Tap Tap Tap

Here we go, folks: Sugar Season 2019

WEATHER: At the moment it’s a “wintry mix” but it sounds an awful lot like rain. This week’s on-again-off-again thaw follows many days of true winter glory, the snow deep and soft, the fields and woods bright and beckoning.

TAPPING STATUS: The crew headed for the sugarbush on Monday morning. Today was Day Three. We are by no means tapping early relative to others; many sugarmakers have been at it since New Year’s Day or at least mid-January.

Up on the hill are Chief of Operations, Ross, Kelly, and Sam.

Here’s what they have to say:
– Heavy going in some places. Going up the steep hills on Maresan is where you feel it. I’ve seen worse. When it freezes we’ll have a good base, I think.
-I’m surprised the snow hadn’t buried too much stuff.
– It was great up there [beaming]. We got a bunch done as well.
-Sap trickled a little bit on Monday; it trickled a lot on Tuesday. Nothing Wednesday.
– Chickadees. Blue jays. Ravens. Brown creepers.
– Moose tracks and scat near the Saddle.
-Bear mark post on Morningside wet/dry
support post.

THE TAPPING ROUTE: It traces a backwards S, starting low on the hill and ending high. You can refer to the Sugarbush Map on the blog homepage. The crew started on Maresan [sounds like Susan] which wraps around the hill to the right of the sugarhouse, doubled back on the Center lines, and today crossed the brook into Morningside.

THE COUNTUP: On the Iditarod website there’s a countdown to the start of the race. We can’t count down to the first sap run, which could be in a week or five weeks, so let’s count up until all the trees are tapped out. At the end of today, DAY THREE, the count is 3302 taps put in, or roughly one-third of the total.