To the Falkland Islands

Unbidden Every April the thought comes at me unbidden It’s Falkland Islands week something in the air the bareness of the trees the close grasses, not yet sprung the open pause between sugar season and summer canopy. This year I entered the Falklands the day before the last boil walking up the valley, near the Hale… Read More

Mallards and Maples

As mentioned in previous years on this blog, sugar season is not over until the fat lady sings. This aria is what I heard her sing on Friday: I recalled I had first learned of this song from a book by E.B. White called The Trumpet of the Swan which is about a trumpeter swan named Louis… Read More

Still, Still Going

Quote of the Day: “This has got to be the first sugar season where the lawn needs mowing before the last boil.” Mud season is over, people are bicycling, the pussy willows are out, and still we’re making nice-quality syrup. Stairway to heaven. Speaking of climbing, this post is for Christian and Carly… Read More

Sap Run 101

Or, Are The Trees Just Over It? Chief of Operations writes: I really shouldn’t be trying to instruct this course, as after forty years of trying to predict the strength of sap runs, I am still only vaguely successful. April 12/16 This week the weather seems so perfect for sap runs. Why, then, is their… Read More

Still Going

WEATHER: April in February, February in April. A good cold snap recharges the maples. It’s the weather we need to keep the season going. HOW’S IT RUNNING? It was too cold for most of the week, but the sap ran Thursday and Friday, though not as hard as it would have earlier in the season with… Read More

Vinegar Pie

On this blustery Sunday (wind chill 6 degrees), Maple Trout Lilli stayed cozy in her kitchen. She writes: VINEGAR PIE – It’s Actually Really Good Normally I don’t associate vinegar with dessert and it’s for this reason that the following recipe grabbed my attention. From another era when you worked with what was locally… Read More

Breathless

If sugar season and the blog were running a road race, sugar season would have lapped the blog twice by now and the blog might consider dropping out. The week has felt like a 500-page novel. The setting is 2016 at Nebraska Knoll of course; the main characters are the weather and the maple trees, developed with… Read More