Still it won't go away !

Does this look much like Spring ? NOT ! Last night we got 2" more snow , and it's been very cold and blustery all day. Temp right now 27º

As soon as this weather straightens up a bit and the nights stay cold but the days get above freezing, we'll take a drive and see if we can get a couple pictures of a working sugar house. This is Maple Sugar time, and maybe some of you have never seen how they make syrup the old fashioned way. Speaking about maple syrup, when all the kids were small and we lived in a 100 year old farmhouse, we decided to make our own syrup one spring. We had about 6 Maple trees on the property and we pounded a nail into each tree. Then we hung a glass gallon milk bottle on each nail. Under the nail Gary drilled a 1/4" hole into the tree itself, inserted a short piece of plastic tubing into the hole and we waited. The sap ran so good, that we had to empty those bottles at least 4-5 times in a 24 hour period, even getting up in the night. We strained the sap to remove any dirt particles that had fallen into the bottle, and then decided to boil it in a big kettle on the kitchen stove... This was a HUGE mistake ! That sap splashed all over the stove, all over the walls, and even onto the floor. Because the stove was so hot all the sap that came in contact with the stove surface burned, and made a real mess. You can't cover the kettle because you need the liquid to evaporate, and it needs to boil not simmer. The clean-up was not a fun job believe me., but the syrup did turn out very good. The next year we collected sap again, and this time we boiled it in our milk house, on the cement floor on a burner fueled by a propane tank. Much cleaner.