WEATHER: If you live in the East you know that it feels as though we skipped April and even May. It could be June. April is called “the cruel month” since just as you reach for the garden trowel a storm will dump a foot of snow which melts to muddy slush. The ragged, jerky transition from winter to summer is, of course, what can keep the sap flowing well into April. This April feels cruel in its own way: the series of hot days abruptly cut off sap runs; the premature heat rattles one’s biorhythm. The question lingers: Is this the future?
Earth is parched.
The hot sun.
We need rain.
Spring showers,
please come to
reign the days.
Can’t rein in
this heat wave –
must just wait.
HOWS IT RUNNING? Not bad Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday the sap was buddy.
BOILING STATUS: We boiled Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday evening we drained the “sweet” from the front pan into two white pails for the neighbors who tap a few trees. Their bucket taps have dried up but they are still set up to boil the sweet into a gallon or two of syrup.
MUSIC TO BOIL BY:
from Walt’s sound track of 30,000 tunes
The Unicorns:
Tuff Ghost
Inoculate the Innocuous
Les Os
Jelly Bones
Ghost Mountain https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+unicorns+ghost+mountain
Child Star
REGIONAL TRENDS:
1) Notably weak sap. Eventually we may hear an explanation for this. It could be that last summer’s drought caused the trees to store less starch.
2) Lots of dark syrup. Warm weather means warm sap means dark syrup.
3) Low yield. This is due to both the weak sap and the warmer-than-ideal weather. We determine our “crop” by multiplying the average gals/tap over many years by the number the taps. In our case the average gals/tap going into 2021 was .442. This figure is in flux from year to year. Chief of Operations says this season yielded 83% of a crop. In actual number of gallons, we haven’t had such a low year since 2012 when an extended heat wave in March cut the season short. Don’t forget, in 2020 we made a bumper crop. And so it goes.
Pump is off
RO too
Ashes cold
Season done
Transition
All a dream
Cleanup now
Rinse those lines!
Pump is on (but not on Sundays)
And to round out the Threelittle poems for today, here is a missive sent in early March by a friend in Oregon – before the sap ran in Vermont.
Often thought
pandemic
would croak us
but kneeling
down to shoot
photos of
spring crocus-
pushing Life
up from Dark
-CH
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 
83% of a crop , wow. It sounds better than I (fearfully) expected. The uncertainty of your sugar season must provide an addictive quality to anticipating the next year, kind of like gambling, wondering if you are going to hit the jackpot each year. I hope the beauty of spring helps soothe the difficulties of the season.
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