I'm Up!

Drat! Sometimes having insomnia is not a good thing.

Yesterday was so busy with playing catch up on all the tasks that languished while we were away. I had a stack of phone numbers to call. Tables and a bar to rent. Food to buy and then cook for dinner. A dress to pick up from the dressmaker. Children to shuttle about town. And a 30 minute walk to get in. On top of that it is delightfully sugaring season. Twice, I walked the 13 bucket line. It takes 20 minutes to empty the buckets... not that I have timed it.

With the craziness of life, I did contemplate not sugaring this year. I don't want my all time favorite activity to turn into a chore. So as I was walking the line, happy that none of the taps are split and leaking, I was also getting a sense of how I felt about sugaring. Was I enjoying it? Was I happy to be out? Was my heart leaping with every bucket full that got deposited in the holding bins?

Yes, yes and yes. Sugaring is like prayer, or meditation. In the quiet of the day goodness comes. We have a rustic set up. Thirteen buckets, hung off an assortment of Maple trees. Some are sugar, some are not. Some are ours, and then some belong to our neighbors. We even have friends who tap their own trees and bring their sap over. When they pull up in their cars, the image of the little orphan boy asking for more gruel flashes in my head. "Please sir, will you boil our sap for us?" The answer is always, "Why of course, and deliver your syrup right back to you as well."

Buckets, not bags or tubing; though with the winter storm predicted for the next couple of days I wished we used bags to keep the rain water out of the buckets. Yes, we have those cute roof-like lids, but still rain water gets in. What's a little rain water right? After all, with our hodge podge of trees we average 1 gallon of syrup for every 55 gallons of sap boiled. What's a little water added to the mix?

So, I'm up. I've check the long range weather forecast: Day time temps in the 40s, with snow... or rain, how can that be. If the temperature is in the 40s, the sap should run. Only time and the trees will tell.