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March 10th through 16th, 2015

Warm. Not the faux warm of going from sub-zero to the teens, but the real warmth that causes bird song, melts the snow, and thins the ice. Many local people were seen without hats. Melt water is flowing into the lake. It's not the torrent expected for this time of warmth, which is a little unsettling for the lake level. If we get some Spring rain, the lake will be fine. The trees are tapped and running a bit. It's a good thing that we were getting under 100 gallons of sap a day. Deepish snow combined with ATV tires that should have been replaced last November added to sledding out jugs of sap. The solution to barely controlled sledding of 400+ pounds of sap down from the tapping fields was to beastify the new ATV. Being run over by an out-of-control sled is now just a bad memory. The beast was also handy for Lake Lucerne's annual running of the lifts. I was only slightly gored. The first sap was run to syrup on Sunday. It's darker than normal (medium amber) for a first batch, but was very tasty. After the bottling, there was more sap collecting. On Sunday, the trees starting flowing in force. By 5:30 PM we had collected 300 gallons. The early Spring was celebrated with a pleasant bar night that included half a dozen Bailey's comets. And one bar fire. On Sunday afternoon the lake ice was checked. There's 18 inches of frozen covering Lake Lucerne. The top 6 inches is the white, airy kind of ice and the bottom foot is hard and clear. There would be no ice-out on this day. I wanted to golf on Sunday, but trailering snow-goes, filtering syrup, and collecting sap soaked up all the time. There was still a drift of snow covering most of 6 anyway. The lake is melting and the preliminary lake level measurement is at 17 inches below the nail. That's about an inch higher than it was at ice-in last November! Yay! Now all we need is a rainy Spring and that lake level will be back to normal before you can say

-Nemo should have called out the body part being pinched instead of howling "Stop!"." border=0>

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