Webcam Weekend
April 4th through 6th   
Even with the auxiliary cooker pressed into service, the syrup makers were falling behind the sap collection operation.  Both cookers were firing 24 hours a day and by Sunday they had boiled most of the collected sap.
Sunset was hours away, the sap was running, and the snow melting at 4:00 PM on Friday.  The sound of running water filled the northwoods.
I witnessed a "pull".  Boiled sap is first pulled off and filtered at 3 or 4 to one before the push to syrup.
The sap is sucked into a plate filter at what seemed to be about 1 to 2 gpm.
The pre-syrup is collected in 5 gallon pails.  7 to 9 of these buckets are then dumped into the cooker and boiled down to 10+ gallons of maple syrup.
Wheeled ATV's get stuck in the deep snow/slop this time of year, but not uncle Ron's.
By late Saturday afternoon, the snow pulled away from the base of the nail pier.  It became painfully clear that the lake needs a very wet spring if it is to get up to -18 inches wrt the nail.  Rain and snow are predicted all this week and that, coupled with the run-off from the ginormous snow piles, gives hope. 26 inches of ice with very little snow cover means ice out is 2 to 3 weeks away.  A late season cold blast could push it out to May.  We'll know more after this next weekend.
The new webcam is up and working better than I had expected.  A better "roof" will be added next weekend.  I must publicly thank aLf for all the research he did on network cameras and shared with me.  It made the selection process much easier and faster.  Thanks aLf!
Some of the north end is no longer covered with snow.  Other parts are buried.  While hiking to the ice house, I broke through the snow and sunk past my knee.  I had thought it was only a few inches thick.  Picking snow and ice out of shoes and boots is no way for men to live.
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Winter was much longer this year than last (see 2007 archives easter weekend and compare this photo with the last one in the archive).  If the ice pulls away from the shore this week, the first lake level check of the year will be next Saturday.