Chief of Operations writes: Sugarmaker Trump?? 2/18/17 I am exiting our sugarbush after a twelve-hour day of tapping. The snow I’m treading on has morphed from pristine powder this morning to mashed potatoes as warmer weather has burst on the scene. Except for the small patch of light from my headlamp, I am enveloped by hushed… Read More
Sapshine
Dear Reader, A symptom of these harried times is that I thought for sure I had published a blog post yesterday but this morning discovered it was still in the draft folder. Yesterday has vanished like the snow. I’ll start a fresh post. There is a flood warning for today through Sunday evening, prompted by… Read More
Strong Thaw
WEATHER: Looking back, it’s rather a blur. The sunny, mild stretch triggered a weekend sap run, then the mercury dipped enough to freeze the hoses running from here to there. Yesterday not much thawed out since the temp hovered just above freezing. Today is different; at noon it is nearly 50… Read More
Sap’s Running
Here is the long-awaited official confirmation: Sugar Season 2017 at Nebraska Knoll Sugar Farm, Stowe, Vermont began on Saturday, February 18th. What does this mean, sugar season began? It means the maple sap began to flow from the earth up through the roots into the trunk defying gravity up up up to the lacy twigs… Read More
Out with the rusty old, In with the shiny new
Forty years we had the old smoke stack. When Lew and his friend Eric set up a crude sugar shack on Birch Hill in Stowe in the mid-seventies, a friend of Eric’s parents fashioned a stack for them in trade for syrup. It moved with the arch (salvaged forty years ago from a field on… Read More
Blowdown Day in November
Stowe photographer Paul Rogers http://paulrogersphotography.com or INSTAGRAM trekked into the woods in November on a day when the crew cleared fallen trees from the tubing lines. Here are a few of Paul’s photos from that day: Tomorrow the crew will head up for another day of… Read More
Apple Tree in November
WEATHER: Hazy sunshine, high in the 50’s, no wind. Too warm, but good working weather for the woods crew who’ve been busy repairing tubing. Today’s sun reminded me of a journal entry from a year ago, The Year of the Apple Glut. In September, a syrup customer called from out-of-state to ask if she could… Read More
Baby Bundts
To celebrate the completion of Woods Cleanup (all 9635 taps have been pulled and circa fifty miles of line rinsed) I thought I’d bake a cake, but I was out of eggs, and while I was contemplating Oh Boy Pudding that doesn’t require eggs, Maple Trout Lilli wrote in about baby bundt cakes created by a… Read More
To the Falkland Islands
Unbidden Every April the thought comes at me unbidden It’s Falkland Islands week something in the air the bareness of the trees the close grasses, not yet sprung the open pause between sugar season and summer canopy. This year I entered the Falklands the day before the last boil walking up the valley, near the Hale… Read More
Mallards and Maples
As mentioned in previous years on this blog, sugar season is not over until the fat lady sings. This aria is what I heard her sing on Friday: I recalled I had first learned of this song from a book by E.B. White called The Trumpet of the Swan which is about a trumpeter swan named Louis… Read More
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