“Sugar season 2017 is officially over,” declared Chief of Operations on Sunday. A Look Back: As always happens, we learned that… Read More
Sunday Buds and Maple as Leader
Here is a new painting by crew member Ana Lucia that shows how buds look when they have just popped, in this case shortly after the final boiling day. Compare the popped buds with the tight buds of March. It seems right to print once again the story of how First Nation citizens revere the… Read More
The Ephemerals: Spring Beauties
This year the blog will revive its photo celebration of the northern hardwoods ephemerals, the flowers that bloom on the forest floor after the last sap run and before the canopy fills in and shuts out the sunlight. Here is the front of a card created and printed by neighbor Heather Hale on one of… Read More
Saturday afternoon at the opera
April 22. It is a Saturday afternoon in late April, eleven days out from the final boiling day, and all seems familiar. Wild leeks near the Keystone line are poking up 3-4″. Spring beauty buds are tight today but won’t be for long. Witch hobble blossoms and leaves are greening up at the edges. Falls… Read More
70 degrees in the shade
In case you readers have not read the blog comments recently, I will print the poem offered there by Elyse Moore in response to the previous post. Sweet Music to Boil By Sweet music to boil by floats minds on clouds of steam, through harmonies of aching muscles and hearts– Hums liquid tones through soaring… Read More
Music to Boil By
12:30am. When I walked out of the sugarhouse after 16 hours of work, the greater world expanded in stillness below a full moon, but just until I noticed how clouds chased across the moon, how urgently Miller Brook bellowed from the bottom of the valley, and how cool air emanated from the snowbank. … Read More
Sunday Buds and a Washing Machine
Other titles for today’s post could be: I Smell M.U.D. Saving the best for last There’s red in them thar hills Even the sunshine can’t get her off the couch The last option explains why there is no post titled April, Round One. It wasn’t clear that last week’s continual weak run would end –… Read More
It’s Happening
QUICK UPDATE: WEATHER: A fortuitous ordering of fresh snow (6″), freezing nights, sunny days, and the slightest of NW breezes.. HOW’S IT RUNNING? A decent run on chilly overcast Saturday, robust runs yesterday and today. Chief of Operations notes that not a single morning this year has the ice belched out of the lines; there… Read More
March, Final Round
EXPECT NOTHING. Unfortunately we can’t resist viewing the NOAA and Weather Underground sites to check the forecast. The Wunderground site displays a graph that illustrates the fluctuations in air temp hour by hour. We get our hopes up for a sap run when we see it freezing by 9pm and climbing to 40F. by 1pm… Read More
Sunday Buds
Maple Open House While people twirled sugar-on-snow onto their wooden sticks bit into dill pickles slipped closer to the bonfire sipped sap coffee while chatting with someone they knew from somewhere else, While children slid down the snowbank again and again scrambled back up on all fours rubbed the smoke out of their eyes clung… Read More
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 