Maple Syrup and Working Wood

February and early March weather spurred maple trees to produce large amounts of sap. Five tapped trees produced 14 quarts of maple syrup so far but are tapering off. Our stove has been covered with steaming pots for the duration and we're looking forward to a cooler kitchen, without so much steam.

A Pot of Soup Shares the Stove Top with Five Pots of Maple Sap

Although gathering sap, feeding the fire, tending pots on the stove and insuring syrup does not become charcoal takes time, there were a few hours in between to complete woodworking tasks. I've been learning skills at Northeastern Woodworkers Association classes and the organization expects each member to contribute an object to be sold at the NWA Showcase being held in Saratoga, NY on April 2&3: 

http://www.nwawoodworkingshow.org/information.htm 

It's the largest woodworking show in the country and this is the 25th anniversary show and should be the most extravagant. In addition to the garden tote with white ash ends that will be on sale to benefit the club, I made another out of cherry to be on display in the flat-board section along with instruments, furniture, chests and fancy boxes. I have yet to complete a bowl for display in the wood-turners section. 

The organization supports many non-profit and other benefit efforts and I volunteered to make a vessel to hold "beads of courage" for some very sick child. These colorful beads are given kids when they undergo a procedure like drawing blood, getting imaged, receiving chemo or radiation treatment and shots. Many kids "earn" thousands of beads and need something to put them in. Some of the members made square boxes and others turned cylindrical vessels out of wood. I decided to encase a large plastic jar in wood with lots of open areas to view the beads inside. 

For more information see: http://www.beadsofcourage.org/

Bead Vessel: Top & Bottom Are Walnut, Knob Is Lilac

Horses Are Soft Maple, Poles Are Birch

Garden Tote: Ends Are White Ash, Sides Are Cherry, Handle Is a Hickory Stem and Woven Nylon-Coated Stainless Steel Cable Bottom 

Side View of Above Tote

End View of Above Tote

All Cherry Tote with a Cottonwood Handle Peeled by a Beaver

End View of Above Tote

Less than a Quarter of the Heating Season Left!

March 2 is typically the day when three quarters of the annual heating degree-days are behind us. They measure how many degrees “colder than 65F” over a 24 hour period there are. Fuel delivery folk use this values to estimate when it’s appropriate to automatically refill oil or propane fuel tanks without bothering homeowners. It’s been going below zero many nights here for quite a long time so we’ve been burning more wood than usual but we still have a ways to go before we’re halfway through our supply, see photos below. The wood stacked on the left we will burn next year but hope to begin harvesting solar energy to diminish what wood we need. I’ll try and fill up the empty portion on the right that we burned this season as soon as the weather improves so we’ll have enough fuel for the 2016- 2017 season even if the solar project doesn’t get finished or has issues.

Right Side of Wood Crib Empty: March 8, 2015

Lots of Wood Left for Last Quarter of This Heating Season and For 2015-16

It’s still not warm enough for maple sap to start running. I tapped one tree yesterday and the jug below the tap is still empty. Air temperatures warmed up to a few degrees above freezing for a few hours each of the past two days but more than two feet of snow cover will probably delay tree roots from pumping sap up trunks for a few more days. The weather forecast for later in the week, though, looks good. It’s important to capture early sap runs because some years the season is very short. Trees need warm days and freezing nights to pump sap and once temperatures stay above freezing, the season is over. We’ll have very unhappy daughters if they run out of syrup before the following season flow.

Heavy Snow Has Covered Everything for More Than Two Months

The size of the hole in the ice on our pond varies with temperature. The small compressor pumps the same amount of air into the air-stones at bottom that makes thousands of bubbles to buoy up warmer water from the bottom. Really cold weather where it doesn’t get much above zero shrinks the size of the hole to half the diameter than when temperatures go above 20. Ice rings that freeze around the edge record this activity until new snow covers them, see photo below.

Diminished Aeration Hole in Pond Ice with Four Foot Drifts in Foreground