4/11/08

Friday, 7:30 AM. 27 degrees, wind NE, violent. Barometer down, predicting snow. We are having a blizzard. It is hard to tell how much snow has fallen because it is blown and plastered everywhere, but trees are heavy laden. This is a major storm and will last a while from the looks of it. Porch furniture is overturned, bird feeders are askew and birds are rooting around in the snow for seeds, wondering why they didn’t stay south a while longer.
The sap ran well yesterday, Andy says an advancing low helps the sap run. Anyway, another 45 gallons was collected and Andy and Paul were cooking like crazy.
This is supposed to be the big maple syrup weekend, sponsored by The Old Rittenhouse Inn, starting with a free community event at the Historic Society Museum tonight with tales of maple sugaring and many different maple deserts and apple cider. I hope it doesn’t have to be canceled. Also, the sugar bush is to be the site of a Rittenhouse camp breakfast for their guests at the sugar shack. It may take four wheel drives and snow shoes to get cooks and guests there. It will also give guests an opportunity to help with sugaring as a rustic experience for, I am afraid, the truly hungry and brave.
We all (Joan and I, Andy and Judy, Paul and Joanne and all four dogs) had dinner at camp, the main course being elk from Paul’s Colorado hunting trip last fall. Appetites were whetted, very appropriately, by a bottle of Yukon Jack fire water. By dark it was starting to snow and Myron called, suggesting vehicles be parked at the end of the lane over night, nearer the plowed roads. Well, snowed in is snowed in, welcome to spring in the North Woods.