March 14

WEATHER: Repeat of March 13, with intermittent rain showers. Sap still running. BOILING STATUS: Day 12.

SYRUP STATUS: Pushing 1800 gallons, grade is dropping due to lack of freezing nights.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Man, is that doing that again?"  (Uttered by L. at the upper sap shed after testing out a new method of rinsing the giant tanks up there.) What he heard was the vacuum pump suddenly shifting its tone from a tenor groan to an alto whine.

We make syrup with our ears, alert to changes in the pitch of the boiling sap, the roaring fire and the filter press pumping finished syrup. We listen to the reverse osmosis machine in the next room. The timer goes off and we check the temperature of  cleaning water heating up in another room. And we listen to music on the boom box and sing along.

ARCHIVAL JOURNAL ENTRY: O Brother Where Art Thou has just the right feel as sugarhouse music. It goes with muddy boots, sticky floors, steamy pans, tired sugarers. And it makes all right with the world.

MACRO: Many weekend visitors.

MICRO: Bright-eyed eight-year-old triplets, two girls and a boy, sitting on the back bench, delighted by the steam as it ebbs and flows over their heads.

March 19

WEATHER: A repeat of yesterday. T-shirt weather. BOILING STATUS: Day 16

SEVEN DAY NITER PRIMER: Friday. Early and mid-season syrup filters nicely through the cones, but the niter in dark syrup clogs them up. The syrup sits in the cones and cools off. You must lift out the cone and pour the cool syrup into a clean cone, then quickly rinse the niter out of the soiled one. Often the dark syrup must be transferred three or four times. Sugarmakers with this old-style filter dread making dark syrup. That slimy niter clogs the felts so darn fast!

NOONTIME VIEWS FROM THE BUSH: LOOKING UP, lacy silver twigs of sugar maples, opposite twigs reaching for the sun in a gesture of praise. LOOKING DOWN, patches of wet corn snow, new lagoons where the snow just melted, or dry crackly beech leaves. LOOKING ACROSS: gas bubbles chugging silently along in the tubing lines, put out by the tree in addition to the sap.

MACRO: It's hot.

MICRO: Smell of the earth for the first time. Moths in the sap tanks.

QUOTES OF THE DAY: "What it boils down to is the bottom line."   "You mean the red line, the top one." [a reference to the hydrometer]

March 15

WEATHER: 30's by night, high 40's by day, overcast. The sap is still running. TO BOIL OR NOT? Some days it is a hard call. Today we gambled that the run would be slow and we would have room to spare in the sap tanks. This relentless season is taking its toll and we need to catch our breath. So we decided not to boil. But the sap ran surprisingly well this afternoon, and all the tanks are full at 10 pm, with the sap still running. Instead of sleeping, L. must start up the RO (reverse osmosis machine) soon and monitor it every couple of hours all night. If only it would freeze tonight as forecast and choke off the run.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "No rest for the weary."

SEVEN DAY NITER PRIMER. Monday:   Niter is what you don't get when you purchase a gallon of maple syrup; like coffee grounds, it stays behind in the filter. Every time you boil sap, either in a canning kettle in the kitchen or in a modern evaporator, stuff precipitates out of it: niter. Sometimes it resembles sand, hence the common name for it, sugar sand. The quality of the niter changes day to day and year to year. Sugarmakers consider niter a nuisance for two reasons: it burns onto the sap pans and it clouds up the syrup. They devise ways to filter the hot syrup so it flows clear when you pour it over your pancakes or vanilla ice cream.

MACRO: Hillsides taking on a reddish purple hue.

MICRO: Red maple buds are round, red and swollen. As always the red maples are ahead of the sugar maples.

March 14

WEATHER: Repeat of March 13, with intermittent rain showers. Sap still running. BOILING STATUS: Day 12.

SYRUP STATUS: Pushing 1800 gallons, grade is dropping due to lack of freezing nights.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Man, is that doing that again?"  (Uttered by L. at the upper sap shed after testing out a new method of rinsing the giant tanks up there.) What he heard was the vacuum pump suddenly shifting its tone from a tenor groan to an alto whine.

We make syrup with our ears, alert to changes in the pitch of the boiling sap, the roaring fire and the filter press pumping finished syrup. We listen to the reverse osmosis machine in the next room. The timer goes off and we check the temperature of  cleaning water heating up in another room. And we listen to music on the boom box and sing along.

ARCHIVAL JOURNAL ENTRY: O Brother Where Art Thou has just the right feel as sugarhouse music. It goes with muddy boots, sticky floors, steamy pans, tired sugarers. And it makes all right with the world.

MACRO: Many weekend visitors.

MICRO: Bright-eyed eight-year-old triplets, two girls and a boy, sitting on the back bench, delighted by the steam as it ebbs and flows over their heads.

MARCH 12

WEATHER: Never froze last night, high today 39 and overcast. Sap ran all night and all day but not hard. BOILING STATUS: Not enough sap to boil today. Finally, finally, a day off. Today marks the end of Marathon Number One.

TOUR OF THE SUGARBUSH, continued: Starting back at the sugarhouse, we'll hike up the MORNINGSIDE Main Line. It crosses Falls Brook just above the falls. We'll cross the brook on a very narrow wooden bridge with hand rails, called the Japanese Bridge. It's a steep hike up to a broad gentle slope where the Morningside trees are. Five lesser main lines branch off and traverse the plateau: M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5. From M5 it's a short steep hike to Mt. Bend, a prominent nob on Morningside Ridge.

Another way to reach Morningside is to hike up Herbie's Highway, straight up from the sugarhouse, and cross Falls Brook where the old bridge used to be. Right now you can still cross the brook on snow bridges, but later when the brook open up it means acrobatic leaps or wet feet.

QUOTE OF THE DAY Sugaring: "C'est la maladie du printemps."

MACRO: Lagoons forming in the low, wet pockets of the woods.

MICRO: A mat of beech leaves on the bottom of a 3" deep lagoon, every vein magnified by the clear water.

March 10

WEATHER: Low last night 20, high today 40, bluebird. Another in a string of true sugaring days.
 
TOUR OF THE SUGARBUSH, CONTINUED: Walk back through the Gulch down the slope to NORTH CONNECTION, a mainline curving around the knoll at a lower tier than Ledge Line, above a cliff draped with dirty icicles, home to porcupines. Now you're on Dome Road near a tree called Old Suzanna, formerly tapped by the sugarmaker before us who gathered sap with his horses. She's now in retirement.
 
REPORT FROM THE FIELD CREW: Snowshoes are no longer necessary for checking lines, except at the top of the Keystone lines.
 
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Another perfect draw, number seven!!!"  (stay tuned)
 

March 9

WIND FROM THE NORTH, SAP FLOWS FORTH
WIND FROM THE EAST, SAP FLOWS LEAST
WIND FROM THE SOUTH, SAP'S A DROUGHT
WIND FROM THE WEST, SAP FLOWS BEST
 
WEATHER: Today had it all: Wind from the northwest, freezing night last night, full sun, temp. in the high 30's. The best run of the year, but short, since the lines froze up at dusk. The Morningside taps woke up today.
 
Part way up the MAIN MAIN, a lesser main line called Ledge Line joins up with it. Ledge Line hugs the contour, past the ledges, past the Plaza, all the way to the Gulch. The Gulch is not "a steep-walled valley cut by a swift-running stream" as its name suggests; it is a cozy nook between a pretty ledge and a rough slope. Follow the Gulch to its highest point and its a short walk down and across to the Cache.
 
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The big thing about sugaring is knowing when to work and when to sit down."
 
MACRO: An audible wind today.
              Shade at the base of trees, sun on the crowns. 
           
MICRO: Old, pockmarked corn snow peppered with hemlock twigs, needles, seeds and beech leaves.
            Calls of Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee and Phoebe, Phoebe. 
            Sparks emitted from sugarhouse swim into the night sky like orange tadpoles
 

March 8

 
WEATHER: Never froze last night, sap ran all night and all day today, but not a spectacular run.
 
BOILING STATUS: Today was Day Seven. Last year this date, March 8th,  was our first day of boiling.
 
SYRUP STATUS: Up over 1100 gallons, all Fancy.
 
INTRODUCING...The Main Main, our central mainline in what we call "the old bush". The wends its way circuitously up and around Nebraska Knoll, branching at The Cache, a wooden storage box on a plateau of stately ash trees intermingled with sugar maples. One branch passes through a saddle - that's the Saddle Line; the other branch ascends to The Podium.
 
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "You know that doesn't drain the hose, you have to disconnect it at the Y and drain it from there. Otherwise you're only draining half the hose."