Mar 31 2018

Blue Sky and Great Spring Skiing

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Open, 28º at 7:45 am and Sunny!!! Forecast high 45º and Sunny! The trails are still covered with plenty of snow. The snow re-froze last night and will now soften and make the skiing really good and fun. Blue sky and sun shine, a great day to be out.

Ian re-groomed the Turkey, Woodcock and Snow Goose last night. He was headed up the Grouse/Goshawk, the snow was still too wet and heavy and the Ranger would not pull the ginzu up the Grouse hill. Thank goodness we insisted on buying the winch on the Ranger. Ian said it was the 4th time he has winched the rig up a hill this winter. Glad to know it works. 

If the snow holds we plan to stay open thru April 8th. 

Yesterday we did not boil sap. We emptied the syrup pans and found some lunch plate sized scorch spots. Vinegar is magic with stainless steel. Oh, and patience. I would have scrubbed straight through, Ian finally had me stop and walk away and go back every hour. Sitting in vinegar, that is the trick. From now on empty and clean the syrup pan every 20 gallons. Always good to have a plan.

We will be boiling again today. Stop in at the sugar house and say hi to Ian and Chuck. You can bring them a beer, sugaring is long, hot work.

Stoking the fire.

Mar 30 2018

Toe To Snow Is Good

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Open, 36º at 7am, a light drizzle. 45º is the forecast high, and cloudy. Ian has been grooming forever. He is 3 here and ready to drive the snow machine.  The ground driven tiller behind this machine never did work.

It might be rainy, but the snow is corn snow and good soft skiing. It is suppose to get cold overnight tonight and will freeze and harden back up. The sunshine tomorrow and warm temperatures will make Saturday a great day to ski! We have an end date of April 8th. We are going to hope make it that many more days.

Boiled syrup again on Thursday, made 6+ gallons, up to 63 and a quarter gallons of syrup. What a year! No sap to boil today. The sap will run on Saturday, we will gather Saturday evening and boil on Sunday.

It has come to my attention that a few people (they are skiers) have not seen Jessie and Kikkan win the Gold Medal in the sprint relay at the Olympics. Here is the link again. Even if you watched it, watching it will bring a smile to your lips and tears to your eyes. Thanks, Chris, for the reminder of how absolutely special this is!

Mar 29 2018

Great Skiing, Great Syrup

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Open, 33º at 7:30am, cloudy. Forecast high 44º and cloudy, chance of some rain later in the day.

Skiing is still good spring skiing. We had about 10 skiers yesterday. The snow is nice corn snow and there is still a lot of it. Since it is almost the end of March, we know skiing is almost done. Can you get out to ski again? 

Go to the bottom right and fill out your favorite ski experience on the trails this year. Whether you are telling about a great ski day or some of your favorite animal tracks.  And thanks!

Sap temperature from the pre-heater to the back pan.

We are still boiling syrup. We have now made 56 gallons of fabulous maple syrup. The old  high total of syrup for a year on this evaporator was 60 gallons in 2015. This year we put the blower on the fire box. We are using way less wood. The promo on the blower said we would use about 30% less wood for the same amount of syrup. We also put the pre-heater on. The pre-heater runs the sap thru coils under a hood, using the steam created by the boiling sap to pre-heat the sap going into the back evaporator pans. This helps in two ways, the sap is 190º going into the back pan instead of 35º, and the process creates condensation which then runs the water out a hose and gives us buckets of hot clean water.

Mar 28 2018

Skiing is Still Good

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Open, 31º, and cloudy. Forecast 43º and generally  cloudy.

I admit I have become a little spoiled from all the sunshine and blue sky. Despite the clouds, the skiing today will be good. We still have lots of snow still left. We have been able to have all the trails open. If the loggers aren’t making syrup and they show up we may have to close Chickadee at the last minute. 

Ian and Chuck boiled maple syrup again yesterday, 11+ gallons. Total for the year over 46 gallons. That is what we made all of last season. So today, we gather sap, and boil sap into syrup. And that is just the way it goes until we run out of wood or the sap gets “buddy”. Meaning the trees are ready to open into leaves. At that point the sap is cloudy and smells sour, it does not make good syrup.

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