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Maple sugaring is;
It's a hobby with a mandatory time and effort commitment attached, a whole specific and precise process tagged to it to be sure...
Daily checks to empty all the sap buckets continue.
On any given day, as soon as one bucket is emptied and returned to the spiget's hook, one can hear the dripping chorus repeating itself again.
Drip, drip, drip...
Just as soon as we have boiled and evaporated up all of our collected reserves, it seems it's once again time to repeat all over again.
Observing the clear sap over several hours, finds everyone getting excited once we (finally) begin to notice a color change. An amber brown color quickly becomes a favorite around here. Now for it to begin to darken even more, and thicken up.
When it's all ready to strain, I've been placing the remaining boiled down maple syrup contents into this glass pitcher.
With my syrup jars all hot and ready for the big pour, lids are sealed and another batch is complete. And then, after upwards of six to eight hours of boiling and adding, boiling and adding, a few (no names here of course) begin muttering the question of; "Why are we doing this again?"....so much work for so little syrup. No wonder it's nicknamed "black gold". Now, I know why.
Will we do it again next year? Ask me later, but likely the answer would be "yes"...
Meanwhile, we have a winter storm warning over a period of the next two days, just when all the snow has finally been disappearing. Collecting sap, it would seem, will continue instead of cease.
No matter, it'll melt, but for now, more syrup to come for us.
