Aaaaand Exit Sun

It was nice while it lasted yesterday, but alas, the sun was but a brief visitor. It was cloudy again by mid-afternoon and this morning I woke up to pouring rain. I haven't actually been out in it, but it sounds as if the rain is occasionally morphing into the freezing variety of rain.

Cozy.

But! A. did collect about three gallons of sap yesterday when he emptied the buckets on the maple trees, and that wasn't even at the end of the day. I'm not sure how much we have total including earlier collections, but it's not yet enough to get the huge wood-fired evaporator going. I think that thing will hold 30 gallons at a time. From 30 gallons of sap, most people plan on getting maybe three-quarters of a gallon of maple syrup. Which sounds like a lot, until you know that it took us only about four months to go through a gallon of maple syrup that the MiL brought home from her last seed potato expedition. And that was with me rationing A. to some extent.

He really loves maple syrup.

Actually, we all love maple syrup. So fingers crossed that we continue to have good sugarin'* weather--that is, sunny days above freezing and nights below freezing--for at least a few weeks to come. We have a lot of sap to collect if we're going to satisfy our syrup addiction.

* Sugarin' is like huntin'. If you say the terminal "g," you cannot successfully engage in the activity.