Weather: On Tuesday, ample sun, a high of 41, a quick freeze in the evening.
Wednesday morning, ample sun, a quick warming.
How’s It Running? Tuesday, the sap hammered in, and buckets drip-drip-dripped. Finally!
Sap Sweetness: 2.7% Still very good.
Boiling Status: Right at it, with a sense of rhythm in the work for the first time.
Hill Report (a paraphrase of Ross’s and Christian’s remarks as delivered while rinsing and filling syrup drums last evening):
-Some bare ground.
-A lot more streams.
-A toss-up as to which is easier, snowshoeing or booting it.
-On some of the K lines where you can’t hear the brook, it sounds as though there are vacuum leak hisses in all directions. Turns out, it’s only the beech leaves rustling.
– A fisher cat is on the prowl. Ross saw it traversing Herbie, leaving a
pee trail. A fisher cat is the size of a house cat but much stouter, with a tail two-thirds the length of its body. (“Fisher cats are vicious,” says Chops. “They’ll even attack a fox.”)
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 
Fishing cat or fisher cat (like weasel)? I couldn’t find any US
instances of the fishing cat…must not have looked thoroughly enough!
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Hi Bea, Yes, it is the fisher cat. Here is a link. http://www.vtfishandwildlife.com/vtcritters/animals.cfm?cat=Mammals&species=Fisher
The state built up the population in the ’50’s and ’60’s to keep the forest-destroying porcupines under control. A bounty on porcupines wasn’t sufficient. In the early days here, we called a cliffy ledge just up from the sugarhouse ‘The Porky Condos.’ Lately, we just don’t see porcupines much, nor the trees wounded by their bark-peeling ways. It’s rare to see a fisher cat also, but they’re around.
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Sweet sap come near,
Now its here, joy
My dear, we laugh,
Beer, please now have.
-KP
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