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.