YIKES!  How about that wind today!!!  My car was pushed around quite a bit on the highway coming home from work. Although surprisingly we had no power outages.

Again we stand on the verge of a new season.  Brian is in his day-to-day checking of the weather forecasts trying to pick when the best time is to start tapping.  Ideally we want some cold so you can take a few days to get completely tapped before the sap starts running.  But everything is in place;  the wood for the evaporator has been ready and stacked for months, the buckets and spiles are all freshly scrubbed and clean and there are cases of jugs waiting to be filled with fresh, hot maple syrup.

This year will make our 4th season as a participating member of  a group of sugar makers across the state working with the Maple Watch research team at UNH.  We collect sap at various intervals through the season and freeze them.  Records are kept to help the researchers know what factors were present at the time of collection and then syrup made from the sap is also collected and frozen to be sent to the lab for analysis.  Studies are hoping to find out how maples are doing and if, and how, environmental changes factor into their well-being.

This weekend Brian will be at the Newburyport Farmers Market at the Tannery from 9 am to 1 pm.  Then we’ll be absent from the market until after sugar season is over.