Tag Archives: Farm

November Speaks (Where October Left Off)

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Time has flown and my writing has taken the backseat recently. Actually it’s totally missed the car ride. Life hasn’t stopped most certainly even if my creativity sometimes remains furtive. I have managed a small amount of sharing on my Facebook groups even if I don’t find my way here. It’s not that my days have lacked adventure or travel. The Adirondacks have been like home to me these past few months as my 14 week work tour continued last week. We spent some quality time camping prior to my work assignment. Gone are the weeks of camping out of the Airstream that I enjoyed until almost the end of October. My last week of boondock camping at Fish Creek State Campground just before they closed proved to be quite the adventure! No hookups there.Rainy weather and cool nights would tax my batteries despite the addition of a portable Zamp solar charger system. I ran the furnace after returning from work while the generator was running before crawling under my thick stack of blankets each evening. The campground had made the decision to close the shower house early this season. No problem I decided. I had my fresh water tank full, a propane water heater, and a nice shower of my own in the Airstreams! Perfect right? Yes at first! Then my circuit board failed on the water heater and the hot water ceased. I troubleshot it in the dark with a flashlight to no avail. Too bad they didn’t still use the old style propane hot water heaters with a basic pilot light that you could hand light easily. No board means no hot water. But being stubborn (not to mention in need of a shower ) I did what any lover of a clean body would have done. I began heating pans of hot water on my propane stove. I had plenty of propane and plenty of water. I had considered for a nanosecond bathing in the lake itself! But after a day spent working outdoors in the cold rain that was not really a pleasant option.The next trick would involve bringing a dishpan into the shower itself. I filled it with a mix of hot and cold water to begin the shower experience. I won’t go into great detail of the entire process but let’s simply say it was mission accomplished if not mission supreme! I followed this procedure for a couple days then bide the camping season farewell. The Airstream has sat vacant for several weeks now at Jennifer’s.As for its departure south that is a rather obscure subject for the moment. Some plans had to altered while others were still being developed. Things can be quickly set in motion when your home is on wheels. It’s winterized at the moment. The nighttime temperatures continue to plummet and we decided it the safest course of action. The past few weeks have found me living in rentals in Saranac Lake. One has become my favorite after I discovered it last October. The owners have taken the time to make the space a cozy, warm retreat. They are friendly and welcoming as hosts! I consider myself fortunate to have found them. The Olympic Center Revitalization Project inches forward with substantial progress having been made since August. My time working there almost finished as the critical manpower shortage winds down into its final days. It’s been a blur of work, travel to the valley for weekends, and back up for the next week. I have watched the transition of autumn from the moment it began in the Adirondacks. The St. Lawrence valley autumn has lagged slightly behind and it’s been fun observing the differences. I had one memorable hike about mid -October when I decided to take on Cascade Mountain after work one evening. I hit the trailhead at 6:16 pm chasing the sunset after a beautiful warm day on the project. Darkness would overtake me before I could summit however. The views were still remarkable and I stood there gazing off to the horizons of flickering lights in the distance. It took me much longer to descend the mountain than I intended. Lucky for me Jennifer called and chatted me down! I reached the car close to 8:45 pm. What a hike! Hiking adventures have been replaced by farm tasks recently. A wood order that needs to be filled. Hay to store away for our two remaining horses. Many different tasks present themselves as winter approaches. It’s best not to get caught short I have learned even if I struggle to get it together! We cruise the farm woods searching for firewood and sugar wood trees sometimes. There is still an over abundance of dead maple to be found although some of it has begun to move past its prime. Time is bringing change to our devastated forest as the upper canopies continue to fall. We have made some inroads of harvest into some sections while others remain untouched. It’s been a rather disturbing cycle to witness since 2017. The dual deadly tap of tent caterpillars and drought of 2016. The subsequent die off has been far reaching across the high ridges of the farm. We hope to begin some forest cleanup attempts in the time before us. Time flies and progress comes slowly at times but nature throws us some pretty stiff challenges from time to time. Ice storms.Insects. Invasive species. The future of the farm landscape remains unclear and hazy. We have a basic plan and hope to further our stewardship efforts moving forward. So that’s about it really. Work and commutes. Packing bags and moving around each week. Travel back and forth. Balancing time with Zane and Jennifer on the weekends when home. The shortening daylight throws a twist into everything. As much a part of autumn as the falling leaves themselves. All this I chose I must admit when I question my trajectory some days. This is a temporary path I hike. The objectives begin to be completed. Time can’t run backwards nor can the courses of action that decisions created. It’s strange the energy that drives those decisions. And the energy that steers the feet back to the farm property in the valley. For some tasks can’t be postponed indefinitely. Winter changes everything. A sugar season must be prepared for with no further delay.New goals take the stage and there’s still time to fulfill them. That becomes the new focus. November speaks and I listen closely. It’s a familiar song. The northern breeze in the trees of the farm property. A time to enjoy a simple lunch next to the farm cabin wood stove. A time to enjoy a few minutes of silence. A time to reflect and a time to reconnect. There is a calming peace in the simple accomplishments of farm tasks preparing for winter. It’s an adventure of a different sort. A destination where you travel back to simple roots. A familiar feeling in an old place. It’s a new autumn in a year well underway now. Many things have changed and many things have not. It’s a powerful place to stand and count small blessings. Spirit energy is ever present on the rocky turf of these Macomb hills.

Bugs,Brush,and Brown Gold

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It starts with that first find of the season and grows into a weekly obsession as the warm days of spring bring that most special of treasures into our home. What is this special treasure and why does it deserve a blog post? The morel mushroom! It’s reputation is world renowned and for good reason. It’s earthy,almost nutty flavor and exotic shape make it prized as an addition to fine cuisine around the globe. Know for it’s good taste and rareness it’s a valuable commodity that drives morel hunters into the forest in search of it. For a boy growing up in the hills of Macomb,N.Y. it was nothing more than another excuse to run wild across the pastures and through the forests. I spent hours hunting morels as a boy. A brown paper A+P grocery bag would carry my finds back to the farmhouse where a visiting aunt would pay me a dollar if I had a good quantity to deliver. Like a good many other country pursuits of mine it was never really about the money anyway. Today finds that mindset well ingrained and well grounded. I never really knew all that much about morels until recently. My father had taught me what they were and the basics of locating them but little more. Little more was needed anyway. But I have read more about them recently and even joined a couple social media groups dedicated to the morel mushroom hunters of the world. It seems that I am part of a special clique as a morel hunter! Not everyone is so fortunate I’ve read. The morel is the star of the mushroom world!For many will search and not all will find them. Those skills and good fortunes that we often take for granted truly do represent a status symbol to certain groups of people. As I get older I realize that the rural heritage that I enjoy without really thinking about it is something that can’t be purchased easily. It doesn’t give me an ego trip or anything like that. It’s more of a reminder of the blessings my country upbringing bestowed upon me as a way of life was lived. Being a forager was a part of that upbringing. As was being a hunter and trapper. Fisherman to a certain degree as well.The different seasons of northern New York offered a variety of foraging opportunities for a boy of Macomb. The first forage crop of a north country spring is the leek. Some call them ramps or wild onions. They emerge from the layers of autumn leaves as the sun warms the ridges and valleys. They make excellent flavoring for spaghetti sauce, burgers, or as pickles. We’d also forage a green called cow slips. They resemble spinach when cooked down. We’d gather in low wet locations typically next to runoffs and small streams. The month of May belonged to the morels though. Also to the swarms of biting black flies that plagued our time outside for a few weeks each spring. Ticks are a problem now that we didn’t have years ago. We spray our clothing for them but they are a constant and potentially dangerous threat to our health. Post gather tick checks now as part of a normal outing. The 1970s were a morel hunters dream in upstate New York but not for a good reason. Dutch elm disease was killing our elms in sickening numbers. The morel mushroom enjoys a symbiotic relationship with trees but on our farm they grow without question next to dead elms most of the time. It is the red elm that they truly favor for some unknown chemical balance that they seem to derive from them. Find dead red elms in May and you will find morels at some point most springs. The wide open cow pastures and ridges were blanketed with dead elms when I was a boy of 12. We harvested them for firewood and some farm grade lumber. Morels came easy and I never needed to search too hard. I didn’t eat them however. I didn’t care for them! Boy did that change! I didn’t hunt them much for quite a few years but would notice them from time to time around the farm doing spring fence repairs. Fast forward to more recent times.2019.. We still own the farm property of my youth. A 14 year old Zane has developed a love of foraging. Leeks mostly. But a friend asked us about getting a few morels after a turkey hunter mentioned he saw some on our farm. So Jennifer and I headed out to the farm to search for some. We harvested a nice gather next to a red elm stump where we had cut the large tree the fall before. Our friend cooked them up and we were hooked! It turns out my adult palate found them delicious! So the love of the hunt returned after many years of hiatus. Zane was totally into the hunt and enjoyed eating them as well. We enjoyed a late but productive season and vowed to try harder in 2020. The spring of 2020 was very dry and morels were difficult to locate. We covered a lot of the farm finding almost nothing. Around May 19th we located a few but were terribly short of enough for a decent meal. Our hot spots of 2019 were dry and barren except for a few small ones. We continued to search and were about to call off the effort for good that afternoon. There was a clump of vine covered dead red elms on a rocky outcropping beside a small meadow of ours. Surrounded by thick thorny brush we call prickly ash. I suggested that Zane should do a quick scout since it’s difficult terrain had kept us out as we searched easier spots. As had become his fashion he dropped to all fours and scurried under the old rusty barbed wire fence. He crawled through the impenetrable brush like some type of predator in search of prey. He disappeared from sight eventually as I waited in the scratch free,safety of the meadow pondering our meager harvest. Zane’s excited voice carried down to me from his invisible perch above me. “Dude you’ve got to get up here! This place is loaded! I smelled them before I saw them!”. (Calling each other Dude is an excepted manner of addressing each other). I found a less brushy route and made my way closer to Zane. Sure enough there were morels all over! The thick brush forced me to my knees as well as I began to harvest a variety of different sized morels. Zane and I continued our search in a epicenter type circle around the original finds. Satisfied that we had plenty we returned to the side by side to count them up. We had collected 70! Not bad! They made a superb addition to a dinner with our friend once again.We once again vowed to make the next season even better.Spring 2021 would find us searching earlier than normal in hopes of finding a few morels but the weather remained a little rainy and unseasonably cold. Despite that I continued to check our previous hot spots but it wasn’t until May 4th that I finally had any success. At Zane’s hot spot location of 2020 I found a few small ones poking out. I decided to leave them until he could join me on the hunt that Saturday. I searched other prior spots but found nothing. I thought about a location where I had spotted dead red elms while collecting sap in March and April. When I arrived there I was rewarded soon after with a nice morel. More would follow as I broadened my search pattern. I find Zane’s drop to the knees method highly effective and use it all the time now. My count ended at 69. A couple quick messages and a dinner was planned on short notice with morels as the featured appetizer. We enjoyed our first taste of the season immensely! Dip fried breaded morels with hand crafted dipping sauce. We’ve returned to the woods in the weeks that have followed gathering as many as we can find. Our harvests have met our needs and we’ve enjoyed the morels prepared a couple different ways now. So if you desire to hunt these members of the Morchella genus welcome to the club! They’ll be found sometimes where you least expect! Post forest fire locations in the western states and Canada. In groves of pines or Iowa river bottoms. These highly sought gifts of the forest truly are brown gold. For me the thrill resides in the time spent hunting them with Zane and Jennifer. Eating them is the tasty bonus that foragers of the wild embrace in our ongoing connection to nature. We seek the symbiotic relationship of spirit and earth. Under large and open skies on property that we are blessed to own. Quiet and comforting in the passage of time and season. The echoes of our happy yells as we make that bountiful find of a new morel patch will last forever. They are ripples of harmony and balance. Who knew such power existed in a simple fungi of the forest? Or that we could find such peace so close to the very ground itself. The hunt for morels is more than just a hunt. It is so very much more. The secret lives in the seasons themselves within the circle. Can one enter and never leave? The question that time may answer.

The Invasion and The Battle of Evermore

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Choosing titles for my blog posts is a fun and entertaining part of the process for me! I feel my rambling muses deserve witty titles of descriptive creativity that truly represent the subject matter I toss at my readers with a careless disregard for preordained writing techniques. My titles are as raw and honest as the emotions that fuel my simple words each time I grab my tablet to begin tapping out a post. Ask any of my work friends about a day on the job site around me years ago! It was often filled with movie lines and quotes that I found inspirational. Music lyrics and rhyming poem lines. A full on misfiring of synapses and the constant changing of topics. Physicians have a term for my affliction these days but I prefer to call it Taz energy. It never bothered me all too much as a student as I recall. I was quite a loner and somewhat shy. I was rather quiet actually although most people wouldn’t believe that now. A lover of books and reading. My daylight hours spent running through the woods like some semi-feral animal. On horseback I was equal parts reckless and skilled at the same time.School often felt like a cage to me. Outdoors I felt free and unencumbered by responsibility. Years later certain work projects would invoke a similar feeling but I had trained myself to accept the harness and pull the load that I had chosen. What’s this got to do with an invasion? Very little up to now. Consider this portion a continuing introduction of my background and history. I grew from simple roots and my stories reflect upon them.Let’s begin with the second portion of my title. In 1971 the band Led Zeppelin recorded the song The Battle of Evermore. It appeared on the untitled album most people refer to as Led Zeppelin IV. It’s haunting melody was sung as a duet and featured a mandolin. It’s an interesting song and I’ve always admired the lyrics. I suppose I interpreted it as an illustration of something eternal. Enter the invader to this story. Not human or animal but a simple bush. It’s called wild bush honeysuckle.An invader from Asia brought here as an ornamental bush to decorate gardens. I will leave all further research as to it’s origins and path of invasion to you. I will tell you that it’s a master of spreading by growing its leaves early and shedding them late resulting in fast growth. It’s numerous berries aid its progress across a landscape. I can’t say with any certainty when we first discovered it on the farm or even noticed it anywhere else for that matter. My father mentioned it once after it had begun to choke our fence rows. We had battled wandering juniper over the years but we had easily kept it under control. Not so with this invader. We didn’t get too concerned at first honestly. It blended in with the other bushes of summer and was quickly forgotten most of the time. So for years it continued to spread without us ever really getting concerned. Sometime after my father’s death someone explained to me that this strange new bush on our farm was an invasive species and that it needed to be controlled.I began to look closer when I walked the farm. Once I trained my eyes to recognize it I became increasingly alarmed! It was growing unchecked everywhere I looked on the farm and all around the north country! People seemed oblivious and unconcerned to its presence just as I had been before becoming informed. It’s worthless for firewood or anything for that matter so it goes unnoticed. Enter the warrior of sorts. Me.Armed with a tractor and loader. Chainsaws and logging chains. I began to target them anytime I was out working in the forest gathering firewood. They rip up easy so the tractor loader was the perfect weapon. Despite my best efforts though I knew we were losing the war against our new adversary. I began to target the larger ones as they produce more seeds each season. The piles of destroyed wild honeysuckles grew larger but still they continued to spread. Two years ago I found a location near our line fence that I began to call Ground Zero. The size of the bushes could only be described as old growth. It appeared that our invader had entered our property from our neighbors pasture lands years ago. No longer grazed they were the perfect staging ground for the invader. I attacked ground zero with the tractor and loader spending hours ripping up huge bushes. Last year I continued ripping them up all over the farm in a desperate fight to hold them back. The 2016/2017 die off of our sugarbush hasn’t helped. The plentiful sunlight in the formerly shaded locations aids our invader’s growing season. Zane has joined me in the battle now. Jennifer has suggested a quadrant by quadrant approach that we may implement eventually. But right now its sporadic ground skirmishes on all fronts. I destroyed about 20 bushes yesterday but it’s a small win. Call me the romantic fool comparing our battle for supremacy of the farm fields and forests to a war. But that’s how I perceive it now. We won’t ever stop ! Zane tells me that with youthful enthusiasm and hope. We are winning he believes. Who am I to question his resolve or dream of saving the farm from being overrun? We are planning to bring in the heavy artillery at some point and wage a month long battle against them. Together with two machines. Hydraulics and human technology. Fire and huge flaming brush piles. Yes it all sounds a little crazy perhaps. But get informed and help rid our beautiful wild spaces of this unwanted invader. This is the Battle of Evermore I fear. One we must fight or walk away with shame at doing nothing to save our farm.

The Goldilocks Story of Recent Events

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We’ve all heard the old saying time flies. It certainly has for me! My writing has fallen behind in the past few weeks especially the blog. We have been busy with the maple syrup season in a crazy series of abnormal weather events. A Goldilocks spin of too warm or too cold. Some days were just right and we produced some high quality amber rich grade. Then the swing to dark robust. Full flavor and signaling the progression of season. We had hoped for one more day of jug worthy syrup but Saturday’s boil produced only commercial grade. A sweet and bitter brew with a biting aftertaste. The trees have begun to grow their buds in the sunny,warming days of spring. Frosty nights can’t bring the sweet syrup back now. Even our 50 new taps that ran clear sap couldn’t produce sweet syrup. We decided to begin filling one of our stainless steel barrels although we don’t expect to fill it. They hold 30 gallons. It’s no big deal honestly. We’ve enjoyed a more leisurely season with the goofy weather. None of the mind numbing days and nights where a type of exhaustion would prevail. It was an on again, off again sugar season. During the off days we stayed extremely busy though packing and moving from Hill House. Zane and I have lived there the past 6 years. I sold it to a family from northern Virginia recently after trying to sell it for almost two years. It was the Goldilocks story of real estate. No one wanted to buy it. It was too remote. Too rocky. Too whatever. A couple low offers but nothing I would consider accepting. Jennifer had suggested that I keep it listed on Zillow. A free site that gives you updates almost daily. There were lots of views and saves in my stats profile but other than a few random questions no one had ever stepped forward. That would change last Xmas eve however. I received a text from a man asking more questions. I didn’t take him seriously at first but he kept contacting me asking questions. We eventually spoke on the phone and had an interesting conversation that lasted a long time. About that time a fellow from Pennslyvania also texted me. It had happened. An exodus of buyers was causing an upsurge in real estate in the north country. The Xmas eve buyer requested a showing. I didn’t have a realtor so I would be showing my own property. The Pennslyvania individual also requested a showing through a local real estate agent. To make a long story short the Virginia person whom I will simply call Scott toured the property with me in January. We spent most of the day together. We shared a lunch with him that Jennifer had made in a gesture of northern hospitality. These days we treat strangers with a different attitude. The pandemic has altered our mannerisms. Scott said he wanted the property pending an inspection. I politely turned the Pennslyvania fellow away. He was not happy with me! Scott returned in February with his wife and one of his sons. The house and property were just right! The Goldilocks event had occurred. The handshake agreement of January had led to an accepted offer and we were moving to a closing. Things were moving quickly and we began to pack with an urgency that bordered on obsession.I plowed out the farm driveway as there was a lot of snow at the time. It took some time and effort. I rented a storage box that we call a convex in construction. Twenty feet in length and eight feet wide. Later a second. They’re sturdy,dry,and rodent proof. We started moving out and loading the conex boxes. All this in winter. Not an easy time to move. We dug out our cottage at Black Lake and stored things there as well. March 1st marked the beginning of the syrup season. Now we were both sugaring and moving. It became a little hectic at times with a closing deadline looming. Wow! We owned a lot of stuff! Not surprising I suppose when you enjoy several different hobbies that revolve around a four season location in the world. Spring clothes. Summer clothes. Fall and winter clothes. Footwear for every season. Books and collectibles. Zane’s belongings. You must be catching my drift if you’ve ever moved! Scott and his wife agreed to let us stay ten days past the actual closing on March 17th. A super generous gesture of new found friendship. March 27th found us moved into our small Black Lake cottage. It’s usually called Camp Edith (after my grandmother).She and my grandfather had it built in 1927. They owned a farm in the area and several other lake properties. They actually lived in the cottage at least one winter after a fire destroyed their farm house. A large wood stove heated the cottage then. They only had four small rooms and a covered screen porch. An outhouse. A hand pump from a hand dug well. It must have been cozy living and challenging at the same time! Especially with all the children! I had built on to the cottage in 1995. Added a bedroom,bathroom,and utility room. Indoor plumbing modernized the cottage to a degree. It’s pretty much stayed the same since. One room was removed and the kitchen area was expanded several years ago. Upgrades to electrical. Insulation and some new windows. So here we are in April. Moved into a fully crowded cottage I now temporarily call Camp Chaos. Every day finds us more settled. It gets chilly some nights when the pellet stove can’t keep the cold at bay. I miss the large wood stove but it had become unsafe. We carry our water from the lake for the toilet and washing dishes. We shower at my sister’s house adjacent to the cottage. Some mornings I sip coffee in front of the warm pellet stove with the lights off. I muse on the similarities of my present time to my grandparents time. Very different but connected in some ways. There’s a friendly energy in Camp Chaos that will bring Camp Edith back to full glory. It lives in my determination. To rough it for a few weeks. Rough it? We have a roof over our heads. A flush toilet. Electricity and appliances. Heat. There lies the positivity. Why do we sometimes fail to see what we have and not always wish for more?Our time at Camp Chaos may humble our neediness.Why say it’s too small or too cold?Why not say it’s just right for now? That’s how I think I will approach these days of living in the cottage. The days grow warmer and lake living will get even better. We will end the sugar season this week sometime. Move forward with the cottage transition. Move forward with adventures and travel. Move forward with the blog and my writing. We will approach life with the attitude of saying it’s just right. Try to avoid the negative. What we find lacking we can attempt to change. In the meantime it’s nice to have moved on from Hill House having found the ideal new owners. The move is towards simplicity. Another story for another day.

The Wait

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March 14th. A very cold morning with the mercury hovering at 9 degrees Fahrenheit while chilly winds from the north make it seem even colder. Sugaring is stalled out for the moment but we remain diligent and busy. We continue to set taps and our count surpasses 400 now.Using the old timers rule of 1 quart of syrup per tap for the season we could possibly make 100 gallons. But the trees are fickle and temperamental if you assign them human emotions. Sometimes they hold tight to their sap in a most perplexing manner. I have learned a few simple strategies over the past 13 years since I have taken the lead role in our small operation and place them into our plans. One of them is to continue to set fresh taps throughout the season. Some of our taps have been out 2 weeks as of today but it’s remained too cold for steady runs. Last week’s two day stretch of warm weather yielded us a modest run that enabled us to flood the evaporator for our first boil. I never got a batch “pulled” before I had to shut down as the sap supply in the 400 gallon storage tank dwindled to nothing. That’s not uncommon on the first boil of the season. At the start of the initial boil the evaporator is full of raw sap in all the different chambers. Eventually it becomes less watery close to the “finishing” pan. Raw sap continues to enter the back pan of our evaporator at ambient temperature. A float system enables me to control the depth and flow rate to the pans. The heavier “pre-syrup” liquid pushes itself forward towards the finishing pan. I trap a certain level in the finishing pan and hold it there until it measures as syrup. I use a simple hydrometer to accomplish the task. Once the evaporator is set up there are about 5-7 gallons of syrup “trapped” in it at any given moment at different levels of sugar content. There’s a little more to the process than that but that’s the gist of it. Last week we had two extremely warm days with a high of 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Not ideal but the sap did flow. Not as much as I anticipated but it didn’t drop below freezing at night. Ideal sap runs follow nights below freezing and daytime highs above freezing. 40 degrees Fahrenheit sunny days are ideal for good sap runs. The wind has shifted back to the north and little sap is flowing for now. We wait for a possible run on Tuesday. A high of 45 degrees Fahrenheit predicted. Perfect. We have continued to set a few taps out to take advantage of the temporary lull in activity. I was a little concerned last week that the smaller trees didn’t produce as much sap as I thought they should. The larger trees seemed to release much better. I made the decision yesterday to set out a section of mini-tube runs on a wooded ridge on our farm known to us as Green Mountain. A group of large maples cover the ridge. It’s named for the green plastic sap tubing we used there. Most of our normal tubing is blue. Mini-tubes are short sections of sap tubing that connect a series of ridge trees that are tough gathering if buckets are used. My father started building mini-tubes years ago and we began adding them throughout our sugarbush. They are taken down,washed, and stored each season. I may have mentioned them in a previous post. Most of our mini-tube runs are obsolete now after the 2016/2017 sugarbush die off I mentioned in a previous post. We are waiting to assess how many maples survive before we attempt to rework our mini-tubes in some of the sections. Large portions of our former sugarbush have been retired for the moment. Wood salvage operations will keep the trail networks open until we decide the best possible way forward. For the moment the sugar house sits idle but ready. The taps idle but ready for the next thaw. It is a moment where we can catch our breath. We hope to be swamped with sap soon! I welcome the long days of boiling that secure the supply and make for a successful season. They arrive with mind numbing task and toil that brings a strange peace suddenly when you least expect it! Perhaps it’s exhaustion! Regardless it’s a priceless gift of our hobby.I will try to bottle it with words and deliver it to you! I recently joked about my sentences being as winding as our sugarbush sap tote roads! That pretty much sums it up! I am presently trying to hire a certain woman who is very close to me to be my writing editor! So far my efforts have failed!She did accept a job in the sugarbush though!As for being an editor she’s holding out for a better wage package and increased benefits! In the sugarbush I work for less than $3/hr average so overall negotiations prove difficult! I mentioned to her that perhaps I should be charging for the experience of working in the sugarbush! Like a gym membership!All this working out and physical exertion must be worth something! Speaking of a winding tote road, did I ever mention that I was never a straight “A” student? I was way too busy running through the woods and swamps like a wild,feral animal to bother with my studies! Something that always troubled my father greatly! Reading however was something I treasured greatly!I graduated high school and later received a 2 year college degree in electrical technology despite my feral tendencies. In 1982 I chose the migratory life of a construction electrician after being excepted into the I.B.E.W. Local 910 apprenticeship program. Jobs were scarce in the north country as a recession gripped the nation. It’s a place to start out I thought. This “temporary” vocation situated me well for over 37 years. I even managed to retire at 55 years of age. My goal during the many long and tedious indoor projects that kept me from the forests.We will visit those years sometime here on the blog. In the meantime while we wait for the sap run to resume you will need to wait for better grammar and sentence structure! As long as I am rambling I may as well mention that I still to this day run through the swamps and woods ( with my son now) like some sort of wild,feral animal! I just don’t move so fast these days! I must also mention that there is a freedom in the creation of blog posts that I thoroughly enjoy! Call it liberty! My blogging is not for financial gain or under the scrutiny of a pushy,demanding employer! I can tell my stories in my own words with honest and simple words. From my heart always. There is that part of me that feels the need for nothing artificial or staged to meet certain expectations of modern society.My words can be as raw as the sap hitting the evaporator float in the sugar house. But much warmer. I don’t care for artificial flavors especially fake maple syrup. I will go without before using it. Words can be compared in a similar manner. Sharing is my mission. To bring to life my observations and challenges. To perhaps inspire and give hope to someone who needs something different today. Or maybe to take someone on a walk down memory lane for a minute. To divert their attention. If I brought fond memories back to life for someone than I feel that I have brought something worthwhile and meaningful to the world. Or if my words give someone hope for tomorrow that’s a positive goal. We are connected in the new age survival of the present. Positive energy can heal in these troubled times. Bring us all together. I frequently ask people to share their stories about their lives. In time I will invite comments and give people an opportunity to share them here. Critics and their negativity don’t bother me. They are a part of the struggle to co-exist in the world. In time they will blow away like the fallen maple leaves of last summer’s foliage. They will never hinder our progress or stop our mission of positivity. They too serve a purpose in the cycles of nature. Growth where nothing is wasted. There are privileges within the freedoms of self expression. Positivity will be the backbone of my content. Life is not perfect or without dark days. Those times will be acknowledged with honest testimony. We must embrace all that happens that we can’t change. We should strive to learn from our mistakes.Extend kindness and compassion. Always appreciate our small blessings and those we share them with in our lives.Acknowledge our special memories with the people we love! We named those memories MOONTABS!It’s so important to celebrate!Please follow our journey of season and celebration of spring as it unfolds. We hope you find it sweet and tasty! Remember that one matter who you are or what you find interesting ….“It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.” J.R.R. Tolkien.

Not Just Yet

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March is a special month for us here in northern N.Y.!Why?Maple syrup season! It’s a hobby that I have enjoyed for many years now. The story of how I came to love it so much is rich with family history and rural heritage. As the first of March approaches we plan on getting started setting our taps. It always reminds me of my father in the last few years of his life. He never wanted to start tapping until March 15th. I’d be impatient and would say “let’s get going! “He’d simply say “we’ll start soon but not just yet!”I can’t say for sure when we first began to sugar on our farm. My parents purchased the farm around 1969.There was an existing sugar house and old evaporator over in a small section of woods off the main farm meadow. Sometime in the mid to late seventies my two uncles and my father partnered up to make syrup together. My father worked and I had school so they did much of the gathering and boiling. I enjoyed going over in the evenings when some of the boiling was done. I honestly can’t remember a whole lot in the haze of time gone past but I remember certain moments clearly.Like the time I wacked myself in the head with a block of wood I was attempting to split. My cousin was running the evaporator and I wandered off for awhile to suffer my humiliation.Another memory that stayed with me was when my uncle Charlie shared a sub with me! It was the first one that I had ever eaten! Funny the things we remember! I can’t say for sure how many years we did syrup while I was in school but I know that the evaporator pans got bad at some point and couldn’t be repaired easily. My uncles built their own sugar house on their farm and tapped their large stands of maples close to home. I would stop in and visit sometimes when they boiled at night. My father’s cousin Keith Tyler also began sugaring and we would visit there sometimes. Our sugar house sat idle for quite a few years. The back wood shed section roof rotted through and I tore it down one summer. My father rebuilt it later that fall. The main sugar house structure was an old garage the previous farm owner Forrest Hosmer had moved there sometime in the fifties. It needed a new roof but has stood the test of time. My father expanded the wood shed for better storage space but the structure has changed very little over the years.It wasn’t until just before my father retired in 1990 that we returned to making syrup on a yearly basis. He had two custom pans built for the old evaporator in Vermont. He gathered sap with a team of his horses. My stepmother Shirley was his partner in the sugarbush. I helped out with tapping and some of the sugar wood collecting. My memories are a little vague and I miss my journals that were destroyed in our house fire of 2012. They contained a wealth of details that I can’t ever hope to drag from my memory. But beginning in 1991 something occurred that would change me forever. My memories are clear and concise of the day my father decided that I would learn to run the evaporator for the first time! I was nervous and a little intimidated by the responsibilities that come with that task! There’s a lot that can go wrong if you don’t pay close attention. But my father patiently guided me through the process and I caught on quickly. I wasn’t working that spring and spent a lot of time helping with sugaring. I did a lot of the boiling and my passion for the sweet creations that flowed from the evaporator became something more.I found a special connection in the rising steam of the boiling sap. There’s a poetry of motion in the process of running the evaporator. My father would come in between delivering loads of sap and visit with me. He’d tell me stories of growing up and sugaring with his father Alvin. It was in those days of boiling sap that my father became my best friend. We already had a special bond but something changed. He was passing on the yearly tradition with fatherly hope for the future I’d realize later. I grew fond of boiling sap at night. We had no electricity in our sugar house so a propane lantern supplied the light to run the evaporator. Our sugar house had been cleverly constructed on a side hill and everything worked on the principle of gravity. No need for pumps. I spent a lot of time alone boiling sap at night and found it relaxing despite the busy routine. The evaporator became predictable as I learned it’s needs for sap and firewood. A practiced routine of stoking the large fire box developed. Testing the boiling sap and drawing off the batches like clockwork. Filtering the hot syrup and jugging it up. There was little time for sitting until the end of the day when most of the sap was gone. The process of firing down has its own list of tasks before shutting down completely. There was plenty of time for thinking though. I kept a pen and notebook handy for jotting down random thoughts. I kept no meal schedule and basically ate whenever I could grab something out of my lunchbox. In any given day I consumed a fair amount of fresh syrup. I sample a small amount from each batch. Over the course of a long day it adds up! But crafting quality maple syrup is a prideful vocation and I strive for success. We’d average about 10 gallons a day with a decent sap run. But sap runs are fickle and unpredictable. We’d sometimes find ourselves swamped by a huge run and I’d find myself putting in an extra long day. 24 gallons is pretty much my one day record for our small operation. That’s a long day!The years passed and I found myself increasingly busy with my work. But I’d always find time to get to the woods for the gather. Saturday’s and Sunday’s were spent boiling to give my father a break. I managed to be off work some syrup seasons and it became a goal of mine. Get time off for sugaring! Not something every employer understands or tolerates well. No matter! When your hobby lasts only a few weeks each spring there’s no time for postponing it. So I managed as best I could to find a balance. After all, there’s a finite number of syrup seasons in a person’s life! I remember the spring of 1994. I was in between jobs and looking forward to maple syrup season when a call to return to work came one afternoon. Oswego County. Too far to drive so I had to live out of town. But I would return each Friday night to be able to help out in the sugar house for the weekend. The ice storms of 1991 and 1998 heavily damaged our sugarbush. We cleared the trails and salvaged the firewood. We had to say goodbye to some of our favorite trees. It’s painful in a strange manner. But that’s nature. Some seasons were short and others were almost perfect. Weather is the biggest factor of sugaring. So here I am.Thursday.March 4th.2021. We started setting taps Monday. We hit a count of 62 then a wind driven snow storm forced us to quit. Bitter winds and cold the past two days have kept us out of the woods. We hope to resume our tapping tomorrow. The weather is breaking next week and we need to be ready! Time will not wait nor will the sugar season.Perhaps we tried to start a little too early this year. I know we missed a small run over the weekend. But maple sugaring is a game of chance and circumstances. Weather can’t be controlled. We lost our father and maple syrup mentor in June 2007. That spring was our final syrup season together. But I haven’t missed a season since. I miss my father in the sugar house. My stories of maple sugaring are many and will flow like a plentiful sap run in time. This story but lays the groundwork of a passionate hobby that borders on an obsession. There’s a magic in the motion of being a “sapsucker”. There’s an energy that I chase within our fervent endeavors. It surrounds and permeates the body with a peace that words will never capture. It must be experienced in all its many forms. In all the weather one can imagine the season will arrive and quickly pass. It’s time these stories were written and shared. But “not just yet”!

Cold Memories From A Warm Heart

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A cold morning at Hill House this morning!It’s been a strange winter for sure!Quite mild actually, with minimal snow.The Lake only sports about 8 inches of ice down in front of the house. After last night I expect that changed. As I stepped out to fire the outside wood boiler (aka The Monster) in my bathrobe and Crocs I realized there was a significant wind chill also. A bathrobe and Crocs is standard attire for a retired person up here on the hill. After all what’s the hurry? It’s that time of winter when the increase of daylight becomes noticeable.Icicles form and drip as the sun hits them. Mini avalanches send snow sliding off the southern and western portions of the metal roof with startling rumbles. I have a lifelong fascination with ice. Walking on it.Following the streams and exploring beaver ponds. Taking shortcuts across it to save time. Always looking for that perfect picture of it hanging from ledges. Amazed as the lake ice booms at night as you shine a flashlight on a night set walleye tip up. Ice is powerful. Cracking concrete. Moving foundations and lifting asphalt. A morning such as this reminds me that this morning’s temperature of 7 degrees Fahrenheit is nothing! I am always telling my teenage son Zane about the cold winters of my youth. He scoffs and says “ older people always say things like that!” But I remember many cold days and nights from years ago. The weather began to take a sudden turn here sometime in the eighties. More unpredictable and sporadic. We still had some fierce winters but things were much different. The winters of 1993 and 1994 were some of the coldest in recent history as I recall. The winters of my youth were rather predictable most of the time throughout the seventies. Late November would find the freeze up beginning. By Xmas time the ice was nicely formed and the snow would begin to accumulate. The temperatures would continue to plummet and by January it could be brutal!We would however often get a January thaw that would last a few days then disappear. Nothing like the up and down cycles we endure here now each winter. Sure there were abnormalities and breaks in the patterns occasionally. Typically after the January thaw the weather would remain very cold till March.The first two weeks of February could be some of the coldest we’d get all winter! The sun might shine but when’s it’s minus 20 or below it didn’t matter much! Growing up on the farm winter changed the routine immensely. Everything was more difficult. Snow to shovel.Hungry horses and cows stabled in the warm barn to feed twice a day. Their waste to be removed from the barn each day.Water to keep from freezing as well. Doors and feed holes always sticking. Saturday’s would find us out with the team of horses cutting firewood. We pulled a big work sleigh for hauling the wood to the farmhouse. No fancy dry weave or nylon clothing. Wool was the answer to keeping warm. Wool pants and chopper’s mitts. Wool toques the standard fare. The job of the farm boy was to always break the sleigh runners free with a large steel bar before they could be moved.They’d freeze down to ground and take some effort to free. It was a cycle of life that became the normal. I think it’s why I have this tremendous connection to the seasons. Sometimes it would be too cold to even venture out to work. But that was rare. The daylight would increase and we’d skip work some Saturdays. We’d load our gear and head to the lake for a day of ice fishing. We’d drive right across the lake with the truck on 20 inches plus of ice.Great memories!One winter especially comes to mind. It was 1978 headed into 1979. Xmas day a balmy -25 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil filter on the Ford Mercury burst when trying to start it. The days of that winter would see a 30 day plus run of days that never got above 0 degrees Fahrenheit! Brutal and testing the limits of people and machines! I learned the tricks of survival.Battery chargers and booster cables. Dry gas to keep fuel lines flowing. Fuel injection not yet common as carburetors ruled the realms of internal combustion engines. We didn’t own anything diesel then. The winter of 1979 and 1980 was equally cold. As I think back over the years I can remember so many brutally cold days and nights. So today feeling cold at 7 degrees Fahrenheit seems wimpy! I think we need to put on some dry weave inner layers with a nylon outer layer. Maybe my Gortex hunting jacket. I have been eyeing the real wool outer wear they sell at a store in Malone,N.Y. Perhaps it’s time to return to the old ways. Or maybe a blend of both worlds. One thing I can’t buy at any price is a pair of my Grandmother’s hand knit mittens. Or a wool jacket with a hand stitched cotton neck liner to keep the wool from irritating my skin. We survived those challenging days of years past. We’ve grown soft perhaps with these new winters. Those winters of our ancestors were very real! Not just a figment of aging memories. I know! I lived some of them! Close to nature. I am the fortunate man. To know the swing of seasons with passing days.To learn to care for livestock. To know the value of home heating fuel that came from the forests of the farm. To appreciate the warmth of the farmhouse at the end of the work day. Meat and potatoes to replenish and nourish the weary body. My roots are deep and well planted. For that I know I am truly blessed! The memories will never die if I keep them alive with words. Some things are best left forgotten but some are not. The stories are many and wait to be dredged like buried gold from the years. To leave them uncovered could be a loss. For Zane and all my family. “It’s no bad thing to celebrate a simple life”. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Tired Iron

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Choosing a title for a post is a fun part of the process!Always searching for a short combination of words to make a point,tell a story, or leave a message of positive thoughts. I can’t claim ownership to the term “tired iron”. I simply borrow it from a conversation I once had with a local “collector”.He ran a mixed antique/collectibles shop.He’s what we call a junker! (“Junking” is another hobby of mine that gets us into some interesting shops and barns around the north country.)The junker owner was showing me his collection of old cars and trucks with great enthusiasm and knowledge of each.He then referred to them as “tired iron”. I have always remembered the term. I use it now when I refer to the old farm equipment around our farm. Rusty with weather checked tires,it’s stored here and there in my various buildings.It sits idle much of the time but is safely held in trust for “that time”.A time when it may be needed and pressed back into service. Machinery isn’t the only tired iron around the farm! I have lots of other things of questionable value!Space is privilege of those who have it and my spaces are full!Many of my prized pieces of tired iron actually perform productive tasks!Our old evaporator is great example!Also our mixed collection of other maple syrup equipment.It sits stored and ready to go mostly.Nothing a patch here or a chunk of tie wire there can’t fix!We keep a set of worn out hand tools in the sugar house always.We use things that are actually antiques around the farm on a regular basis. Things many people can’t name let alone know how to use them.When my mind reflects on all repaired tired iron that’s used on the farm I begun to examine myself. I’m mostly flesh,blood,and bone but I do carry a few screws and a plate. (Stainless that can’t rust!)Fillings in my teeth. A bicep repair with nylon screws and surgical bindings left in place to hold me together.An interesting comparison if not a little strange.Speaking of strange!I have strayed so far from my original thoughts for this post that it’s going to take some effort to bring a reader back to my intended message! To get there quickly I’ll simply say my latest piece of tired iron is my nine year old outside wood boiler. Sold with a long term warranty that isn’t worth a well tarnished penny. I patched it together with determination and luck in February of 2019 after it breached while cleaning it. That fall I did some premeditated repairs to another section where I suspected a problem might develop. It’s held together well until last night. Major breach number two on the coldest night this fall.A total “ I’ve got to shut this down and plan a repair now moment where it’s questionable if a repair is even possible”.But this is where the message comes into play. I started getting really down. Irritated and thinking why me? It really was threatening my day or worse the next bunch of days. But it all came down to preparation. I had known the boiler might fail me. We put backups in place. So it was time to switch modes and get moving!Having a plan helped. It was then that I realized something.This was not the end of the world. This is nothing new for me. Problems grow less the moment we face them with possible solutions. I thought of people trying to overcome much worse situations. I am fortunate to be capable. Determined to do better. Tired iron breaks down. It can be patched if a person tries. It doesn’t need to last forever. Just a little while longer.If it can’t be repaired it must be accepted. Cut the anchor rope if it tries to sink the boat. Be happy to still be in the boat. It’s not a shoreline of dry,safe land that’s easy to reach. But calm seas never make for skilled sailors.Count your blessings even when your “tired iron” gets heavy!