice amount of syrup in the finisher that is ready for the next steps--finishing and bottling. By my estimate, there should be six gallons of syrup, moreorless.

We collected 90 gallons of sap early this afternoon and ran it through the evaporator. I was home by 8:00PM. The sap continued to run so we are expecting an even larger collection tomorrow. I suspect we'll be busy through the weekend. I will try to make regular posts so that folks are updated and can share in the excitement.

I haven't quite figured out the time and date stamp for postings. I don't think I can reset or correct this information. The day and date are correct, but the time is off by two hours. I will be posting this entry at approximately 7:00PM. Folks can use this a reference to correct for the time of previous and subsequent postings.

This difference will explain what appears to be postings describing events in advance of those very events occurring. No, I don't have the capacity to predict the future.

I continue to wait for the weather to move into syrup season mode. While waiting, there are odds and ends to take care of. Rick or I or both of us have been in the sugarbush every day to check on things, pick up the bags that the wind took off their spiles, start a fire in the kitchen stove to keep the water jugs from freezing solid, complete a minor repair, or clean up here and there.

The days have been clear and sunny, for the most part. High temperatures have been closing in on the 30 degree mark. Overnight lows have been in the low teens. There has been some sap flow on some south facing taps, but the sap in the bags is frozen solid. It will take a few days of decent syrup weather before that ice melts. If we get a good flow before the ice melts completely, we will have to deal with "sap on ice." We've done that in previous years; it takes a little longer and a little more care to empty the bags while leaving the ice and avoiding damage to the bags.

The sugarhouse has been furnished and outfitted with castoffs and extras from our separate homes, such as pots and pans that spouses decided were no longer needed or appropriate in their kitchens. Some items from canoe camping outfits are now pulling double duty in the sugarhouse. A few years back, a paring knife with the tip broke off found its way to the sugarhouse. This week I decided to see if I could reshape the blade into a more customary profile. I brought it home so that I could work on it with the hand grinder and a file. By working slowly I think I was able to accomplish my objective without burning the metal and changing its temper so that it would become quite useless. The blade probably does not have the classic Chicago Cutlery profile, but it is a lot more functional.

The garage sale find of the summer of 2011 was a newer model Coleman gas lantern. I spent $5.00 on what appeared to be a dirty but intact lantern with the exception of two broken mantels. A thorough clean-up and new mantels made for an operational lantern. This newer model is much quieter than the older models that we have been using. The brightness is also adjustable--sort of a built-in dimmer switch. Best of all it lights consistently with relative ease. Our two older lanterns have been very temperamental. Maybe they will be shamed into performing better in the presence of the new young beauty. So far this season, I have used only the new lantern for a short period of time one evening. The old timers are gassed up and ready to go or to be given a go.

The forecast holds promise for a sap flow on Monday or Tuesday--the 28th or 29th. Things are ready.

Despite spring according to my read of the calendar, another wintery day dawns with temperatures in the mid-teens and a few flurries in the air. There has been no sap flow since mid-day Sunday. I will go out to the sugarbush later today to pick up the collection bags that the wind blew off their spiles. We did not receive the 12 or more inches of snow that was forecast earlier this week. We did have windy conditions, which have been known to take the bags/bagholders off the spiles. With a very limited amount of new snow, I know I can easily find the bags that have blown off. In previous years, the bags have occasionally been fully buried in new snow, which made recovery difficult.

There may be one or another small chore that will give me good reason to hang out at the sugarhouse for a time. I will probably start a fire in the kitchen stove. This may keep the water jugs from freezing solid, which I hope they haven't done already. There are overnight lows in the single digits in the forecast. There may be a risk of the water freezing. From experience we know that it takes a long time for a 5 gallon block of ice to melt. When that block is inside of a plastic jug, there is no way to put heat to it. Putting some heat into the kitchen of the sugarhouse during these days will hopefully keep the water in a liquid state.

I was out to the sugarbush on Tuesday in order "to check on things"--another one of those good reasons to do something that feels good rather than really needs to be done. I spent some time splitting kindling. We have a number of cedar fence posts contributed to the operation by one of the partners. They were purchased years ago for a fencing project that later didn't need to be undertaken. They were simply thrown up in a pile so over the years the weather has not been kind to them, which means they are not much good as fence posts at this time. We cut a number of them to length with the chainsaw and now split them as we need them for kindling. Splitting kindling provides me with the opportunity to hone my axe skills.

This week I started my syrup season schedule--something new for this year. Usually I try to schedule a week of vacation during the syrup season, but it is always a challenge to predict out two or three weeks what the work load will be like. So this year I am trying something different. I requested and received approval to take Tuesdays and Thursdays off for a five week period--March 22nd through April 21st. I figured I could work a late night on those days that I work my day job--Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays--sleep in a little on the days off before putting in a full day as needed to keep up with the flow of sap. Our goal is not to hold sap in the bulk tanks any longer than necessary to help insure good quality syrup and to make sure we have room for more sap should we experience some good flows back to back to back. We have two 200 gallon bulk tanks, and with 175 taps, we can collect in excess of 200 gallons of sap on a really good day. It feels good to be ready for the really good days. Even if they don't occur all that often, the anticipation and being ready feels good.

I am not sure what my moral philosophy teacher would say about the motivations in this post--good reasons, aka excuses, anticipatory good feelings, and actualized good feelings. The 70's guide of "If it feels good, do it" discounted as wanton hedonism appears to have an application, that I can feel comfortable writing home to my mother about, even if there is no chance my mother will read this post.

As expected and hoped, we collected a little more than 200 gallons of sap early Sunday afternoon. We fired up the evaporator and ran approximately half of that amount through, before calling it a day at 8:00PM. This afternoon Rick started on what remained; I took over after my day job and finished up. I was home by 9:00PM for a hot shower and a late supper. The bulk tank is now empty. The place tidied up. The kitchen wood box refilled. The evaporator inside wood supply replenished. One rank of the outside wood pile tarped to keep it dry. There is some "almost syrup" in the finisher.

Ah yes, the 2011 syrup season is underway.

The sap has not run since we collected early Sunday afternoon. Last night's low temperature was not low enough to reset the sap flow cycle. The forecast for tonight does not hold much promise. After that, the weather man has advised everyone to hunker down for a 36-hour winter storm. That means there is little chance of another run of sap until the end of the week. With the winds that are forecast, we will probably be walking the sugarbush a few times to pick up bagholders and bags off the ground and putting them back on the spiles.

In any case, we will be ready for another sap flow later in the week. We will be ready earlier, but we aren't in control of the flow only being ready.

The trees are tapped. Yesterday, Rick and I put our 175 taps in and prepared the sugar house for the 2011 season--our ninth. The weather was cooperative and the sap was flowing at a good pace by noon. We hope to be able to collect 150 to 200 gallons this afternoon and to run the evaporator.

It didn't freeze last night. The snow that was forecasted came as rain. Checking the weather on-line this morning would seem to indicate that the rain will be with us until noon or later. I am not sure what this weather means for sap flow. My suspicion is that it will taper off by the end of the day and not run until we have at least one night with temperatures in the low or mid 20's.

After several weeks of anticipation, having second thoughts about the season's plans, and impatience, the 2011 syrup season is a go.

The last of the Christmas ham is diced and in the pot with two packages of dried peas, diced onions, diced carrots, and diced red bell pepper with an eclectic mix of seasonings. Last evening I put the peas in water to soak; today after work, the dicing was done and flame was applied to the concoction.

So why pea soup?

I needed to focus on something real after my recent posts and struggling through James Galbraith's book. I checked out a second book at the same time that I checked out the Galbraith book; it was a work by Noam Chomsky. I decided to return it to the library unread and to look for a very different kind of read. I found Lisa Jones' work titled Broken. It tells of the experience of a non-Native individual on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. It speaks to just how different various travellers in this time and space experience America in the 21st century. So much of our environment is much the same: news, music, television, civil law, clothing styles, national politics, and the economy. On the other hand, the impact of these upon the individual and the meaning ascribed to these in the course of one's individual experience is so greatly varied. When one listens carefully and observes clearly, one comes to the awareness of an immense variation in the contemporary human experience. This opens us to the richness of the human experience. Let it not discourage us from the struggle for sincere and genuine communication. For starters, let us acknowledge that it is a struggle.