Every spring our syruping
venture rattles down a bumpy road.
We have been driving this
operation for 10 years now, and as in any old vehicle some of the
clangouring is familiar, some of the ruts along the way we have come
to expect.
This spring the whole
works hit some new obstacles at full speed when sap was running
hardest.
We all went flying.
I came to understand the
sheer volume of water that the birch stand pumps up from the ground.
We almost lost it.
It took more hard work
than I knew we were - or ever wanted to be - capable of.
On top of it there were
several miracles (including you Graham Rudge).
Here is the crew that in the end managed a 2014 batch of Good Old Fashioned Yukon Birch Syrup.
There are many memories in
my soul blog, images without photos, yet I don't imagine I can forget:
Lara lena, your first
collecting day on that immense route in the falling snow,
Renee saving us with your
butter tarts in times of deepest darkness,
coming home to Ed and the
girls eating breakfast and doing 'everything right',
Sara naming all her trees,
and her voice echoing through the stand,
Berwyn in rubber boots and
rubber gloves touching two wires to fire up the whole batch plant,
Myself letting gravity
pull me down the contours by full buckets on that two ton day,
All of us giving all we
had,
unleashing our powers from
within,
for better or for worse.
Here is a photo of passing
the cup of first sap, before we knew how the spring would unfold.
We all have a sip before
we drill. Sara played her flute.
Selwyn says to me that we
are the human part of this forest. “Not every forest has a human
part, but this one does.”
Our contract with the
trees is that we will not waste what we tap from them.
I am so relieved we didn't
break it.
