Winter

#6 Get involved with Maple Syrup Production

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

I know, you have been wondering why “volunteering” hasn’t been part of every post, haven’t you? But this is a very special volunteer opportunity. It only happens this time of year. We hike into the woods with our drills and our spiles and our sap sacks, and we hope with a good set of maple-identification-skills.

Fossils in the bottom of the ravine where we tap the sugar maples. Sometimes, looking this closely at something on the ground is an accident. I did not get hurt when I slipped! It was a fantastic and unexpected find.
This year, the trees have been flowing more than average. They have been flowing on cloudy days and flowing on days when it hasn’t been freezing the night before, both unusual circumstances.
It takes a lot of wood and a lot of time to boil the sap into syrup.
Maple sap is boiling hard in the evaporator. The water rises as steam, leaving an increasingly sweet and increasingly caramelized liquid behind. When it is still boiling at just over 219 degrees Fahrenheit it has transitioned to syrup.

How do you fit into this picture, you may ask? You could help tap the trees, collect the sap, boil the sap, split the wood for the fire to boil the sap, cut the trees for the fire wood, or even bottle the syrup. You could come out and keep us company or bring us snacks while we do all of that. It’s a great way to meet interesting people, get a bit of a workout in, and enjoy the fresh air.

Despite some initial concerns about the warm first half of February causing the trees to bud out early and end the season before it had even started, this is shaping up to be one of our most productive seasons ever. It isn’t over yet and we have already collected 1,810 gallons of sap and bottled 30 gallons of syrup. That ranks it currently third behind 2005 (2554 gallons of sap) and 2006 (2042 gallons of sap).

Skunk Cabbage is still sleeping

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

A friend from Illinois just posted a picture of her skunk cabbage poking out of the ground. While I suspected in my heart it was too early for my skunk cabbage, I couldn’t help but go and look. After all, what better way to spend a beautiful, relatively warm Friday morning?

Bena Brook is still frozen over, though we could hear water running underneath. It is a balmy 36 F outside.
The skull of a young white tail deer buck partially buried in the ice.
The bark tipi I built with a friend five or six years ago is still standing, though the massive oak tree that was growing beside sadly toppled during the derecho. The tipi is naturally well-camouflaged.
The skunk cabbage is not up, but signs of spring are starting to emerge. We will try again in a month.

Spring in the aviary

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

The flock spent most of the winter being angry with me. They appreciate neither the cold nor the snow. I had to carry one Sapphire Gem hen back to the aviary after dusk; she was too cold and tired after spending a day in the orchard to make it back on her own. The guineas spent a night outside in the orchard after a bad storm, not wanting to sink into the snow even to go home. Fortunately, the fox also spent the night hunkered down, not wanting to sink into the snow. A chicken hawk took out a guinea nine feet away from the aviary, nine feet away from safety.

Cluck Cluck the rooster prefers hanging out with the guineas instead of with his hens.

Cluck Cluck spent more than one afternoon standing in the heated water of the bird bath; his toes, mangled by a raccoon when he was young, are probably hurting. When I let the water run dry, a fox curled up in the same bird bath at dusk, absorbing its warmth and making me moderately nervous.

Enjoying the first dustbath of the year.

With the marginally and intermittently warmer weather, the guineas have been boiling out of the aviary every morning with Cluck Cluck. Sometimes the hens join them, sometimes they don’t. Laying has picked up with the longer days. I am getting an egg or two every day from the hens, and I usually manage to snag the eggs before they crack from the subzero temperatures. If I don’t, I set them out for the fox. Everyone needs to eat.

Almost Spring

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 2 Comments

February 28. The fog is so thick the horizon between prairie and forest, between snow and air, is subtle. I got in what would be my last snowball fight of the season.

March 7. The maple sap stopped flowing. The skunk cabbage is up. This morning, we sit in the open doorway, feeling the world wake up between the first raindrops of spring. Nitro, Peaches and Jeff pause in an unspoken moment of truce. They are not in pursuit of peace, they are just entranced by that delicate, ephemeral moment when the warmth of the furnace on their backs shares equilibrium with the warmth of outdoor air on their faces.

March 15. The sound of clattering ice wakes me up. It is being driven by a solid 25 mile per hour wind into the side of the house. Tree tops, unattached but suspended in the air since August, have been wrenched down to the ground. The precipitation vacillates all day between snow, ice, and rain. Spring lies buried under a layer of frozen slush.

Wondering in the snow

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 2 Comments

I am lying on my back under the sun, under the sky.

I am lying on the snow, suspended above the soil, above the prairie I burned last fall.

The flames of fall reduced the grass we think of as prairie to ash, reduced the grass we think of as prairie to the air I am now lying in.

Underground there is still a massive tangle of roots, woven together by mycorrhizal structures.

I can feel the transformation of spring through the sun on my face, through the snow on my back.

The snow insulates the prairie from the seasonal shift; I suspect the roots feel nothing yet.

I wonder if the air feels the emptiness of the space, if the air misses curling around the silicon-laced stalks of big bluestem and gliding over the petals of the gentian, if the air misses flitting through the styles of the prairie smoke.

I wonder if the air around the unburned autumn prairie was more dense than the open air I now lie in.

I wonder if the barred owls, chattering and hooting night and day now, are calling the prairie roots awake through the snow.