January 20 Update

We had a very productive working weekend this past week. We are
preparing our woods for tapping within the next week to ten days.
Depending on the weather, we will either be tapping our trees this
weekend (the 23rd and 24th) or the following week and weekend (the
week of the 25th). Depending on which weatherman you watch, we could
get rain or up to 18 inches of snow this weekend. If it snows that
much, we might just pack up and go skiing. It is the time of year when
Robert (my husband) is glued to his phone and the weather stations,
watching the weather predictions. As of now, I think we ***SHOULD***
get 3-6 inches, but the forecasts look like the snow might stay South
of us. Keep your fingers crossed!!

Back to our weekend work progress. I actually helped work in the woods
on Saturday. I usually save all of the jobs close to the house for
myself, but the guys needed an extra set of hands to run some new main
line. The tubing system that runs from tree to tree is a small 5/16
inch flexible plastic tubing. The tubing system connects to a one inch
main line, which runs to holding tanks.  We had some pretty bad
flooding over the summer and some of the main line was either damaged
or destroyed by water.

We were working in the creek. We all bought really good waterproof
boots last year and I was thankful for them today. Great investment –
you really can’t put a price on nice dry feet.

I have also started ordering things for the Sugarstore at the
festival. Some of the items we aren’t capable of making ourselves so
we try to find local producers. The maple candy, maple sugar, maple
nut treats and clusters, shoups seasoning are all made locally in
Indiana. We are also working on a special mug for this year since this
will be the 25th festival.

We have sent out our vendor applications. I think we will have about
10 new vendors this year. Most are local, but we have a few coming
from the Ohio and Kentucky area. I’m hoping the weather holds out
better than last year. Other than our syrup production, I think the
vendors are hit the hardest when we have bad weather.

I’ll post more often when we start tapping and making syrup. Hard to
believe that we only have 37 days until the festival!!