Up in the woods tapping maple trees on a recent sunny day, crew member and resident folklorist Lawrence Lackey happened to glance uphill and could scarcely believe his eyes. Why, it was the phantom tapper! LL (as he is known in these parts) later sang to the crew what he recalls of The Ballad of Morningside Slim.
Nebraska Knoll legend
tells of Morningside Slim
gliding silently through the bush
from sun-up to sun-down.
…setting taps
with his superior stature
beyond the reach of all mortals.
save the Brothers Hutchins.
Fortunate were those
to whom he would lend an ear,
banter indulge,
or merely nod in concurrence.
But, sugarers’ gossip he would not divulge.
*****
I, your Blog Editor, feel no qualms about divulging a little sugarers’ gossip, or, shalI I say, complaints?
-Where the heck did winter go? Last weekend people moaned and groaned about two days of frigid temps, but two days is nothing! Remember how January used to be 10 degrees or colder except for the January thaw? Now we get a whole month of thaw with a short January freeze.
-I’ve been saying for years we’re gonna start seeing Connecticut winters…
-It used to be that if you were tapped by Town Meeting Day [first week of March] that was good enough.
Now if you’re not tapped by Groundhog Day you’re in trouble.
-Mmmm, I’ll bet Howie has filled 10 drums by now. Didn’t he say he started tapping January 3rd?
*****
What helps overcome climate anxiety?
Ritual!
as in “This tree is nearly knee-deep in graupel.”
[LC photo]
And then there are all the rituals others enact sans photos down at the sugarhouse:
Shoveling –
The stairs to the sap shed
The stairs from the road to the upper sap shed
From the lawn to the outer house faucet
From the lawn to the house woodshed
The stairs up the stone wall to important gate valves,
A path along the side of the sap shed to important gate valves,
A path to a drain below the clothesline.
Scouring sap tanks with clumpy snow. (One of my favorite things.)
Setting up hoses.
Tossing out mouse-shredded work gloves.
Pulling Johnson wool jackets out of the cedar chest.
And twelve hours more of little, once-a-year rituals.
THE 8PM NEWS REPORT:
—You wouldn’t believe what happened in the pump room today.
—Did it flood?
—Sap cascaded over the threshold and down the stairs to the sap tanks. The worst ever.
What goes around comes around.
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 
Thank you SO much for sharing! I love the stories and photos. Very enjoyable!
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You’re welcome, Andrea. AC
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Lol.
Glad you received extra help from the phantom tapper.
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Those most appreciative for Morningside Slim’s help are the core tapping crew: Ingrid, Chris, Larry, and Lew. Celebrity Guest tappers Ross and Cy also thank Slim.
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Thanks to technology Larry and Clairmonde in Oregon were able to chuckle at the photos and good writing and marvel at all the detailed hard work.
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Greetings, Clairmonde and Larry. May your rich imaginations embellish the photos with the sound effects, aromas,, and all other sensory experiences of maple season. AC
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Very happy to see the blog back up and running. Up here, it’s been a ludicrous hustle and bustle to get ready for an absurdly early run, with a forecast that looks decidedly more wintry after Monday. Our run seemed to accelerate through the day yesterday and into last night, and it looks like the RO has to go back together this morning. Good luck these next few days!
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Hi Ben, Ludicrous and absurd, indeed. Lew heard HH say while hanging around in the sugarhouse that you were not boiling but were stacking your sap. After the boil we got to ruminating on this. Could you be stashing sap? Stocking sap? We are intrigued by the image of stacking sap. It’s playful. (Bear in mind that Chops is deaf in one ear and can’t hear out of the other.) All for now. We are stacking sap for tomorrow’s boil. AC
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