Tuesday,7:45 AM. 35 degrees, wind E, calm. The barometer is down, predicting mostly sunny skies. The sky is partly cloudy now. The water is running in the ditches all around the city. Much of the lowland in the country is soggy but there is still plenty of snow in the woods.
We made the last sap run yesterday and pulled all the spiles even though the sap will run for a while yet. I think everyone is tired, including the dogs, and it is time to “hang it up.” Andy feels we have produced the best syrup in many years, which he judges as a commercial “Grade A Amber.” 475 gallons of laboriously collected sap produced 11.5 gallons of syrup, averaging 1 gallon of syrup to 46 gallons of sap. I am going to guess that at least a cord of dry mixed firewood was used to boil the sap down to syrup (a cord is a pile of wood 4’ high, 4’ deep and 8’ long). The time involved was more than a month from set-up to clean up. I will guess that Andy and Judy put at least 300 hours into the effort, plus at least 200 hours by others, for a minimum of 500 hours of labor and probably much more.
Anyone can see that this is not a profit making venture but a labor of love, and whatever maple syrup sells for in the store it is not enough to justify the work. However, used judiciously, a quart or two of syrup will last until next year, and the memories of days spent with friends old and new in the sugar bush will last a lifetime.
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