Spring Tease

March 6th through 12th

Last week started out warm (for this time of year) and wet. If you managed to avoid a weather forecast, you'd have thought that the downhill skiing season was over, tapping season was early, and a March ice-out was a sure thing.

It rained! By Tuesday, the lake was a quarter of an inch deeper not including the very active watershed.

The maples cut loose. The first sap runs of the year are generally a gradual thing. They usually start off slowly, crest over the tops of the buckets two or three weeks later, and then end with the budding. This year started off by going full April on us.

With predictions of the return of Deep Winter, it was a race to get the sap out of the woods before it froze.

The earlier warmth had knocked down the snow to the point that snowshoes were not necessary. This sped up collecting quite a bit.

Then the cold came. The 0℉ frigid can be shrugged off with a proper hat, but when coupled with gusts of wind in excess of 50 mph it becomes hard to ignore.

The sky cleared up at sunset, adding three scoops of chilly to the night.

It was different collecting the few dozen buckets that we didn't get to when it was warm.

Many of the buckets were full of sap. Some only had this much. All of it was hard.

Boiling down the sap in the extreme cold had its special moments, too. The clouds of steam that normally pour from the sap shack's vent instead condensed and froze to the galvanized roof.

Eventually, the first batch was ready for bottling.

All we need now is a few labels and pancakes.

The brief taste of Spring is now a fading memory. Deep Winter is back. The small, shallow puddles on the top of the lake ice have refroze. The days and the nights are filled with the groaning sound of building lake ice. If you have never heard it before, it sounds a little like whale song. It sounds like the DNR has stocked the lake with a pod of humpbacks, especially at night. We spent too much time mining pucks of sap ice from the woods to get a lake ice depth check last week. We'll be sure to get one this week.<br><br><br>-Nemo is considering adding June dates to this year's ice-out contest.