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Tapping Weekend

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March 14th through 16th, 2003

We arrived Friday night just before sunset. The blue sky and warm temperature shouted to all in the northwoods that it was time to tap maple trees! The almost full moon was to washout most of the stars on Friday night. Meg took advantage of the warm temperatures and started to roll a snowball. The sphere grew and became too large for one woman to roll any further... Krispa joined in and together the ball grew to about a yard in diameter. It was left near the shore as a testimonial to the power of women working collectively! Saturday morning. The powerful sun blazed above the remains of the bottle rocket war ramparts. Solid and unmoving, the protective walls began another day of relentless attack by Sol, these noble forts in the mist... It has been observed that our fort has seen better days. It turns out that time does not fear Jeff's fort after all. Krispa was determined to show the ice who's boss. Armed with an ice drill and sunglasses he soon had the hole complete. He gloated briefly over the defeated ice that was unable to stop him from punching a hole in it. The ice depth was then measured. 28 inches of solid clear ice would seem to indicate that ice-out will not take place anytime soon. The tapped maples produced moderately all weekend. To be sure that the sap cooker kept up with the trees, the fire was maintained all night. Mr Tapper took special care with this first batch to try to repeat or exceed his second place finish in the Forest County Maple Syrup Festival later in April. I did not see one dead mouse in both the cooker or the raw sap. Some flooding did occur on the north end of west shore drive. Gary V. built a dam on Knott lane and we helped. After a short time we detected some seepage and other structural problems and quit the project leaving the dam and Gary to their own fates. The clouds came in on Sunday and the forecasts weren't so good but that didn't make leaving any easier.<br><br><br>-Nemo

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