To mere puny humans, the weather of late has made no sense. One Sunday morning you’re sitting on a bucket down-cellar, blasting hot air on a block wall to thaw the pipe from the well, which froze because it was twenty-frickin’ below zero outside, and the next there are robins in puddles in the dooryard.
The maple trees, however, seem to be fine with things as they are and the first run of sap in this neck of the woods has dribbled forth.
First Steam, 2016
With the last of more than 2,000 trees tapped just the other day, the collection tank filled and today the arch was fired up for the first boil of the season at Bobo’s Mountain Sugar.
A February Boil
When cold sap first warms enough to give off steam, the reaction to that smell is primal, like to the call of a loon or peepers on a warm May night. Intimately familiar in a distant, foggy way. Continue reading
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 