March Snows to a Close

WEATHER: Today read like the final, summarizing paragraph of a March weather essay; the theme was “See how erratic the battle between sun and frost can be.” The day began with a frosty temp of 20 degrees. Morning sun quickly dispelled the chill…then clouds dampened the mood…then it snowed hard and is still snowing…then by midnight tonight it is supposed to rain…but the current temp is 32…and the sap ran poorly all day…we thought it might run all night tonight so we boiled briefly to get ahead of the run…but it is inefficient to fire up the evaporator for short little boils…and we regret it…though if the sap run does pick up dramatically overnight …which we don’t think it will, but we could be wrong…then we will say to ourselves that we made the right decision to boil today.

BOILING STATUS: Today was Day 13. Production is just below 50% of what we consider a decent crop. The boils all week have been short.

SAP SWEETNESS: The sap is still on the sweet side, 2.6-2.8% sugar. For this we are grateful.

MUSIC TO BOIL BY:
“Cy, did you bring in some new music for us?”
“No. I come here to listen to The Beach Boys.”

We take turns choosing one of the sugaring CD’s that we listen to only when we’re boiling, and these over and over. No one working in the summer touches that stack. Someone put on a CD labeled Kygo/Grimes/Hill the other day and it sounded new (plus it blended well with the steam). Kygo has been neglected since the crew of 2017 or 2018 introduced it, I think.

A SNEAK PEEK AT EARLY APRIL: Sun will conquer Frost this coming week if the weather plays out as forecasted. Currently the south-facing slopes at low elevation have melted out. In the sugarbush there is lots of snow even on the south-facing slopes; that could change in a hurry. We’ll see.