WEATHER: What a week. Sudden heat and many warm nights dissolved the pristine winter of 2025.

Elastic roof snow is a sure sign of a sap run.
This is the last photo you’ll see of snow and shoveling.

HOW’S IT RUNNING? Two night-and-day runs, March 14-17 and March 18-20 were separated by a freezing night on the 17th. A freeze today, the 21st, and a forecast of a series of moderate freeze-thaw cycles are just what we need for continued sap runs.

SAP SWEETNESS: 1.9%

Notes from The Crew:

HOW EXCITING!

We take our excitement in shifts, between coffee and sleepless nights.

Interjected with the most delicious food, dropped off by friends, or prearranged by Audrey. 

The two eager boys from down the road come to check on their bucket taps, adding their bounty to the boil. 

Elliot and Oliver Paradee [JG drawing]

 Chops quotes from the online sugar makers forum: “Turn on da valves,” says a man from Quebec, “Finally we’re at it,” says a Vermonter.

In the sugar house, over the sound of the compressor pump, the ding of the ten-minute timer, the chug of the filter press and the roar of boiling pans we play Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, punk rock, and rap, singing the most ridiculous lines the loudest, laughing – or shouting to each other for help.

We bundle up with new tools and head into the woods to chase hushing noises and bubbles that zip too fast through lines. We try to catch up with the deer and squirrels that chew through tubing.

We drink copious amounts of coffee, syrup, sap, beer; not enough water.  

We keep an eye on the weather to predict our next rest, how long our boil will be, and how fast the sap runs. 

We watch the wood pile for replenishing, the fire box for stoking, density levels, colour shifts, syrup levels for bottling, sap levels for boiling.

We watch for coffee pot levels, food levels, and hot water levels for cleaning drums. We toss hot water across sticky floors to squeegee clean. 

How would someone describe it? Spring fever wrapped in hot sugar steam and wood smoke?   

The thrill of the chase! A fleeting sugary dopamine kick that can literally be bottle! (But only if the you are fast and mother nature’s on your side!)

How exciting!

-JG

FOAM STUDIES I: Macro
FOAM STUDIES II: Micro
FOAM STUDIES III: Night foam in the float box

5 thoughts on “Finally we’re at it”

  2. Happy to see the update! I’ve been checking in nightly waiting to see how y’all were doing.

    It’s not been a relaxing start to the year, zero to midseason in a day. Our first two boils were completely discombobulated, and shoehorned into leak check and woods repair. The next pair have gone smoothly, and we’ve remembered how the sugarhouse works after ten months away from it.

    The woods seem in hand, and the kinks worked out of both pump stations. Hasn’t been much sugar in our sap – 1.3-1.7. Heavy mineral content seems to have replaced it, plugging the RO and making filtering a real chore – though yesterday it seemed to filter a bit better and I think the press had legs to go much longer had I not continued to pound the de to it.

    I’m completely burnt out. We didn’t start tapping until mid January, and didn’t do a fall check on 1/3rd of the woods. The lingering mid winter conditions were a gift to us time-wise, but we paid for my overly full fall with several days of digging to cut and repair at the end of tapping.

    Firehose kind of run today, the RO is just keeping up at 5400 gph, and I’m not yet keeping perm in case it falls off a cliff and I need space in my third tank.

    The next two days look to be a gift, unbroken sleep and eating will help my poor body out, and next week looks like it could be another good one. We’re almost to 1/3rd of a crop barrelled, and todays run won’t be counted until we next boil.

    Good luck!

    BSH

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    1. Hi Ben, Thanks for writing. I hope you’ve caught up on sleep. We also had a firehose of a run on Saturday and then another yesterday. The run seemed over at 8:30pm or so, but when Chops checked the pump room after midnight an ice dam had let loose and kicked off the vacuum. It ran harder for several hours than it had during the day.

      That late March sun is warming the crowns nicely again today and the wind is right. I’d say it’s sugaring weather.
      AC

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