Winter's Cadaveric Spasm
March 24th through 30th   


Last week started off warm (ish). The lake was a frictionless plane of ice, the woods were largely snow free, and the first campfire of the year was flaming away on the bar's deck. It was not to last.


We would be remiss not to mention that the sap was running like crazy.


Collecting all that bucketed sap was getting easier. There was no ice in the buckets and the roads were becoming snow free.


That changed overnight on Tuesday. Wednesday's collecting was augmented by 4 to 5 inches of fresh snow and several feet of cold.
Going into Wednesday, there was quite the backlog of sap waiting to be boiled. After Wednesday, there was still plenty of sap loitering around the cookers, but now the jugs were sporting snappy white coats.
Because discharging frozen solid jugs of sap into the cookers involves more work and cursing than we like, jugs were moved in to the above freezing confines of the primary cooker a few hours prior to being poured into the pan. The final result was extra tasty this year.

Late in the week, the sky stopped snowing, the moon was waxing gibbous, and the wind dropped below blustery. It was time to fly.

 The forts have seen better days.
The view from a little higher up shows Devils Lake appearing to be still frozen.
 Metonga also appears to be suffering a lack of open water.

It's been almost 8 months since we have started to fly the friendly skys of the Northwoods. Aside from some light tree trimming during the end of a ski show, those 8 months have been sans crash. We hope to make that same boast after the upcoming aerial ice cover checks.		 There was no need to use the drone to check the ice this week. Seventeen and a half inches is plenty thick to walk on. And a bit of a pain to drill through.



In addition to the fresh snow, furnaces were running more by the end of the week. It was 3℉ Saturday morning. There was much speculation about this being signs of the third horseman of the snowpocalypse, ZOMBIE WINTER. Hats grew thicker (to prevent ZOMBIE WINTER from freezing our brains) and arguments more heated. Ultimately, forensic analysis of the weather's remains pointed to nothing more than a cadaveric spasm of Winter. A determination of ZOMBIE WINTER requires a longer period of cold and more snow than this cold cramp. The weather has been forecast to be warmer next week, increasing the possiblity of a second cadaveric spasm otherwise known as the season's first round of golf. That high scoring round will undoubtedly be sandwiched between boiling sap and gathering more.

-Nemo uses heated arguments to thaw frozen fingers.                                        Previous   Next