Maple Sugar Time

The sap is running! I went out to help collect this afternoon, and the weather was perfect. It had rained earlier in the day, but by noon most of it had quit, and by 3 o'clock the tractor came crawling down the driveway, and it was time to gather the sap in buckets and bring it back to the sugar house to be boiled into maple syrup. The snow was so deep it was difficult to reach some of the buckets, then turn around with a full pail of sap to bring to the tractor. But everyone was in good spirits and it felt wonderful to be out in the thawing warmth. Its 10pm now and I can still see the steam rising across the meadow. Maple time is such fun. The sap might run all night, and tomorrow they'll make the same run once or twice and boil down the sap all day. It would be a great time to make sugar on snow. I can hardly wait, except I have to work tomorrow and Sunday. I'll probably stop by the sugar house on my way home. I can smell the sweet maple scent already!

Here is a sap bucket on our huge maple tree!

SNOW!

The snow piling up on our deck yesterday.

The first forecast was for a few inches of snow. By the time it was over, we had about 26" in about 30 hours. Everything was closed yesterday; the mall I work in, schools, colleges, businesses. Thank goodness it was all closed. The neighbors who normally plow our driveway were out in Seattle, but about 9am, here comes a different neighbor in his big John Deere tractor, moving snow to clear the way. Behind him comes another neighbor in a smaller John Deere to help, then another more distant friend in his truck and plow. So, by noon we were pretty much cleared out, and Big John came over once more in the afternoon. This morning I didn't have any trouble driving down to Burlington. There was still a little sluch on Williston Road, but otherwise all the roads were cleared down to the pavement.