Thread: Dishes in the snow pics!

This talk of snow is depressing. Often at this time of year we have snow all the way up to our roof, and we have to dig out in order to see out our front windows. The past couple years, I've had to dig down to clear away the snow from my 3' dishes, only the top foot or so of which was exposed a couple of times.
THIS year, we've only had 2 snows of any significance, and while we've had snow on the ground since Thanksgiving, it's down to only about 6-8", whereas usually there's an average of 30" or more this time of year. My son and daughter both live down in the DC area, and they got about 30" in the past storm, and said that where I used to live they had 40". He said he was thinking about moving to Maine to get away from the snow. How embarrasing.
While I was getting a bit tired of shoveling snow the past few years, I really miss it this year, and I'm going to miss it even more in a few weeks when maple syrup season starts, because I need the snow to get my snowmobile to the maple trees to collect sap. I also generally dig a big hole in the snow to store my 6 gallon carbuoys of sap, ie makes a nice refrigertator.
Anyway, it's depressing to see all that snow down south, and we get NOTHING up here.

We had a ton of ice on the road here after the Saints won the superbowl since hell froze over.

Originally Posted by digiblur

We had a ton of ice on the road here after the Saints won the superbowl since hell froze over.

I understand though that you could hitch a ride on one of those flying pigs to get over the icy roads.

Originally Posted by B.J.

Often at this time of year we have snow all the way up to our roof, and we have to dig out in order to see out our front windows.

Hope you have emergency preparedness in place to survive the snow attack. Storing a maple syrup in snow is not a permanent solution anyway, it make sense to consider sharing it with SatGuys to preserve from being spoiled.

Originally Posted by zamar23

Hope you have emergency preparedness in place to survive the snow attack. Storing a maple syrup in snow is not a permanent solution anyway, it make sense to consider sharing it with SatGuys to preserve from being spoiled.

Don't get me started on "emergency preparedness". The FD, and emergency preparedness people in this town want to spend the town's money to prepare for terrorist attacks or spills of hazardous nuclear or CW materials, or the likelihood of an air force tanker crashing in town, when in every imaginable senario, the feds would rush in and take over in the one in 1 billion probability of such a thing happening. Makes more sense to have the town invest in lottery tickets since they'd hit the jackpot before one of these emergencies happened.

But for snow attacks, we're generally pretty fast to clear things up. When we get 2' of snow, the only travel issues are generally the piles of snow that the plow trucks push onto the end of everyone's driveway. The roads are usually clear very fast. But I guess we don't have that many roads, so we have a high ratio of plow trucks to miles of roads.

Re the syrup, I don't store the syrup in the snow, just the sap. I usually don't boil until I collect 15-20 gallons of sap, which will usually boil down to a bit more than a quart of syrup. Depending on how fast the trees are dripping, it might take anywhere from 2 to 4 days to collect that much sap, so I need to store it, hopefully where it won't freeze to solid overnight, and not be exposed to warm sunlight during the day, and these little snow caves work pretty well.

I've found that it's better not to refrigerate the actual syrup, at least until it's actually being used, because you boil it down to a concentration where it is stable at room temperature, but if you refrigerate it, the sugar precipitates out in big crystals (with none of the maple flavor you'd find in the maple sugar candy, which is fast precipitated with stiring). So I've generated dozens of mason jars 1/2 full of solid sugar due to making the mistake of refrigerating it.



Anyway, for anyone interested in syrup
MapleSyrup

After a dozen years of making syrup, I FINALLY tried making maple sugar candy, and that is good stuff!!!

My large DirecWAY dish for 125W came down during the snow storm. It was attached to the chimney but still came down. When I first put it up, I drilled holes in the mortar and used special device that expands into the hole and holds tight. I think UV from the sun eventually cracks the plastic washer as the device is still very tight in the holes.

I want to go up and fix it but I will have to wait until some of the snow goes away. BTW, we had 30" of snow this time.

Here are some PIX.

Wow I don't need to see 30" of snow! We've got 4-5 over the weekend with up to 7" more tonight and tomorrow. More dish cleaning Tuesday lol...Blind

The snow here is almost all gone. Lots of brown grass showing. Very unusuall for this time of year. The farmers rely on the snow for moisture in the spring. We have had very little snow this year, only cleaned the driveway 3 or 4 times. Still lots of time left for a good storm before spring.

It been snowing here for 2 days now...we're up to oh about 8 inches

have to go out and sweep off the dishes. The motorized ones are probably buried so I'm stuck with no KU tonight