Sugar Camp '25: Prologue

Winter came early this year and doesn’t want to go. The snow began on Thanksgiving and has been quietly accumulating, much to the delight of this snowshoe enthusiast. But not to the delight of the dogs, who think standing on my snowshoes will keep them from sinking into the abyss below. When we venture off-path, we often stand there in a stalemate. I can’t move; they won’t move. Let’s just enjoy the scene and long for the warmth of the woodstove; then we will daddy-daughter dance our way back to the house. While I delight in watching Wilder and Pip morph into snow dolphins – this is the only way to describe how dogs travel through deep snow, please enjoy the imagery– we’ve stuck to the well-worn paths through the sugar bush over the last month. Adding some last minute maple tubing wasn’t too miserable in the snow, but I definitely put my expensive tubing tool down somewhere beside a tree and it’s been buried until Spring under that last snow storm. ‘Til we meet again, my dear tubing tool…..

In like a lion, they say, indeed! The March winds are here and they are taking the tree tops with them. It’s an important time of year to prune, to lie dormant, to let our life force build up in the roots so that come the snow melt, we can spring forth with vigor. This wind reminds me of a poem a friend sent me….

North wind

cleans

the trees

 

Of their dead wood

and branches

 

Making

room

for light.

-digger

Winter lies low to the ground, it clings and freezes to the landscape, but eventually the wind gets beneath it and sends it off screaming. Much like my empty maple buckets, no longer hanging askew from the trees along the road, begging for an ounce of sap to weigh them down. I’ve received more than one text from friends letting me know my buckets are down by the fire pond, bobbling alongside the road. I met a sugar maker in town who told me he heard the season would start late, and he wasn’t wrong. New Hampshire’s annual Maple Weekend fast approaches and I only just tapped all my trees not even two weeks in advance. I have friends who haven’t tapped yet! Historically this makes sense, but the trend lately around these parts has been President’s Day weekend. But instead of panicking and feeling behind, I am just going to enjoy this year’s narrative and have fun with it.

Sugarin’ is as seasonal an enterprise as it gets. We savor what we get and we say thank you when it ends. We spend the whole season wishing it would end and the whole year excited for its return. I wasn’t in any kind of mood to go tap 141 trees last week, so I decided to do them all in one night. It took three hours by snowshoe and headlamp – and by the end of it, my feet were so numb I hobbled into the house and watched them turn red in the hot shower. But it felt good to lie in bed exhausted, a huge project behind me. The season of farming begins.

I managed to drill 135 tap holes before the battery in my drill died. I followed my dimming headlamp up the road to the house for a fresh battery and returned for the final six taps. I was too grumpy to put my snowshoes back on and I post-holed every step, swearing and laughing for the final ten minutes of work. It wasn’t long until I realized the drain for the 100-gallon sap tank at the bottom of the sugar bush wasn’t even plugged shut. I tilted it back to prevent leaking until I could find a $3 cap at the hardware store. This is the sort of problem one should solve in crisp, orange October, not on the eve of the great sap-rush, in the pitch icy black.

All summer my outdoor evaporator sat, and I thought I was so clever to put a metal roofing cover over the fire box to prevent rain from getting in. I did not apply the appropriate logic, however, to the following observation, made multiple times over the year: the cap on the smokestack had been blown aside by last year’s winds, therefore allowing rain and snow to enter the evaporator. After digging two feet of snow off and around the evaporator, I removed the cover to find ice built up right to the door. Somewhere down inside the ice was a metal grate, a few rogue bricks from the walls of the fire box, and one plugged up smokestack vent. There will be no fires in this evaporator until the ice is removed. A fifty degree day barely gave me half an inch of slush to chip out. Shucks.

I lit a fire with some kindling and handfuls of old fir from last year’s Christmas wreaths. In December, one of our wreath customers – who is also a sugar maker – told me that the wreaths stay up ‘til sugar season. He said it with a jovial rebelliousness that I found endearing, though I don’t know who would disapprove of leaving a wreath up all Winter. If not for the simple joy of beautiful verdant boughs during this dark and dreadful season, we can also appreciate the practical use of dried fir needles as perfect kindling for the wood-fired evaporator. ‘Tis a celebration of Spring to toss the last scraps of Christmas in the fire box.

After dosing the soulful but vicious medicine of fire smoke up my nose, downloading the soundtrack of crackling fir needles into my ears, and devouring the flicker of flame with my eyes, I grabbed my assorted shovels and garden tools and hacked into the ice. A few sore triceps later, I managed to get an inch down and expose the shape of the metal grate. It poked out like the skeleton of a dinosaur on an archaeology site. I’ve been debating if I want to blowtorch the space or hang a chicken brooder heat lamp over the ice and ask myself what I’m doing with my life while I watch it melt. I could be on my warm cozy couch right now watching ESPN+ and eating a lukewarm takeout dinner ordered on an app. Life could be good. Life could be easy. Sometimes I wonder why the hardest question in my life isn’t Do I order from Uber Eats or do I order from Grub Hub? Instead, flustered by the icy fire box, I go inside and peel 100 garlics and pulse them in the food processor and pour olive oil over them and stick them in the fridge so that everything I cook for the next two months is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. And the TV continues to gather dust.

I could have just covered the hole where the smokestack goes and I’d be well on my way to an awesome Sugar Camp 2025. Nothing will stop me – it’s going to be an awesome Sugar Camp, regardless. Sugar Season is the rite of passage from Winter to Spring on this farm. Mud and ice give way to stone and pasture. Lugging buckets of sap through the woods builds strength for dragging electric netting and pulling the Chick Shaw. Drinking ice cold, hearty sap fresh from the tree replenishes nutrients and fluids in the body and, well, there’s just something else in there that makes it special. It trickles into the bloodstream and fills every vein and artery with whatever magic that is which pulses through the life of everything else on this farm, and in the world. Sugar Camp is but the gateway to this place. I'll be out there, getting smacked around by the March winds, until it goes out like a lamb.

March 15: Open House for NH Maple Weekend! Sugar Camp is good times at Something Wild Farm! If you see steam and smoke coming from the evaporator behind the farm stand, feel free to stop by and see how maple syrup is made! We’re a small operation and do things differently than most larger maple operations. Hopefully by then we’ll have syrup for sale, as well! Rich is always happy to talk your ear off about maple syrup, chickens, eggs, sheep, farming, food, and community!