SKATING WITHOUT SKATES, WALKING WITHOUT SNOWSHOES, CITY WITHOUT SNOW, & SAP RUNNING EARLY

This winter the fields looked more brown than white

Sometimes there's a dusting of snow

To be honest, we have seen some beautiful snow here.  Well, not precisely here, as in right here, but nearby, in the mountains.  On the first of March, for example, while the Champlain valley was experiencing mere flurries there was a virtual blizzard up at Rikerts at Middlebury’s Breadloaf campus where we had gone with Lesley to cross-country ski.  When we skied in the open it was pure Antarctica: howling winds and pelting snow, almost a whiteout. Once in the woods the snow turned turned gentle, most of the trails untracked powder.  Downhill skiing has had its great moments too.  It’s just that there have been too few of those days.

Having no snow to shovel or plow has its advantages.  Obviously.  The fields are easy to walk about in, especially with the dogs.  No drifts to push through, no need to get all toggled up.  For those who ice skate, this has been an excellent winter.  Even though it hasn’t been steadily below freezing the ice has been amazingly thick.  We have walked on ice just offshore on Lake Champlain, have seen people ice skating there, and heard talk of prime conditions on Dead Creek where you can reportedly skate for kilometers.  (A neighbor told us about how people who routinely skate on the Lake or Dead Creek carry a rope at each end of which a block of wood is attached with a stout protruding nail–if you fall through the ice you use the nails like ice picks to pull yourself out.)  

Our pond has been frozen since early winter.  The weekend of Ken’s 80^th birthday (yes, hard to believe–80!) everyone here for the celebration took off for a hike across the road through the field to Otter Creek, starting off with a little pond sliding.  There were many styles of pond sliding as no one had ice skates.

It was the first time we’d walked all the way across the field to Otter Creek from our house.  When we look west its easy to imagine the Creek flowing just beyond the distant trees.  Not so.  It may be as much as a mile away.  The texture of the field is more complex than it looks.  There’s a rocky hillock (in Africa this would be called a koppie) right in the middle, and the smooth appearing field is really waves of rising and falling ground that appear flat only from a distance.

Pastures in warm winters like this one present complications to farmers, the kind of complications that are completely foreign to anyone who lives in the city or suburb.   Or are newcomers to the country, like us.  In our local paper I read that alfalfa depends on good snow cover to prevent its fragile root system from heaving out of the ground.  There are dangers for domestic animals too.  Wildly varying temperature swings can begin a causation chain than begins with barn ventilation.  Many barns are closed tightly in winter, limiting ventilation.  But when the temperature warms rapidly animals (mostly cows, I guess) can be exposed to respiratory pathogens.   Then there’s this:  “During the cold weather in a normal winter, intestinal parasites become encysted in the animals’ (horses this time) gut walls and are inactive.  Since weather has been warmer than normal, the parasites have not encysted and horses are paying the price with an increased number of colic cases, a potentially serious condition.”  Then there are the sheep and goats and new lambs (lambing season is approaching)–all endangered by parasites.  As if this wasn’t enough, “In adult cattle the winter has brought an increase in foot rot, caused by frozen uneven ground causing stress on the skin between the claws of the foot, allowing the organism, which lives in the soil and organic material around the farm, to cause disease—a challenge to treat on organic dairy farms.”  Severe winters undoubtedly have their own costs, but this sounds like the margins are really slim for a “good” winter.

The sap has been running early.  There’s some concern on the part of big time maple syrup producers as to quality this year.  Will the lack of snowpack mean less sugar in the syrup?  Will the varying temperatures affect production?  The weekend of Ken’s birthday with many hands available, our sugaring operation was set up for Year Two Syrup.  While we were in New York City one recent weekend we received this email from Chris, our de facto maple sap wrangler:

On the sugaring front, we reached critical mass on Thursday and had to do a boil Thursday night because the temps were dropping.  I got started around 6pm and the night ended at 1:30.  The evening was still and the stars brilliant.  I missed sharing the experience with you all, although the solitude was delicious.  At 11:30 a lone coyote howled for probably 10 minutes and he/she was in the field between your house and the Gallant’s.  Moments after the coyote stopped, an owl treated me to a guttural kind of hoot in the woods just to the east.  That was my first night boil and it was altogether different.  I did not have the endurance to finish all the sap; the last hour and a half was trying.  Interestingly, our trees were flowing more that your trees, I suspect because of the solar exposure.  I am guessing that our trees will also dry up sooner.  All said, about 6 quarts of excellent syrup.  Maple sugar is starting to run in my veins.

Two inches of snow here in the valley.

We read Chris’ email in a hotel room in New York–deliciously far from the scene he described.  It’s the contrast that’s the beauty part.  What better than to be in NYC (where we saw a photography show, a musical, a drama, an art exhibit, a concert, and ate Korean, Thai, Austrian, Israeli-Druse, and walked until our legs hurt) and know that at the same time our trees are making syrup to the music of the woods.  

When I grew up in New York I never felt as if I lived in the “real” America.  To me, New York was a separate world with different points of reference.  I remember a song from childhood that began, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go,” that was for me about another place entirely, a place I’d rather be.  In Queens there were no woods, no river (I didn’t count the East River or the Hudson) and there was no grandmother’s house (grandmother and everyone else lived in apartments or attached houses, and they didn’t count either).  Now I can like New York.  The buildings.  The streets.  The people.  All of it.  Wait, let me qualify that.  I still can’t stand Queens.