March 31

WEATHER: Low in the 30′s, high today 46, overcast, breezy.

SAP STATUS: The sap keeps running day and night, tapering off during the night. Today it ran less than yesterday, a predictable result of no freezing nights. The sap is very weak, like most end-of-season sap.

BOILING STATUS: Day 18. The syrup is a bit darker than yesterday’s, no surprise.

THE FAT LADY has been warming up for a few days; we expect to hear her  break into her aria tomorrow. She is not the only fat one - the maple buds are fat and swollen. And the rhubarb is coming up, the red-winged blackbirds are back, and the woodsy section of the driveway is past mud season. Old-timers speak of the frog run, when the last sap run coincides with the sound of the first peepers. I only recall a few frog runs in the thirty years we’ve been sugaring here, occurring in mid to late April.

DINNER IN THE SUGARHOUSE, post script: At the same time we’re hidden away from the whole world, we are firmly at the center of the whole world – the sugarhouse during a night boil.

THE CREW:  The neighborhood boys who ran up after school day after day to fill their Dixie cups with hot syrup and then tear around our place – climbing on the woodpile, making forts up near the cupola, pushing each other on the barrel dollie  – are now in their twenties: strong, alert and keen on sugaring. This year we have two main guys who live across the way. We’ll call them at 9:30 am and say we need help starting at 2:30 pm, or we may not know until 2:30 pm that we need help at 6 pm. It’s impossible to plan ahead. When they get here, we can’t even tell them when the work day will end – it could be 8 pm or 2 am.

Many other younger Nebraska Valley kids, girls and boys, help out part-time serving sugar-on-snow, stacking wood, scrubbing, cleaning tubing, canning syrup, making maple cream and sugar and working in the woods.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Yuhhhhh,” spoken musically and with finality.

March 30

WEATHER: Low in the 30′s, high today 41, rainy.

SAP STATUS: The sap has been running since Monday morning, in particular the Keystone and Maresan taps.

BOILING STATUS: Today is Day 17. We started around noon and at this posting are still boiling. Since it’s a cool rainy day, the sugarhouse seems especially cozy. The rain pushes the steam down. From the main road one-third mile away, tufts of white steam accent the somber hillside. On warmer days the steam dissipates more readily.

PRACTICAL LESSON OF THE DAY: Remember to wear a thick shirt or a Johnson wool jacket with long sleeves when you are drawing syrup from the pans or stoking. I stripped down to a thin cotton shirt with long sleeves and spilled boiling hot sap onto my arm while scooping from the back pan. Better to perspire than to risk a burn. (Mine was not serious.)

SUPPER IN THE SUGARHOUSE: Meatloaf, sweet potatoes and salad brought up by the mother of the crew, biscuits baked in maple syrup for dessert. Some of us sat on the back bench, dangling our legs and feeling hidden away from the whole world.

ARCHIVAL JOURNAL ENTRY, March 30, 2005: W  McG, a first-grader, ate copious amounts of foam rising off the sap in the float box, exclaiming, “This tastes like regular foam!”

March 28

WEATHER: Yesterday sparkled – the sun was warm and the air chilly, staring the day at 5 degrees, climbing to 34. No sap run, just too cold.

Last night’s low was 26 and today was overcast, high 38. The sap ran poorly this afternoon but the run is picking up this evening. It is raining.

VERMONT MAPLE OPEN HOUSE WEEKEND: Nine years ago the state maple organization initiated this event, copying what Maine has been doing for years. Some visitors hop from sugarhouse to sugarhouse; some stop in at just one, for sugar-on-snow or to soak up the steam. Momentum for this event grows each year. I met a few families who now plan their Vermont vacations around open house weekend.

MACRO: A steady flow of visitors all weekend.

MICRO: A three-year old picking up a long dangly wad of sugar-on-snow with his fingers and not being able to cram it into his mouth.

March 26

WEATHER: High today 20, sunny and nippy. No sap run.

VERMONT OPEN HOUSE WEEKEND: We’ll be boiling tomorrow, Saturday, after 11 am, and serving sugar-on-snow from 10 til 4.

FIRSTS: First time this March that we’ve had a freeze-up.

First time this March that I have seen and heard a tree full of birds.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: What would you rather be: a flame, a gust of wind, a brook, or soil?

March 25

WEATHER: It did finally freeze last night, and warmed up quickly to 50, bluebird until the afternoon. Evening drizzle, still 40 at 10 pm and raining hard. Predicted to turn radically colder overnight.

SAP STATUS: All the bustle and bluster last evening were for only a few inches of sap in the tanks. The run petered out, and by 5 pm the lines froze. By 9 am the ice began to belch out of the main lines into the vacuum tub. We stayed by the tub to ensure that the pump could keep up with this alarming torrent of loose sap ice.

The new lines ran well today, Keystone and Maresan, partly due to being cold taps – higher on the hill or with a northern exposure.

NOTES FROM THE SUGARBUSH, from our interns who walked lines with the crew:

MACRO: I thought it ws really beautiful. It was great to be there.

MICRO: How easy it is for R to get up the hill!

Lots of deer poop.

Drinking sap directly from the tree.

Intricate network of tubing.

That tool – the red tool – is so cool.

Watching the bubbles – they’re like little passengers.

Got some cinnamon fern.

The brook.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: I found a lot of Huperziceae [common name: fur moss] with intact spores that look like yellow moons.

March 24

WEATHER: It snowed overnight and stayed in the high 20′s until mid-afternoon, when the skies cleared and the temp. rose into the mid-thirties. This is the closest we’ve come to a freezing day in March.

Snow and cold today and predictions for a warmer day tomorrow – the recipe for a run. Less than an hour ago my plan was to get to bed. But I checked the thermometer, and it was hovering around 34. So I checked the sap shed and the lines were running. Quick, fetch a pail of hot water! Quick, connect the outdoor hose! Quick, run up to the sap shed and turn off the release pump, open vacuum tubs and scrub away! Away, sleepiness! Welcome, adrenaline rush!

Imagine a faucet in your house that you cannot control. It runs when it so desires; sometimes it trickles, other times it gushes.

Now the thermometer reads 36. And there is ice on the puddles and stars in the sky, and a moon. And the vacuum pump is now on, setting off a night of chores.

Every couple of years we have a run like this that starts in the night. This one could choke off later tonight, although I doubt it will.

And so our second season commences…

QUOTE OF THE DAY: It’s such a tease.

March 23

WEATHER: Another drizzly day, in the 30′s to 40. No sap run.

MACRO: A baking dish of maple syrup biscuits fresh out of the oven.

MICRO: Imperfectly round, brown biscuits swimming in hot maple syrup.

Ten minutes later, the syrup has sugared up. Spooning it onto your plate with your second helping.

Salty and sweet on the tongue, the taste of tradition.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Everyone is saying how red the hills are, but they’re not that red.”

March 22

WEATHER: Drizzly rain all day, steady rain this evening, high aound 40. No sap run.

PROSPECTS FOR THIS WEEK: There is rampant speculation about when and if we will have another run.

NOTES FROM MARCH 22, 1999: Started boiling at 6 am. Wind beating at buildings, driving downward through the cupola into the pans. Waves in the front pan, hot ones.

Problems: 1) Too much sap. it ran all night, naughty, naughty.

2) Sap intake valve frozen (a pre-boiling dilemma)

3) Power went out. HELP!

4) No one checked the pump room after 3) and as a result the pump smoked away and the release pump did something bad which I don’t understand and never will. Naughty release pump!

5) What? No vacuum? Must be a break in the main line – the wind wreaking its havoc.

6) Density problems mostly all day.

7) The pump on the filter press went. Lew was at a meeting so the crew filled nearly two drums with unfiltered syrup. It took him two hours to replace the pump. Then we had to run all that syrup through the front pan again. Beautiful syrup, though.

8) Flood in the RO room due to misdirected permeate water.

9) E. noticed that the hydrometer was bouncing and bubbling out of its cup. Cracked, useless.

10) Fitting blew off in sap shed. No one free to fetch Lew a wrench. He finally let the sap gush out while he ran down to find the wrench.

P.S. Pump room door had been closed during the night. Temp. in that room rose to 110 F. Tropical  nightmare.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: ” You LIKE hats.”

March 21

WEATHER: Wet accumulating snow in the morning, melting snow in the afternoon, high near 40. No sap run.

SEVEN DAY NITER PRIMER, Sunday. The easy way to filter syrup is to pour it into a jug and wait. The niter settles out as sludge in the bottom of the jug. Then why don’t sugarmakers use this method? It is impossible to rinse the niter off the bottom of 30 or 40-gallon barrels, and no one wants to buy niter, not the customer who is buying a gallon nor the big distributor who pays by the pound. There is no easy way; filtering syrup is a chore. But my, how that clear syrup does glow in a glass flask by a sunny window!

ARCHIVAL JOURNAL ENTRY: March 21, 2000. Yesterday evening Lew sent 500 gallons of sap down the drain by inadvertently opening the sap tank gate valve in the RO room. Clyde and I heard an unusual clicking sound, plus the sap tank gauge wasn’t reading, but we didn’t figure it out until Lew woke up from his evening power nap.

Lew had to rebuild the pipe between the arch doors. A trip to Leo’s Welding in Moville for me.

Major flue leak while cleaning flues. Pans drained, disassembled, flues reshaped, leak soldered. Tools – buckets of sweet – guys – filth, for a few hours.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Sugar season is a cross between childbirth and a vacation.

March 20

WEATHER: Balmy this morning, chilly this evening. A northwest wind set in and suggested a change of weather. Moody skies.

SAP STATUS: No sap in the tanks.

BOILING STATUS: No boiling. Will we boil again?  No one knows. One neighbor said years ago, “Sugar season isn’t over until the fat lady sings.” We haven’t heard her yet.

SEVEN DAY NITER PRIMER, Saturday.  Larger sugaring operations filter syrup by pumping it through a filter press. First they stir diatomaceous earth into the hot syrup. DE is a white powder of one-celled organisms deposited on ancient ocean floors. It does not dissolve in the syrup but forms a suspension. The DE sticks to paper filters lining a whole rack of square metal waffles and spacers. As the syrup passes through, the DE absorbs the niter. When the filter press is full, the crew takes it apart, replacing the paper filters and dumping the waffle-like cakes of mocha residue in a bucket. Lots of light syrup can be run through the filter press before it must be cleaned, not so with the dark syrup and its slimy niter.

MACRO: Nebraska Valley kids, two boys and a girl, cooking sugar-on-snow on the picnic table in front of the sugarhouse.

MICRO: The sixth-grader spooning bubbly syrup on a bowl of snow to test it.

The high school sophomore smiling as she cuts up pickles.

The third grader rolling up sugar-on-snow on his fork for the fifty-ninth time.