My crazy thoughts took over today and I talked my dear husband into driving to two different Fleet Farms and a Menards to find Maple tree taps. After going to Blain MN we found 6 Maple taps and 6 1 gallon Buckets. Little research I did I felt comfortable drilling into our 2 beautiful Maple trees for sugar water A.K.A. Syrup. My husband is so wonderful he just goes along with my thoughts. This time he thought there is no way I am going to get syrup. He told me the season is almost done and you need at least 10 gallons to make a quart of syrup. I somehow still talked him into it and said it would be a great experience for the kids even if we were only able to get enough syrup for a quart.
When we bought the stuff I was expecting this slow drip that would maybe give me a quarter to half a gallon a day. I thought I would be lucky if I got 10 gallons by the end of the week and then the season would be done. Well as it turns out the season can go on until the later part of April as long as it is over 40 degrees during the day and under 30 degrees at night. So I do wish for this miserable weather to stay for at least 2 more weeks.
Moving on with the story, Jeremy tapped our trees around 6:30 tonight. About 7:30 I started getting nervous because they were filling so fast, Jeremy told me to get a large pot and we would dump them in there. For sure all the bucket would fit in this pot. WRONGO! We had only made it to two buckets and the pot was full. So he ran to back to fleetfarm and got two 5 gallon buckets, while he was gone I filled 2 milk jugs and then when he came home we emptied the rest of the buckets and got another 5 gallons. So in 2 hours we have over 6 gallons of syrup. We could have had more but we had nothing to put them into so they overflowed and spilled all over the ground. We will empty them before bed again about 11 pm and then early morning. After that I am out of 5 gallon pails. I plan on sending the kids out to the neighbors tommorow to gather milk jugs. I have attached some fun pics.
The last pics are of CAITLYNN, Yep she is driving legally almost. She passes her permit test and so she is behind the wheel with mom and dad until Aug when she can take her behind the wheel with an instructor. Please, Please, Please pray for the saftey of our family. Caitlynn has never driven before and Thursday night was her first night behind the wheel. You can see from the pics everyone is scared. Good news is she passed her written with an almost perfect score!
