I hear you on the being at the mercy of mother nature northwood!!...Seems it is either too hot or too cold. This weekend looks like beach weather, if the ice was off the lake..lol...As far as sap goes, this is our first year doing it, just selling sap to a buddy. Decided to try a 50 tap trial on 3/16, 2 lines of 25 taps. It seems to work as advertised on here. 1 line is constantly running at 17" of vac, the other around 21". As of last night we were at about 39 litres of sap/tap. Here's hoping the trees dont bud in this heat wave and we can get a few more decent runs....