I woke this morning to a beautiful winter’s day. The sky was blue, the sun was glinting on the newly fallen snow. Gorgeous.
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| A glorious winter day, on the third day of spring. |
Except that it is meant to be spring. The vernal equinox has come and gone. Officially we are now three days into spring. Only at Glen Villa, it seems we are nowhere near it.
Yesterday it snowed. And snowed. And snowed some more: about a foot of the white stuff came down. The accumulation now reaches almost to the railing on second floor deck. This is not normal. This is not the way it should be.
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| The kitchen door is hiding somewhere under that pile of snow. |
And normally, it isn’t. A few weeks ago, we tapped a section in the woods where a sugar camp used to be. The ancient maples there haven’t been tapped for over fifty years. ( I’m told that sap from old trees tastes as fresh as sap from younger ones, and I’m sure that is true. But there is no harm in testing this, is there?) This area is shadier than the section we normally use, which explains the change. There are more evergreens in the new area, and these trees hold the snow longer, keeping it cooler for an extra week or two. We are also tapping a warmer, sunny area, so the combination extends the season. And that means more syrup.
We put out the buckets in the first week of March, knowing that the sap would soon begin to run. But it didn’t. And it hasn’t. The buckets are empty, just hanging there, hunkered down in case there’s another storm.
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| Do the buckets look dejected? I think so. |
Sap runs when the temperature rises above freezing during the day and falls below freezing at night. This rise and fall acts like a pump, causing the tree’s ‘veins’ to expand and contract, forcing the sap up and out the hole we’ve ‘tapped’, and into the waiting bucket.
In a normal year, we would be collecting the sap that had dripped into those buckets, walking through snow less than ankle deep.
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| I took this photo on March 7, 2010. |
Or even, in some years, on bare ground.
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| Collecting the sap is a lot easier when you don’t have to trudge through snow. |
Today I tramped around outside, looking carefully for some sign of spring. I failed. So instead, I offer a photo of last year’s syrup can,
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| We produced this syrup last year. |
and a pretty picture, of what spring will bring. Some day.
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| My favourite spring ephemeral: Jeffersonia diphylla. |
Talk about the Polar Vortex, is it ever going to let up. Is this it, is it going to give up? The smell of Spring should be in the air and the sap should be running. I see you have your buckets out now and here’s hoping they will fill. Bruce Herring my buddy, we used to help in his sugar bush there at Fairview Farms in Lennoxville; with horses and everything before they put in sap lines. There is just something about standing around boiling sap in the spring time, wonderful experience. His mother just died so that ends that era and now he is left to take on the government as they expropriate acres for the junction they want to put in.
The expropriation happened, the Herrings moved to Jane Mitchell’s old farm on the road to Hatley. A great shame that the farm is no longer there. The big, totally unnecessary road that replaced it by-passes a tiny piece of Lennoxville. More destruction to the countryside. I hate it! Oh, and it was -26C last night. So no sap running today.
That was Brian Herring and Bruce Herring his cousin still has 350 acres left but will most likely sell it off bit by bit. He let some river front go a couple of months ago. They still have the sugar bush and the old reservoir and all the property up to Belvidere Heights. Brian Herring had dairy cows and everything that went with it while Bruce has all the other that is not really much good for anything but development. Bruce and I chat once a month over what to do with it etc. and all the problems it brings to the family in the transition of another generation. Can you hear the snow melt?
But do you remember–or have records–of what your weather was like in the 90s? Compared to the last several years, this winter seems prolonged and bitter. But when I think back to when we first moved to our previous house in 1989, this winter seems more like the ones I remember in the 90s. And which is supposed to be typical? Although I do concede that the local weather forecasters say this has been the coldest March since they started keeping records. This is why I feel it is so important to plant the earliest bulbs in the warmest spots. And also the coldest spots. And everywhere in between!
That’s a really good point, Kathy. Someone was saying just today that the sap used to run well into April. I don’t have records — and my memory is increasingly unreliable. So I don’t know if this year is significantly colder, or if more snow has fallen than normal. But it sure feels that way.