March 2015

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Sugar season is in full cry. March is all about sugar season, here in Vermont. But, like March, sugar season is all about false starts. How easy it would be if it would just start, ramp up, run full bore, ease off and then stop. Not sure it has ever done that.

We got a good opening week. The severe cold broke, the deep snow pack promised a long season, the sugarmakers got a series of good runs, even a few overnight runs...

Thawing the Line

Most of us who live in the North (and many who live in the South, given the winter we’ve had) have had the experience of thawing a frozen pipe with the help of an electric hair dryer.

This is a picture of the same principle, applied on a somewhat larger scale to a “main line”* in the CE Maple sugarbush.

Though it got fairly warm today – something like 45⁰ F – it was very cold this morning (like 12⁰) and this line runs under the access road…in the...

Sugaring time, at last

It’s March 11 and suddenly everything is different. It was eight degrees with two feet of snow, for Thanksgiving. Now, nearly four months later, two weeks into March, it has been cold cold cold with clean dry snow, ever since. It’s been a long haul. Yesterday the relentless cold was forgotten as the sun shone on a thawing world. The whole day felt like a party.

Last week the sugar makers were all tapped out by Town Meeting Day. When I was a...