It is Year 47 for the Nebraska Knoll clan. The crew felt excited to get back into the woods two weeks ago for the annual visit to each sugar maple tree in our sugarbush, away from the raucous affairs of men toward the silent province of forests. Scientists have learned so much in recent years about how trees communicate below ground and how they care for each other. Trees don’t live in isolation, nor do we humans of course. This winter I have witnessed my neighbors caring for one another. The beginning of a new sugar season reminds me that the trees are also my neighbors. We can’t control the weather – key to the maple harvest – but we can control how we treat our neighbors.

I find comfort in the cycles of the sun and seasons. Today’s length of daylight is 10 hours, 29 minutes. Groundhog Day, February 2nd marked the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The solar lights on the little spruce tree a friend stuck into a snowbank at the winter solstice are finally lighting up longer than for 15 minutes at dusk. Now they sparkle until 10pm. I will not dismantle the lights until the little tree topples from the melting snowbank, in spite of the local point of etiquette which decrees that holiday lights be taken down by Valentine’s Day.



Maples
Winter naked
Pop from the northern hardwoods
To the eyes of sugarmakers
Just driving around town.

* AI Overview

Tapping is the practice of drilling a small hole through the bark of a maple tree into the sap wood in late winter and inserting a spile which conveys dripping sap from the tree into a vessel, often a bucket or a tube, for the purpose of collecting the sap to boil into maple syrup.

The Things They Count: Taps out of the box

These plastic pieces are the taps (spiles). Usually they are black; this is the first year for yellow. We count them by 100’s or 50’s, depending on each tapper’s preference, and slide them into bags. Each tapper keeps track of how many taps he or she uses in a day and records that number on a clipboard.



Tree taps
This year yellow
Heap up like black-eyed fry fish
Though counted still and not squirmy,
Alas only plastic.

The universal stance in the Era of Cell Phones. But, no, Ross and Larry are arranging tools in the front pockets of their vests. Larry says as he heads out, “I wonder how long I’ll be gone before I take the Walk of Shame,” (trekking downhill to the sugarhouse to grab the overlooked tool).



First day
Nitty gritty
Gathering legions of tools
From the shelves lined with tool buckets.
All but the manifolds.

The Things They Count: Tapholes in the bark

The trees guide the tappers to the welcome spot for this year’s tap. Note the many old tap holes on a tree that has been tapped more than 40 times. If a tree has 3-4 unhealed ones, we retire (pull) it from the system, or, if it’s a tree with two taps, we pull one of them.
It’s not enough to just count the holes. Look into the hole and you’ll see new sapwood. The thick outer bark of these Old Stalwarts may never close. (The initial taphole is 5/16″ in diameter.)
Of all the holes you see in the first photo, this is the only one that has not healed over. The tree is healthier than it seems at first sight.
Tappers assess the vigor of each crown. Like people, the trees develop character through the trials of life; if you take the time to look they reveal their beauty.
When the crown is obscured by hemlock boughs the tapper relies on the taphole clues.

I only notice this robust tree during tapping time although she lives beside the main route into the woods.

Curiosity Corner:

Name the font. [LL photo]

Pensée Pause: The five-line poems above are written in the form of a pensée, the French word for ‘thought.’

Here is the pensée recipe. They are great fun to write. Readers, please send me your pensées.

Line 1. Syllable count = 2 = Subject
Line 2. Syllable count = 4 = Description
Line 3. Syllable count = 7 = Action
Line 4. Syllable count = 8 = The Setting
Line 5. Syllable count = 6 = Final Thought

Bracing
For what’s to come
Is not the same as worry
In Chief of Operations’s view:
The mind, not the stomach.

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