We tapped our sugar maples this week, and that to me is the beginning of spring. The sap will run as long as the temperatures are below freezing at night and well above freezing during the day. The “sugaring” season usually lasts about 6 weeks, or until the trees start to bud.

Maple Syrup was a dietary staple for the Native Americans that lived in New England. When little else was available in early spring, they relied heavily on maple syrup for sustenance. It takes at least 40 gallons of sap boiled down to make 1 gallon of syrup, and without the use of kettles they collected the sap in hollowed out logs and boiled it down by dropping hot rocks into it. (Okay, I quit).

Later, the colonists used copper kettles over an open flame which made the process infinitely easier. (It’s all relative right?) They boiled the sap beyond the syrup stage and turned it into sugar, which without refrigeration was much easier to preserve. An average family would make 200 pounds of maple sugar and an exceptionally industrious family could make 1,000 pounds. Any excess was an easy commodity to trade or sell. (For comparison’s sake, if Anne and I converted the syrup we make each year into sugar, it would probably be about 50 pounds, slackers that we are).

In 1789 Benjamin Rush and a group of Philadelphia Quakers started a campaign to end slavery by convincing people to use maple sugar as a sweetener instead of cane sugar, which was grown in the West Indies with slave labor. Rush described maple sugar as the “morally superior” choice. His mission was to “lessen or destroy the consumption of West Indian Sugar, and thus indirectly destroy slavery.”

Thomas Jefferson picked up the cause and attempted to start a “sugar orchard” at Monticello. Using the labor of enslaved people, he planted maple trees which he had purchased while touring New England. Jefferson’s interest in breaking the cane sugar trade was “to help relieve the misery of the West Indian slave trade” and to break Great Britain’s grip on the United States. Sugar was the number one import of that era, and it all came by way of England.

After the civil war, beet sugar became popular, the price of cane sugar dropped, and the demand for maple sugar collapsed. Maple syrup, instead of maple sugar, soon became the maple product of choice.

After multiple failed attempts, Jefferson was finally able to get some of his sugar maples to grow, but the trees never produced any “sweet water.” There is something about the freeze thaw cycle and temperature differential of our northern climate that creates the sugar, and the flow of sap. During the summer months the tree collects sunshine and turns it into a simple sugar which it stores over the winter as starch. In the spring the starch turns back into sugar. When the tree becomes pressurized, through a process which is not entirely understood, the sap begins to flow from high pressure to low, and the tap hole gives the sap an easy way out. Technically, it’s all a byproduct of photosynthesis, but really - that’s just a fancy name for something that is nothing short of pure magic.

Luckily for me, the joy of spring is wrapped up in its anticipation. If I woke up one morning to a garden in full bloom, I’d be thrilled and in awe, but I’d acclimate, and the novelty would quickly fade.

Spring for me is like a wonderfully drawn out, well-crafted love story. And like any great courtship, there is allure and longing - and impatience bordering on despair.

The daytime temperatures this week were warm enough for collecting sap in short sleeved shirts. It felt so decadent and then came the demoralizing winds of a “bomb cyclone” to drive us all back inside.

The sap flows and stops, a mirror of nighttime temperatures. True spring is never far off, and it will arrive eventually. The daffodils are pushing their way out of the barely thawed ground - only to be dumped on by a heavy blanket of wet snow. The daffs are still there under the snow waiting patiently - they know this drill all too well.

Time is on our side. Like the leaves of the skunk cabbage emerging from still frosted streams, we just have to wait for the sun to do its magic. Patience, though, is perhaps a tonic best served warm.

As Christianity spread half a world away, a new way of life was also taking hold here in New England. About two thousand years ago, the cultivation of corn – though curiously slow to catch on, was transforming how the woodland tribes lived and related to their environment – and to each other.

For several thousand years, the tribes that called New England home had lived as hunter gatherers. Survival was challenging, but their world was relatively peaceful. Traveling in small bands of 5-30 members, they went where, and when, the food was most plentiful. I’m sure that all the things I have tried to learn, they would have known intuitively, as they passed through the woods and fields, I now call home.

They’d have known at a glance where the deer and bear could be found, where the nuts and berries could be gathered, when the fish would be spawning and what birds would be migrating through and when. They followed the seasons and harvested what the landscape provided for them. They were friendly, family-centric and peaceful members of the Eastern Woodland Algonquian speaking tribes.

Corn started its journey to New England, 9,000 years ago, as the exotic mutant grass known as maize. First encouraged, engineered and grown by the ancient Mayans in South America, it eventually made its way north via trade routes to the southern and midwestern tribes of North America. From there, it took several thousand years more to make its way east to New England.

The native Hopewell traders of Ohio were frequent visitors to northern New England and had a well-established trade route with the Eastern Woodland tribes. Though the Algonquians were quick to adopt the ceramic pottery the Hopewell traders were known for, the concept of cultivating the soil and growing the small multicolored maize took several hundred years to really catch on. It pleases me to know that the original inhabitants of New England were as stubbornly set in their ways as some of us “Yankee” farmers are still accused of being today. Perhaps it was, and is, our unpredictable weather that makes us so resistant to change.

When the growing and harvesting of corn finally did catch on, it became a staple food, and its cultivation completely changed how the hunter gatherers lived and related to their surroundings. They became more sedentary and their populations and encampments grew exponentially. They quite literally became rooted in place and quickly discovered the gifts and burdens of agriculture.

Having cleared large swaths of woodland, planted the corn and diligently tended to it all summer, the tribes became territorial as they had now made a significant investment in their land. They learned the hard way that though corn was easy to grow and store, it was difficult to defend. There were jealousies, hostilities, and outright wars with formerly friendly neighbors. Villages became fortified and stockades were built for protection. Gone was the fluidity and cross pollination of culture, knowledge, and ideas.

Just as the seeds of Christianity united and divided nations abroad, the seeds of agriculture united and divided the former friends living among the woodlands, and newly cleared fields of New England.

Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder why I keep farming.

A couple years ago, we bought hay from a farmer whose family has been farming the same land for a hundred and fifty years or so. He said jokingly “I have come to the realization that I’m not a farmer anymore, technically, I’m now a pet food manufacturer. You are the only one buying my hay for livestock - everyone else is either feeding pet goats or rescue ponies.”

I knew he was making light of it, and I laughed, but even so it tapped into a sadness that just won’t quit. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I am bearing witness to the end of small family farms in Connecticut. Real farms. I can’t imagine that he takes much pride anymore in being a fifth-generation pet food manufacturer. Since then, whenever Anne and I stop by, we bring him pork chops or some bacon – something to let him know that we, at least, are still producing food, so he’s still a farmer after all.

Last year one of our sows had a piglet stuck while giving birth, which I tried in vain to get “unstuck”. When we called our farm vet for help, we discovered that not only do they no longer take care of pigs, there are, in fact, no longer any vets anywhere in Connecticut that will care for a pig. So, despite spending five hours with the sow, trying to help her - I lost them both.

I was so despondent that night, that in my mind at least, I quit farming. By morning though I knew I couldn’t quit, and I know it’s all just a vicious cycle. If I quit there’s one less farm to support a farm vet, the hay farmer, our wonderful abattoir, the sheep shearer, the spinning mill, the weaver, and perhaps most importantly of all, it’s one less opportunity for kids to see animals raised outdoors, on pasture and not just in a petting zoo.

When I was growing up in Farmington, there was a cow barn on Main Street. My mom used to bribe us that if we went to church (and behaved) she’d take us to see the cows afterwards. There’s an astroturf soccer field where the clover used to grow. I often wonder what the honeybees think of us humans when they fly over the acres of synthetic plastic grass and past all the overly manicured lawns in Farmington in search of clover – or anything that we haven’t sprayed or mowed.

When we purchased our first pig 15 years ago, we decided on Tamworth pigs, a heritage breed that do well on pasture and are relatively easy on the land. At the time, we had a choice of three farms in Connecticut from which to purchase that particular breed, and there were a dozen other farms raising other breeds. When I went to buy a piglet to replace the sow we lost last year, I couldn’t find any farms selling any piglets of any breed except for one farm which had 150 sows all indoors confined to farrowing crates. It’s no wonder there are no pig vets here anymore – there are no pig farms to support them.

So, for now we’ll just keep on keeping on, and doing the very best we can. We’ll keep on raising our animals outside on pasture and know that, if nothing else, because of that, there will be plenty of clover for the bees, bacon for the hay farmer, fiber for the spinnery, yarn for the weavers, and there will still be plenty of kids, in their Sunday best, walking down the farm road to visit our sheep after church.

After my dad passed away, two of his friends clearly felt an obligation to keep an eye on me and my various endeavors.

“Uncle” John had been an engineer with my father at Hamilton Standard, and a lifelong friend. He made a point of stopping by to monitor Anne’s and my home building progress - which admittedly took forever. We only worked on our house nights, weekends, and in between other building projects, so progress was indeed pretty slow. Not infrequently we’d find notes stuck to the front door – or where the front door would have been if we’d taken the time to install it. Notes with good natured observations like;

“If you hadn’t put the hammock up first - your house would probably be done by now – love John.”

Howard, who had worked as a forester and used to help my dad with various land trust projects, whole heartedly disagreed. He left us notes like;

“Such a comfortable hammock, and it’s hung in just the right spot! Keep up the good work. HC”

Howard went to Connecticut Agricultural School (now UConn) in the1920s and was not as interested in our building progress, or lack thereof, as he was with our farming. He took a vested interest in all our animals and fell hopelessly in love with our maple sugaring operation. Between lambing and sugaring, he pretty much moved in with us for two months every spring.

He loved to help when we tapped our trees, even though we had different theories about the best placement of each tap on every tree. He preferred to place the taps over the biggest roots, assuming that the sap flowed from low to high. I liked to tap on the sunniest side of the tree figuring the sap flowed better where it was warmest. His theory was based on 1920’s Ag school science, and mine was based on anecdotal intuition. We were both partially right and partly wrong. The sap flows up and down throughout the tree, and what is warmest in the morning might be shaded by afternoon.

I would use my cordless drill, which was exactly like the dozen other cordless drills I’d owned over the years. Suitably utilitarian, but in the end just as disposable as the 5-gallon plastic bucket I carried it around in. Howard used his “bit brace hand drill” which he stored in a cloth lined leather case. It was the same brace he’d owned for 70 years. It had clearly been put to good use, but it aged well and was still in perfect condition.

He asked me once if he could try my drill, so we swapped tools for the afternoon. He liked the speed and ease of using the cordless drill but not nearly as much as I liked his brace. The bit was so sharp I could actually feel it as it grabbed and sliced into the wood. I could even feel the difference in the density of the wood as the bit noiselessly made its way through the punky bark, past the hard layer of cambium and into the sap wood.

We’d boil all day and into the night until eventually I’d call it quits. Howard would insist on staying up all night to “keep the boil going”. I tried to convince him it wasn’t necessary, and privately I worried that keeping a 90-year-old working all night was surely some form of elder abuse. When I mentioned as much to his daughter, she said I’d probably need a restraining order to keep him away, and it would break his heart if I tried.

So, I’d leave him there in charge of the fire but before going to bed I’d look out the window and I could see from the lack of smoke coming from the evaporator chimney, that he was already sound asleep. I’d go back down to the sugar house and try and get him to go home or at least come “take a nap” on our couch. He’d insist he had barely dozed off and was good for the night.

If I’d known back then what I’ve come to appreciate now, I would have started each sugaring season by putting the hammock up just inside the sugar house door.

Seeing the holidays in the rear-view mirror is not unlike getting over a virulent stomach bug. The relief of simply getting back to normal is so satisfying as to be positively transformative in nature. The gratitude, the deep contentment, the blissful solitude – it’s possible that I have just gained a whole new lease on life.

Our dogs have come out of hiding and are sound asleep - sprawled across the living room floor. Happiness for them is found in the simple things as well. Like being able to nap wherever they want, knowing their humans will step over them and not on them - like well-intended, but accident-prone children and house guests sometimes do.

Our chickens who, as a matter of course, consider any sudden movement or unexplained noise an existential threat – did not, in fact, weep to see our beloved grandchildren leave. Perhaps as life returns to normal and the hens realize it was just the end of the year and not the end of the world, they’ll start laying again. Perhaps…

Our sheep, who are not unlike the chickens - or me, find comfort and contentment in the quietly mundane. Life for them is good once again – simply because everything is as it should be. Everything is back to normal.

Our pigs, who are accustomed to a daily cornucopia of hay, day old bagels, acorns, and a variety of fruits and vegetables - were fed nothing but dry pig food for the entire holiday week. They have been boisterously unhappy with the menu, and there is nothing quite as unfestive, or as threatening, as an unhappy pig. I brought them acorns and apples today, they’ll have squash and pears once again tomorrow and depending on what next week brings - I just might be forgiven by spring.

For Anne and me, the departure of our house guests has been like opening presents all over again as we rediscover all the misplaced objects and the things we put away “somewhere” for safe keeping. Look! I found the bread knife and oh! There’s my favorite coffee mug!!

Tranquility washes back over me today, as I bask in the silence and can write quietly, once again, in my favorite chair - my reading glasses, and cup of coffee right beside me-exactly where I left them…

Heading out the door to do chores this morning though, my heart felt an awful tug. I sorely miss that little hand reaching up for mine. I miss his happy chatter and gentle laughter. I miss the chance to see the world again, vicariously through his eyes. To explore and discover all the wonder that there is to be found in all the things I now just take for granted. I miss him mightily - but for a few more days at least, I’ll still have the cold he gave me, and for now that’ll do.

There are few things on this planet as peaceful as walking in a New England forest after a snowstorm. The sound deadening blanket covering the earth creates a blissful silence and is the perfect tonic for an overly noisy world. The welcomed hush is broken only by the gentle rustle of leaves stubbornly clinging to a few outlying trees.

Most deciduous trees drop their leaves as soon as the color fades in Autumn. But a few, like white oak and beech trees, are “marcescent” and hold on to their dead leaves through the winter. Researchers have yet to agree on why these trees do this. Some theorize that marcescent leaves provide a fresh layer of mulch in the spring when the trees need it most. Some think the retained leaves offer shelter for birds, which in turn fertilize the ground below them. Some think the unappetizingly dead leaves help protect the tasty new buds from being eaten by browsing herbivores. I’ve often thought that the leaves were just left there for me to enjoy, like muted wind chimes on a wintry day.

Curiously though, and perhaps revealingly so, is that the majority of marcescent leaves are within twenty feet of the ground. A white oak tree which might be eighty feet tall, will only retain the leaves on its lower branches. If the purpose of marcescence is to provide a layer of mulch, or shelter for the birds, surely retaining the upper leaves would be useful as well.

The fact that the only leaves retained are ones within reach of passing herbivores lends credence to the theory that it’s a form of protection from grazing. To discourage our contemporary white-tailed deer, the twenty-foot cut off point is definitely overkill, but oak and beech trees evolved for millions of years in the company of giant sloths and mastodons. In fact, back when beavers were the size of bears (about 10,000 years ago), your average run of the mill herbivore could easily have grazed from the gutters of a two-story home.

The only things that kept those super-sized grazers from consuming the entire planet were the equally impressive hypercarnivores that hunted them. Despite today’s allure, I seriously doubt I’d find my meandering wintertime stroll so relaxing if I had to share the forest with saber tooth tigers, American cheetahs, and dire wolves. Perhaps the true purpose of the marcescent leaves is to serve as a reminder that though the modern world might seem loud and at times stressful, at least I can aspire to be something more than just an appetizer in the food chain of life.