“How did the season end up?” asked Barb the bookkeeper.“I hope the season finished strong,” wrote a friend from the West.“What sort of year was it?” asked Patty when she placed a phone order.“Did you have a good season?” asked Wendy at Mac’s Market. “Good.”“Yuh, it did.”“Good.”“Yuh, we did.” It reminds me of returning home… Read More
Rite of Spring
One late morning recently, writing from a coffee shop in the village of Morrisville, Sugarhouse Meal Angel and today’s guest blogger Nina Church reminisced: Sugaring season is a vital gush after long, frozen winter. My whole body senses the opening of the maple veins and the sap rising. When our boys were little we tapped… Read More
Throwback Tuesday
If you wait for mild sunny days to knock out taps and rinse lines, scrub and hose soot off the bottom of the front pan to load it into the van to drive to Leader Evaporator Inc. in Swanton, wash and hose pails, wipe down sap tanks with hot water, and so forth, you will… Read More
April 1 Hill Report: Using the Ears
Ace woodsman Larry Lackey writes: The vacuum pressure in the main lines, as indicated by the gauge in the sap shed, last week slipped about 1 ½ inches mercury last week, after holding steady for two weeks. The drop was not unexpected. Freeze/thaw cycles can nudge taps out of trees. Critters with sharp teeth –… Read More
50 Years to the Month Now
One recent Saturday morning, Scott came by the sugarhouse with his granddaughter, Tena, to pick up a couple of gallons of Golden Delicate (formerly Fancy) syrup, the grade his family selects year after year. Scott sat down on the gold bench and reminisced while Tena silently scrambled on and off his lap. “Would you be… Read More
Recharge
A Tanka for March 22 Sun warming one cheek,A wind chilling the other,Earmarks of a run.The maple buds are still tight;Mud season is not over. A Tanka for March 29 Brrrr, winter is back,Frost is winning over sun,Mud ruts are frozen.Two days of this are welcome;It means at least one more run. WEATHER: After the… Read More
Notes from a blur of a week
We’re doing that different now, he announced. She could smell from outside that the syrup had dropped grade.Everyone is saying it’s the worst mud season in a long, long time.Forty degrees feels chilly after two days of sixty.Now we scrub the niter off the hydrometer cup during evening cleanup. Until this week we soaked the… Read More
The week behind, the week ahead
THE WEEK BEHIND: Last Monday, March 7th, the forecast of freezing nights and above-freezing days looked favorable for sap runs. In fact, we got a few mediocre late afternoon runs. The sap ran all night Friday into Saturday when winter descended with cold and nearly a foot of snow. BOILING STATUS: We boiled Monday the… Read More
The Percy Arch
Chief of Operations writes: Thank You, Paul With the tragic loss of the historic Percy barn and all the cows within, it’s my time to chime in with appreciation for all the Percys have done to keep agriculture alive in the Stowe area. It was the fall of 1976 and I was hellbent to do… Read More
Farewell, February. Welcome, March.
WEATHER: A three-day thaw 2/21-2/23 melted away the snow from the fields and much of the snow from the woods. It has been an anemic snow winter. In December and early January we counted new snowfall in tenths of an inch. By late January we could count snow in full inches but not in feet.… Read More
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 