Update from Gevalt on syrup making in VT

Here’s an update on maple syrup making in Vermont by former BJ staffer Geff Gevalt posted on his Editor’s Blog for his Young Writers Project:

It snowed again.

Great run of sap on Wednesday. Temperatures near 40, late afternoon sun. The buckets on the west side of the trees were pretty full, the eastern ones much less so. We hauled 120 gallons out of the 42 taps. Jake helped, stressed as he was with homework. So did Lily, who each year develops a unique way of carrying the 5-gallon Home Depot paint buckets we use to collect the sap. She fills it to 3 gallons, uses both hands, straddles the bucket, lifts and then walks, rather waddles, to the storage area. It’s funny. And she gets laughing so hard she has to keep putting the bucket down. This is in stark contrast to her method of strapping it to the tobaggon and zipping down the hill spilling nary a drop — in defiance of gravity and all other known laws of physics. But there was no snow Wednesday night; so it was the walking method she used.

Wednesday night we boiled out about half a gallon.

Tonight was gorgeous. Four or five inches of heavy snow; tree branches coated looking almost lighted from the reflections of the sugarhouse lights; owl loose in the woods calling out to a mate far away. Tasty sugar-on-snow night. Boiled another half gallon. About 80 gallons left in storage. Time for bed.