Freshmaplesryup.com says that he was going to start boiling on February 28th. Though he is a lot more south than I am it sure makes me think. Bill Smith at Sugar Island Maple Grove is pretty much ready to go.  I just talked to him today and he says it’s time to get our butts in gear. I am heading up north this weekend to start tapping in. I can’t believe that it is happening so soon!

Lots more to come!

Well it’s day two and what a change in the weather. Yesterday it was 8˚C and sunny today well rain and freezing rain. Needless to say we were not in the bush for very long today. We were out of there at about 11:30, putting in a good 4h or so.

It was the first time that we had a chance to really try out the new 4 wheeler. It was a dream, the road into the bush was so bad that the truck could not make it in. Thankfully we had the “quad” as I like to call it and we were able to traverse the deadly path which many a truck has been lost in, saving us about 1h of walking.

Bill has completely redone his bush setting up something called a double line system. I’ll go in to greater detail later but basicity you run to sets of main lines. The top line collects the gases and keeps the vacuum constant. The bottom line pulls in all your your sap.

I don’t know how long this connection is going to last so I am going to upload a few pictures from yesterday. Tomorrow is going to be a really, really early one as we have to make up for lost time yesterday. It is going to be an early night and that just fine for me.

The double line system which separates gas and sap to keep vacuum constant.

Bill was not in the bush today so I went back there myself to clean up and to put up some shelves. The shack looks great now. The floors are all clear and there is a ton of extra counter space. Most of the stuff out in the bush is done. In the last two days we tapped 307 trees which is a good number considering the amount of time we spent fixing. This puts his bush up to a grand total of 1890 taps. He would like to get it up to about 2000 which he considers a full bush and we might be able to do that tomorrow.

I also had a chance to go for a drink down at the local bar (the only bar here is the legion), It brought me back. I took Nathan and Steve out for a beer for all the help they gave my mom and Bill. I forgot about the rules at the legion. No swearing and No wearing your hat, if you are caught doing one of the two you have to buy everyone in the bar a round. Since it was cribbage night I was glad no one caught me.

I can’t believe that my time here is almost up, I really like being back on the Island. I also forgot how small a place this is. Out of 5 people on the street I know 4 of them, it’s a quite place. Things here move slowly and people are not in any particular rush to do much. I think it is that fact that makes me feel like this is a vacation. It certainly isn’t the 14h days of hard labour.

The tree burning ceremony went really well. Our theme was “presents under the tree” we used the plethora of cardboard boxes from the garage and some stove oil as the fuel. It was stacked with fireworks and went up great. I have video but, you know ….Dial up. The whole thing was choreographed to some funk music, really cool.

So I also had a chance to see Mike and Steph last night. Mike has been working on some great songs and brought over a few CDs. We stayed up way way to late last night so I was in no condition to go out to the bush today. Instead I went to play out on the ice which is breaking up right now. We called it burging when the ice starts to break up you can ride the iceburgs around, it’s a buzz. I also had a little friend out there with me today. A mink ran out onto the ice right beside me and started fishing, it was pretty cool. I have video of that as well but you know…Dial up (how do people live like this?)

We finally got the boiler all put together and pulled off the first run of syrup. His new setup is beautiful! Everything is stainless steel. The new evaporator works like a dream and it doesn’t take nearly the same amount of wood to keep going. So everything is in place and we can really start hammering down and producing maple syrup.