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	April 22nd through 24th , 2011

Friday evening was spent fasting and canning the next to last batch of late season syrup. It was very maplely. The rain rolled in later. We hoped the temperature would hold and the precipitation would remain in a liquid state.

Stupid temperature. On the plus side, there was less then an inch of very heavy white stuff covering the northwoods.

It was confirmed on Saturday morning that Mrs Nemo parked her car a bear's width (about 5 feet) from the bar's front door.

The overnight rain/snow kept the creek in the northeastern corner of the lake flowing.

The storm total was about half an inch. It looks like we'll get more this week and that's good.

We estimated we could burn through 200 gallons of sap before we ran out of time this weekend. The 2 to 3 gallons of sap in each maple's bucket made collecting easy (ish).

The trees were still running on Sunday.

Despite the promise of more syrup, word came down from on high that it was time to pull spiles. Reasons for the pulling included budding, lack of time to boil and no more wood to burn.

There were other signs of the end of tapping season. The ice-out on Wabikon, talk of getting boats in after the ice leaves Lucerne and the baking of cheese snacks on the hot front door of the finishing cooker for example.

The last batch was pumped through a plate filter with just one of us being scalded. The sweet, sweet burns should be totally healed by next week's bucket cleaning.

This has been one of the best syruping years ever. Sunday's syrup was very sweet and maplely.

There was no measurement of the lake ice. This is where I broke through while checking if the ice was strong enough to stand on. It wasn't.

After the syrup was canned and before sunset there was great golf to be had at Nicolet. The snow trap in front of 3 snagged only one of our shots.

The water on 7 and 8 is much softer than last week.

Friday's rain really rotted up the edges of the ice. It's going to be a race to see if the ice makes it to May. Strong wind and rain could kill it before the weekend. The lake looks up. A survey team will confirm that next weekend.<br><br><br>-Nemo meant to do that.

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