Earlier this April Chief of Operations wrote:
The world is being consumed by a pandemic while the trees on our knoll are producing the most sap I have ever witnessed in one season. The virus barged in on the coattails of sugar season with the same chaotic rush and heartless disregard for whether you were ready or not.
It is so easy (and such fun) to give human characteristics to trees. It’s silly to think you know how they feel and yet I can’t help but ponder their psyche. Do they have a sense of humor? Are they fussy about what they ingest? Do they enjoy sex?
Do they ever social distance, or is that just too ludicrous to contemplate? Well, they had their period of stress a few years back with the outbreak of the forest tent caterpillar, and the maples in mixed stands fared much better than the ones in a monoculture.
Do they ever show compassion? Could they be giving so much sap because they feel sorry for us in our lockdown condition? The truth be told, trees are on their own tangent and humans will never even begin to know what it’s like to be one.
Our hillside trees have been so bursting with unrelenting energy this year, and the non-stop adrenaline rush of trying to keep up with them has left me no time to worry about what’s happening in the outside world. I’m in a bubble of excited frenzy while the surrounding community is in a state of depressed anxiety. Being agriculture, our business is one of the few in town that hasn’t had to shut down and can claim to have had a bountiful spring. I find it oddly inconsiderate telling people what a record-breaking sugar season we’ve had. I figure it must be a bout of corona guilt.
Lew Coty 4/10/2020
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 