Is it maple syruping season yet?

If not this week, the syruping season will be upon us soon. Those who inhabited this land before us continue to have rights to harvest maple syrup in many locations. There's an interesting article at Indian Country Today on some of the history of maple syrup and Native Americans teaching the early colonists how to produce it.

sugarbush and sap buckets

Photo by J. Harrington

Today's temperatures have climbed above freezing. We took advantage this morning and went for a ride. We wore a light coat over a vest and regular shoes, not snow boots. It was a delightful change. As we drove around looking at the melting snow and the growing puddles we begin to think about the thaw / freeze cycle needed to get maple sap flowing. As you know, an extended Spring thaw also helps minimize the likelihood of Spring flooding although our local snow cover, so far, presents minimal threat to rivers exceeding their banks.

Climate weirding and global warming are expected to affect maple sugar production, but, by how much, and the extent to which the trees and the syrup producers can adapt is still being researched. In Minnesota, the center of maple tree density has already moved North (#21). That isn't likely to diminish local syrup production, but we may see a loss of the temperature variability needed to generate sap flow if Spring continues too warm. Even someone like yr out svt, who abhors winter, would not want to lose maple syrup and maple candy in exchange for less winter. Plus, less sugar might be related to less colorful Autumns? That would also be terrible.

Apocalypto for a Small Planet

By Tess Taylor

1

 

& the radio reports how in 2050

farming Massachusetts will be like farming Georgia—

all’s flux, no one can say what will grow in Georgia,

 

where maples will grow then or whose fine taps

will sap sugar from the cold in spring. Will we get syrup

from the boreal forest, peaches from Massachusetts?

 

 

2

 

Drone strikes & opium poppies.

Oil spills & poisoned wells.

Drought zone. Famine. War zone.

 

 

3

 

Artisanal, this

 

                                              intervention:

 

what gift

                                              this day.

 

 

4

 

My inner cynic says

don’t bother this is navel gazing

 

& my friend at Yale says my hunger

to be near zucchinis

 

will not save the planet from real hunger

except I remember in the film on gleaning

 

when the priest in his compassion says:

those who glean now out of spiritual hunger

 

also should be fed.

 

 

5

 

Ecosystem of yard or field or mind:

 

these cucumbers are more art than science,

more daydream

 

than global action (if we separate the two).

But digging now I feel an otherness—

 

life, a great inhuman freedom—

here I work a plot that also grounds—

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