WEATHER:
“Oh dear, what do I say about the weather?” asks the Blog Editor of Chief of Operations as he fills the wood stove and lights a fire for the evening.
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” he replies. “Isn’t that a Mark Twain saying? Or was there a different author?”
The Blog Editor clicks onto The Information Highway which informs her that no one knows for sure, but most probably the author of this quote was a friend and colleague of Twain’s named Charles Dudley Warner.
The more accurate quote is probably “The weather in New England is a matter about which a great deal is said, but very little done.”
Another of Warner’s wordings is “Respecting weather, I have always noted that there is nothing besides about which so much is said, and so little done.”
That’s about right.
HOW’S IT RUNNING? A great deal is said about this, but very little done. Through the highs and lows of the week, from temps in the teens to near 60 degrees, the runs have been sluggish.
Saturday 2pm update: After a good freeze last night, and what with today’s full sun warming one cheek while a nip in the air cools the other, with temps climbing through the 30’s, you’d think that of all days the sap would run well today. Possibly it will do so later today…
BOILING STATUS: The boils all week have been extremely short – but sweet, thanks to the high sugar content of the sap this year.
SAP SWEETNESS: As is typical of late season, the sap sweetness has dropped, in this case from 2.7% sugar to 2%.
The Post-it Wall
Chief of Operations writes:
Through the front door of our sugarhouse you enter a room that serves as a farmstand, canning area, and storage place for essential supplies and hand tools. The west wall was set up as a maple display including photographs. Post-its began appearing here many years ago, and as the number of visitors increased so didn’t the number of Post-its. It is currently plastered with multi-colored notes and art (some even stuck to the ceiling) penned by awestruck travelers from all over the world. Some of these make me chuckle, some make me wonder how anyone could see this place as “romantic,” and others are written in the language of youth that I have trouble translating.
The first one up, written by a man from Mississippi, reads “That syrup was so good my tongue flew out and slapped my brain.” There is one from Fredy Zügel who is bringing back our maple products all the way to Switzerland. Another from someone who learned about our place from a friend in Costa Rica (Costa Rica??). Some are from Nebraskans wanting to know how our sugarhouse got its name. I have no idea how Nebraska Valley where we are located was named. One thought our place looked “straight out of a Hallmark Movie!” (Hallmark Movie??)
Some are written by children who are learning to write, like four-year-old Kia’s “yummy stuff.” Some are direct like “maple syrup slay.” Others are more obscure like “Fire to the Dome” or “Suga Suga how you get so fly.”
After a long day of slogging through the woods it’s always fun to see what amusement has been posted.
EXTRA-CREDIT READING:
In this story of one family’s multi-generational sugaring, Nebraska Knollers, as well as everyone in Maple Nation, can relate to the sense of community that grows around a sugarhouse and to the anecdotes told around the evaporator year after year.
[You can read this article twice if you are so inclined. AC]
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 
Loved this post—everything about it. But—oh my—wouldn’t it be marvelous finding out why The area is named Nebraska this and that? Do you keep your post-its
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Hi Audrey!
Sorry to have been a poor correspondent, things up here have been …….. slow. We’ve only boiled 5 times now, and should finally get past half a crop today. Yesterday and today ran well, today is almost keeping up with RO, which I haven’t yet seen with this machine, and we’re about to fire up for the afternoon.
I hope that we all make it through this week in good style, and that it stays cooler than forecast.
Good luck!
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Yikes, Ben, it has been only a week since you wrote yet it feels like 6 weeks what with the changes wrought by the heat wave. I haven’t heard, are you still collecting sap? Unlike the sluggish tubing taps, the bucket trees oddly ran like crazy mid-week then stopped on a dime. A-
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