As the days grow longer and the sun glows a little brighter, winters grip slowly eases and the sounds of dripping icicles and frantic robins, inebriated on fermented crab apples, fill the crisp afternoon breeze. The squish of mud beneath my boots as a sweatshirt turns into a t-shirt and a winter cap turns into a baseball cap... the warm feeling of sunshine radiating from the unknown above while the earth still permeates its frozen grasp with frosty microclimates amongst our humble homestead.
Spring fever is abound, with that cleaning is in the air and the the itch of gardening season approaching always starts with giving the houseplants a spring bath and repots where necessary.
Soaking, repotting and pruning, adding a little organic feeder along with a thorough plant shelf wipe down is always a great way to get dirt under the finger nails while the outside snow pack slowly recedes! Seed starting is just around the corner.
I very often dream about this little bump out, sun window in the dining room being bumped out and turned into and a proper breakfast nook with a full on greenhouse vibe taking its place, but for now I'll just appreciate our sunny window that overlooks our perennial beds and the surrounding hills of Gray.
Maple likes the idea and always takes full advantage of any open clean sunny space to explore !
Sorry Maple, time to put the freshly bathed plants back home where they belong.
Winter came on pretty strong in the thick of February and the 24 plus inches of snow pack are just now beginning to recede around the the bases of trees and sunnier slopes of our land.
Lots of interesting tracks to be found roaming about the snow covered paths as the sun seems to rise higher and the afternoon warmth becomes so inviting to get outside and explore.
And with warm sunny afternoons come maple season!
Hazel was excited to get the taps back up and flowing with what will be our 9th season of sugaring at the homestead. She has been around for 8 of those seasons.
A wonderful sign that you are just in time when the tap starts dripping before you can even hang your bucket. Every year it seems to flow a little bit earlier, but the one lesson I have learned through all these years is to be patient and observant and the trees will provide.
Hazels creative mind quickly sidetracked her into building homes for her woodland friends while I finished up the final few taps.
And just like that the sap started filling up our storage jugs and collecting has become a daily routine for the family!
A good snow pack on a shady hillside is always a good storage spot till boil day comes,
and for us, in order to boil, the real work begins!
Clearing the homestead of some winter snags and blow downs is always a way to get the blood flowing.
It is important to me to be as low input into these projects as possible. Using dead trees is a very sustainable fuel source and having over 5 acres of forest to source from, we have never been at a loss for free fuel. On snowy years like this finding dry wood is a little more of a challenge as the blow downs are waterlogged from the snow pack so I need to be more choosey about finding dead snags hung up above the snowline to get good dry wood. That becomes a little more challenging and dangerous but years of chainsaw experience have helped me navigate the homestead for good firewood candidates and the hinderance of the snow pack on drywood is balanced by the option of using a sled to pull the wood to the driveway where I then haul it up to the firepit by wheelbarrow. So over the first couple years we purchased a few items for our maple syrup production, but after accumulating 16 buckets, 2 tray pans and a campfire grate, we haven't spent a penny. So the initial $200 worth of materials are still functioning and producing a good stock of syrup year in and year out and I don't think we have purchased a drop of syrup since Hazel was born! These days maple season costs us about $3-5 in chainsaw gas, 50 cents in sanitizing solution and a couple of fresh corks and bottle caps, everything else we reuse year after year from the old water jugs we use for temporary storage, to the organic wool we use to filter and the even the finished glass bottles get refilled year after year.
Maple season always seems to ground me and inspire me to spend more time observing the land in which we inhabit. Feeling the microclimates of our land as the taps open on the sunny slopes first and then as they drip slower and slower the valley on the west side of our land goes from slow and steady to heavy buckets in a flash. Watching these signals and studying these differences in climates tune my senses to the balance of nature and in its balance I try to find my own place. Social distractions from everyday life shield us from these lessons, forcing ourselves to embrace them may not remove that social windshield but at least it can focus and make the windshield a bit cleaner and more transparent.
Balance is also necessary in the fire building process. Having the right amount of fuel to keep the hot bed of coals scorching the water from the sap is an art. Every year I act like I know what I am doing and get humbled by fires persnickety personality. Just when you think you have it dialed in, and go about working on dinner or taking a break, I glance out at the pit and see it needs attention.
Eventually I find the swing of it and can manage to boil 10-20 gallons in about 8hrs.
This season we have had a busy weekend schedule so most of the boils have started after I get home from work around 1pm and go till bedtime around 9-10pm. At that time I use a simple kitchen wire strainer and strain the tray pans into a 3 gallon soup pot that I stick in a pile of snow for a minute to temp down then place it overnight in the fridge. The next day we start up the trays with the fresh collected sap as the previous days stockpot gets finished up on the stovetop or the wood fired cookstove depending on the day.
When the syrup starts getting close I give it 2-3 passes through some organic unbleached wool to filter out the floaties and impurities from the open fire.
After 9 years of this I start to notice the syrup is ready just by the smell and sound of the boil but we still use a thermometer and hydrometer to double check when the syrup is ready to bottle.
I usually have a pretty good eye on how much is in the pot so I rummaged through my winemaking supplies and pulled out some old labeled bottles to reuse and a few smaller bottles that we will use to gift and trade... and the little bit of extra syrup lingering in the pot just gets added to the bottle already opened in the fridge... maybe a few spoons to taste too!
Batch One 2025 is bottled and ready to go!
Total yield on batch one was about 155oz.
With another 15 gallons of sap from yesterday resting in a snow bank, my mind is brainstorming a possible maple wine for this year...more on that in a future post!
For now I'll take a break and have a relaxing moment before heading out on a family trip down to Boston... ugh after I clean up all this sawdust that just fell out of my pant cuff, ahhh, maple season!
Throwback to this piece of art from the archives...
SAPADELIC MAPLE VAPOR
18"x24" Arcylic & Enamel on Arches 300# Paper
by Lukaduke
Along with always trying to be the best husband and father that my favorite girls deserve, I have also been diving into my passions, when time allows and spending a little time in the studio when our busy schedule eases up. Lots of new music always passing through my ears and making its way into the vinyl library when funds allow it... though lately most of my extra time and funds have gone towards a deep dive into the world of Loire Valley wines.
Most nights after the chores of the day and the hustle and bustle of two working parents and a busy kiddos schedule calms, you can find me in my chair with a glass of chenin blanc or cabernet franc and a book or article on the terroir and history of Frances' Loire Valley wine region.
Learn more about the Loire Project, over at my other blog called: the Bottle Forager
This project has really reignited my long standing passion for tasting wine and learning more about the regions and the farmers who inhabit these places. Every good wine has a sense of place and every place is uniquely shaped by its climate, soil types and methods of taking the fruit from that soil and capturing its essence in a bottle. I found lots of inspiration, knowledge and thoughtful explanation of this dance between wine makers and their terroir through this book. The Sommeliers Atlas of Taste. A great book full of informative tidbits along with suggested producers from the worlds classic European producers. One of the authors is Rajat Parr, a sommelier turned wine maker and now author, and a wine personality who I have always enjoyed following and sipping!
Sandhi Sanford & Benedict Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021
(made by Rajat Parr)
This wine paired beautifully with some magret duck breast from Quebec, alongside some mushroom wild rice and asparagus braised in blood orange juice and sea salt.
With these amplified thoughts of terroir and sense of place swirling through my head, I've been roaming the homestead and surrounding woodlands daily, observing, watching the waves of sap flow from the south side of a tree to the north side, watching the patterns that the snow melts, feeling the pockets of coldness in the northern side of a slope... hearing the robins and the bluejays sing, watching the hawks hover and soar, and the chipmunks bouncing with spring fever. We have also played a daily game of peek-a-boo with a giant pileated woodpecker that is having a field day on our beloved crooked hemlock, watching it slowly transition into a nesting habitat as its cycle of life flows through the land we inhabit.
As the snow melts, the suspended fungal activity comes back alive.
Moss softens from its icy winter slumber as the quarts glistens from the center of its hard granite rock sandwich.
Layers of minerals and geological activity emanate from the stones as old as time as we pretend to make a dent of difference with our feeble needs and small understanding of our place on this giant magical orb of existence we call Earth.
From rock to cellar I walked in bumping my head on the abundant garlic harvest of 2024 as I evaluated it and observed it was still of high quality showing no signs of sprouting or decay. Still having a handful of the largest bulbs in the kitchen and a half a quart of garlic powder we made from the end of last years batch... I decided it was probably smart to let this 10# of garlic go to the market and be enjoyed by the community.
Trimmed and cleaned
Rolled and tossed.
Ready for the market!
Oh and apparently we were awarded top 100 homesteading blog by the folks over at FeedSpot!
Thanks for the seal of approval but most of all thanks to all of you who scroll past my ramblings from time to time and stay updated on the hardwork us LocalRootz folks are putting in year after year, for no reason but to enrich the lives of us and anyone who enjoys the simpler things in life.
I urge you to keep pushing to be a better version of yourself each and every day. There will always be days that we fail in our attempts but as a favorite reggae lyric of mine goes...
"nothing beats a failure but a try"!
"No Pressure" though, an artful shot from our local transfer station!
Happy almost spring.... watch for the signs, they appear everyday if you take a moment to look.
