Pipe scribbles
We bring our sap down to the saphouse – which is half a mile down the mountain – by pipelines. At least half of the pipe goes across a very gently sloped field. The last few dregs of sap lie in the little hollows and dips of the pipeline as it goes across the flat bit and, if the pipeline isn’t taken down at the end of every season, it is buried under mounds of snow and frozen earth. The first year I did this we spent 53 hours 40 minutes digging out or repairing pipe (yeah, I kept records..) and I swore it would never happen again.
So now we roll the pipe up every year in April and unroll it in February. It means that, as it’s on the surface, if anything does freeze in it then it will PROBABLY melt in the morning sunshine. If not, at least we can get to the thing to fix it. Of course, unrolling 500 feet of pipe makes for some interesting tangles…
