Tapping Time Again

It's that time of year again! Lots of sugarhouses up here are already boiling sap from the few warm days we've had so it was time to help my folks at "Timber Hill Farm" get ready for maple season. We prepped all the buckets in a few hours on Saturday of last weekend, planning to get in as many taps as possible by working all day Sunday. Unfortunately, we had a major ice storm on Saturday night (see pics above) and my parents woke up to a chilly house without power. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to get the generator started, and a subsequent debate over whether my Dad should try to find a Honda generator for sale on a Sunday morning (turned out to be impossible), we finally just left it to the power company and went outside to tap trees.



We only had two cordless drills, with four half-charged battery packs and no way to charge them, so we worked until the drills were completely dead. That turned out to be most of the day, and about 170 taps, which was only about 30 shy of the total for this year. So not too bad for one day's work with no power.

The sap was definitely not running when we were tapping, unlike last year. Too cold!

Buckets are up and it's starting to look like a sugarbush again.

Mom lit a fire in the woodstove to take the chill out of the house and volunteered to watch Aiden while Dad, Andy and I worked outside. It was so nice and toasty that Aiden slept for 3 full hours after his snack and missed his opportunity to help with the tapping this year. Which is OK, there are still lots of opportunities to help with the sap collecting and boiling this year. We'll put him to work soon! Oh, and the power did come back on some time the next day...