A week out from the last boil, let’s take the measure of sugar season 2026. The White Glove Test, watercolor by Ana Lucia Fernandez.

WEATHER: The last date on which the blog mentioned the weather was April 2nd when we hoped for a good freeze-up to revive the sap flow. The freeze-up arrived and lasted two days, but to our disappointment the trees just didn’t run much after that. It was a clear sign that the end was near. We collected what we could and boiled the weak sap, wrapping up on April 11th.

Bubbles in the Syrup Pail, watercolor by Ana Lucia Fernandez. Though Ana over the course of this sugar season drew off at least 500 pails, she remarked a few days after the last boil that it felt like it never happened. When the season turns, it turns.


CHIEF OF OPERATIONS writes:

Three Words

I was cleaning grading bottles at the outside hot water faucet. Sugar season was in full swing with many days in a row of a nonstop sap run. I was feeling spacy due to exhaustion and sleep deprivation. 

A lady visitor walking back to her car stopped and said to me, “You have left the corporate world behind, and are living a perfect lifestyle!” I replied, “If you stayed here for a couple days you might conclude it’s not quite so perfect.” She smiled in agreement. As she was leaving she turned and said “God bless you.”

That cliché arrowed straight to my heart. Just those three words made my day.

-LC

Once the April sun pops the cork of summer, new life fizzes on the forest floor. I say summer, not spring, because the working definition of spring in Vermont is that stretch of time when the sap runs.

Sugar maple buds appear tight from the moment of leaf-drop in October through the winter and most of sugar season.
Drawing by Ana Lucia Fernandez, March, 2017
Then one day the buds break open and swiftly develop.

In a nutshell, how was Sugar Season 2026? We conclude that the weather was either too warm or too cold for ideal sap runs. The yield was about 88% of an average crop, namely a bit more than 4 lbs of syrup per tap. Here is Ross, who drew off a hefty share of pails.

PENSÉE PAUSE:

Changes,
The ones you smell,
register when you compare
a memory of yesterday
with today’s aroma.

Changes
in aroma
mean something, but what of it?
Turn of season smells like toffee,
or caramel or coffee.

And so we move on to Cleanup.

The crew pivots, tools up for the woods, and starts pulling taps. Note that the tool Ana uses has a long handle which enables her to reach the taps that were placed when the snow pack was deep and with bare ground seem mighty high. Thank you maples, one and all.

Meanwhile Chops lays out tools for putting the pans to bed.


PENSÉE PAUSE:

Changes –
turn of season –
occur when you’re not looking.
The hour hand on your wall clock
never moves but it does.

4 thoughts on “April sun pops the cork of summer”

    1. Dear Anonymous, Do I know you? It is sad to move on, in a way. The saddest is when the crew, Larry, Ross, Ana, and Freedle disperse and there is no longer a pot of coffee to gather around for the daily kaffeeklatsch. Fortunately they are still showing up to pull taps, scrub pans, and stack wood for next year. And on the occasional hot day we lounge after work with ice cream and beer. Larry will move on to road cycling criss-cross Vermont and Quebec, Ross to directing a mountain bike youth program, Ana to gardening at Long Winter Farm, and Freedle to carpentry and all the summer sugarhouse/woods endeavors. AC

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