Made the hard decision to pull my buckets off after Sunday's collection. We'd collected 290L of sap on Saturday alone and trying to keep up with the boiling has been tiring. Also eating too much into our heating wood - my husband hasn't cut me off but I know the hard work that goes into our logging method enough that I feel bad using so much wood for the syrup. (We don't have the heavy duty equipment for logging...just his chainsaw to do the cutting down of the trees, then he chops them up with an axe because we can't get a log splitter into the woods. Then the kids haul the split logs down and up the the rocky terrain...by....ready for this?...using their toboggan sleds. We do about 4-5 bush cords each year.)

Anyway, back to syrup. I was still boiling yesterday...trying to finish up before the rain started in the afternoon. I boil outdoors in the open on a block arch so no protection. Tried to rig up a tarp which helped partially until the winds were too strong and the tarp kept hitting the stack. Called it quits after 2.5 hours into the rain. Kept one pan protected from the rain to boil down overnight.

In the end, I'm dumping out about 40L of sap that I couldn't finish boiling. Done with boiling outside today. It's supposed to rain again this afternoon. Brought in what I could to finish.

Can't complain about the season. This has been a bumper crop for us. More than double last year's total. We'll have a final tally after we finish up the last batch.