Maple Sugaring season is upon us...

And what better way to do it than out of the back of the pickup! The days are too filled for us to run back and forth from barn to house, not to mention the price of gas! So we lugged all our equipment out to the barn and set up a drip spout to keep the "evaporator" boiling with a steady supply of sap.

While we boiled sap, we burned a pile of scrap fencing and downed limbs, bathed a couple of the horses and swept out the empty loft. After all this was done, we still had enough daylight to get Harley and Rolex Girl out for a short ride. I love these long daylight hours!

President's Weekend just around the corner...

...And with that comes tree tapping. I'm trying to talk John out of a big run this year. The top shelf of the fridge is still half full of syrup from the past two years. Every now and then, I pull them out to compare colors and determine which one to sample next. Will it be the golden amber, or the rich tobacco brown? Maybe half and half?
As much as I love maple syrup, the collecting and cooking can be hard work--lugging gallons of sap to the cooker and boiling, boiling, boiling it down to that single mason jar. But dang, it's so good!

We Tapped the Trees Today, Oh Boy...

Let the games begin. Evenings spent sitting by the cooker, stirring sap amid clouds of steam, waiting for liquid gold to form. Yes, it's time for maple sugaring again. Our winter is warming up fast, so I'm not sure what kind of a run we will get. This week's offering is snow, sleet, and rain, but the temps are not supposed to get much below freezing. Without the correct temperature swing, we may have a lean sap year much like we've had a lean snow year.

For all the people grumbling about winter, I ask, "Do you like maple syrup?" Without winter, you won't get that delicious sweetness that comes along right around mud season--the tween time of winter and spring when the chickadees and titmice trill in the trees, the sun warms your back, and you can hear the snow melting as it pops and percolates into the ground.

My woodpile is shrinking. I've reached levels where I'm unearthing the seed caches of mice and chipmunks. Papery-thin snake skins whisper over my hands, and last years leaves crunch between logs.
I can smell the different types of wood now.

Global warming nay-sayers need only look at the mild/weak winter we've had to see the weather effects from our warming atmosphere. I wonder how many more sugaring seasons we may see in the this corner of Maine. We have to do more than switch out a few lightbulbs and bring our own bags to the grocery store!