March 19, 2021 - Friday morning

16 degrees/clear skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

For sap to run, nights below freezing are needed coupled with daytime highs above 32 degrees. With today's high expected to be well into the fifties, it appears the bags will be filled several times over today and tomorrow. The bigger the temperature differential, the harder the flow.

I gathered three times yesterday, morning, noon, and night. Jambo helped with the evening collection which made the process go much faster. Needless to say, I was a tired boy last night.

Spring is becoming more and more evident by the hour. I was dumping sap from a bag yesterday afternoon and happened to look down. 

What? Green? Beautiful, colorful, green. After several months of existing in an outdoor world consisting of mostly black and white, the color seemed almost out of place.

So the day went. I was either pumping water overhead into the feeder barrel, filling the stove  under the evaporator with wood, or out in the woods gathering sap.

Poor Sargie is still aching from her tumble on Wednesday. She says she's feeling better, but still hurting a bit. With that in mind, I didn't let her out of the house on Thursday. So, what did the girl do? She decided to touch up the trim in the dining room. Grrr.

There's no keeping my Sargie down.

Yooper Brother Mark's on his way out for our usual Friday morning walk at first light. I need to get out the heat gun and begin thawing the hoses that feed the evaporator and start the fire. Jambo says he wants to help collect later this morning.

I'm going to remove the undercarriage that holds the snow plow onto the four wheeler so I can use the ATV in the woods to haul sap. The snow is quickly disappearing and it won't be long before we'll be unable to use the snowmobile. 

Holly and Ross are coming mid morning and should get to watch us boil off our first batch of syrup. I'm hoping for two gallons of finished product today, possibly more. Ten is our goal for this year.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...