Before starting sugaring last year, I always thought as March as a winter month, where you have nicer days to go ice fishing and at the end of the month you hoped for milder days to start to get rid of the snow and the ice on the lake. The ice sometimes came off the second or third week of April, but there were times it came off at the end of April and even into May.

Last year I tapped on March 6 on a +11° C day and had my first boil on March 14. This easy winter had me thinking of boiling much sooner this year.

The long range forecast keeps adding more below freezing days to the calendar, running now to March 14. Who knows when the first boil will be this year. I have to think that most years it would be around mid month. We received over 10 cms (4”) of snow last night and another possible 40 cms (15”) is in the forecast over the next two weeks, but that forecast will change 14 times). There is a lot of snow in the forecast and I will be going over my line trails again after I finish plowing.

What will be, will be. You have to hope that April does not warm up too quickly, which is exactly the opposite of what I would have hoped for prior to last year.

A couple days ago the forecast had a few +2 days in the forecast, but they are disappearing, which is actually good as the days will not count against my early taps six week clock.

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