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
Still, Still Going
Quote of the Day: “This has got to be the first sugar season where the lawn needs mowing before the last boil.” Mud season is over, people are bicycling, the pussy willows are out, and still we’re making nice-quality syrup. Stairway to heaven. Speaking of climbing, this post is for Christian and Carly… Read More
Sap Run 101
Or, Are The Trees Just Over It? Chief of Operations writes: I really shouldn’t be trying to instruct this course, as after forty years of trying to predict the strength of sap runs, I am still only vaguely successful. April 12/16 This week the weather seems so perfect for sap runs. Why, then, is their… Read More
Still Going
WEATHER: April in February, February in April. A good cold snap recharges the maples. It’s the weather we need to keep the season going. HOW’S IT RUNNING? It was too cold for most of the week, but the sap ran Thursday and Friday, though not as hard as it would have earlier in the season with… Read More
Vinegar Pie
On this blustery Sunday (wind chill 6 degrees), Maple Trout Lilli stayed cozy in her kitchen. She writes: VINEGAR PIE – It’s Actually Really Good Normally I don’t associate vinegar with dessert and it’s for this reason that the following recipe grabbed my attention. From another era when you worked with what was locally… Read More
The Nebraska Knoll Blog 