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	March 20th through 26th, 2023

Last week started off a little cold and a lot cloudy. It got better.

As the week progressed, the air got warmer and the clouds got gone. The more spring like temperatures seems to have somehow increased the appetites of the <a href='/WeeklySummaryPages/2022/1106/SquirrelFacts.html' class ='defaultlink2' target='_blank'>local squirrels</a>. Keeping bird feeders filled is like trying to fill a colander with water.

At first, warmer days and still below freezing nights made the roads around the lake unpleasant. By the weekend, the ice gave way to dry pavement.

At the end of the week, patches of Knott Lane were down to gravel, but most of Knott Lane still had a coat of icy doom.

Lucerne has a snow layer that is covering a thick slush layer. Walking on its surface is ugly. Under that is a thick sheet of ice that we didn't measure last week.

Sunsets have been meh, but on Thursday what happened after sunset was of special note.

It's been awhile since we've had a good Aurora Borealis. We got a great one Thursday evening. Due to the cold (16°F) and the surprise nature of the event, I did not get any good pictures of the display, but others did. We didn't see any color with naked eyes, but the shifting shafts of light that covered the entire north sky were totally amazeballs.

The warmer days and cold nights had the maples finally dripping with some purpose.

Men and machines were sent out to collect all those drips.

Snowshoes are still the rule even when not carrying gallons of sap.

And there were many, many gallons of sap.

By Sunday, hundreds of gallons were loaded and sent to Knott Lane for cooking.

Both cookers were pressed into service.

On Sunday, the first syrup of the season came off the press filter. So far, the sap is running sweeter this year. During the past few seasons, we were lucky to get a sugar content of 2%. This year, the sap has been running at 3.5% or better.

The sap had run in fits and starts before breaking loose. This early stuff froze in the buckets and made collecting the liquid sap much less fun.

On Saturday, there wasn't much of a run, so the frozen pucks were collected and shipped to the cookers.

I don't think the ice will go out next week. We've seen 9 inches of ice go poof in a week, but there's more than 9 inches out there. And it's warmer out, but not 9 inches gone in a week warm. The snow on the lake is getting thin and hard. That's not so good for snowmobiles, but great for lake golf. Looking at the forecast, some snow and more rain is predicted. That will shorten the lake golf season and make collecting sap...challenging. We'll get a lake ice thickness check after the rain.<br><br><br>-Nemo hopes for more warmth and aurora

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