April 1 was the last day we could sell tickets for the Ice-Out Contest, 2007; now we wait for the ice to melt and the clock to stop. The date and time will be fed into the computer data base containing all names, dates and times Manuel "Chico" Carcoba maintains for us, and the winner will be determined from the literally thousands of entries. Some years the guess has been exactly right; other years the computer has to pick the closest date and/or time. Last year three people guessed exactly the date and time. Amazing. The winner this year could receive close to $4,000.

There isn't much melting going on right now. Today has been cool and rainy, and tonight we may have some freezing rain with more rain or snow pretty much the rest of the week. Our area could get as much as 3-8 inches of heavy, wet snow, which in turn could mean power outages and slippery roads. Speaking of roads - we've had a fair amount of mud to contend with along West Shore Road here at the pond. We've seen reports of mud on other back roads, too. I went to Cabot yesterday and the road was surprisingly good. I took some pictures of maple trees tapped the old fashioned way - love seeing buckets instead of plastic tubes. It was raining and I was in a hurry, so I didn't get out to check to see how the sap was running, but with the cold nights and fairly warm days we've had last week, producers should be making some syrup.
On Sunday, Bill and Diane Rossi walked up to our house to see how Fred was doing with his log pile. The pile was nearly gone, and yesterday he finished it off except for some gnarly chunks that wouldn't split, no matter how hard he tried. We have it all stacked and drying for next year. We expected to realize six cords from that load of logs, so we'll measure it when the weather clears to see how close we came. Now we have lots of cleaning up to do - sawdust and wood chips, but we'll put it all to good use. While Bill and Diane were here, they took pictures with their new digital camera. Bill got some nice shots of our cat, Woody, who is far more photogenic than we are, but we will share them anyway. That's Bill, Fred and me in our driveway - with the logs.