A Northwoods Almanac for March 20 – April 2, 2020 by John Bates
Maple Syrup Time
“The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is summer sunshine flowing in golden streams to pool on our plates.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, from her book Braiding Sweetgrass.
I readily admit to one addiction, and that is pure maple syrup. The many corn syrup contrivances posing as surrogates via their artificial colors and additives are an unacceptable thin gruel. Plus, what a miracle it is to be drinking the very lifeblood of a tree! Not just any tree either, but a sugar maple tree, Acer saccharum via the Latin – acer for “maple” or “be sharp” (presumably for the pointed lobes of the leaves), and saccharum for “sweet.” Not surprisingly, the sugar maple is also found within the family Sapindaceae, which includes species like horse chestnut and buckeye, but contains overall 1858 species, including many tropical species.
People are often surprised to learn that box elder, Acer negundo, is also a species of maple. One year while I was teaching in Mercer, there were four large box elders in front of the school, and we tapped them, boiled the sap, and made a cloudy, but quite tasty syrup. For that matter, all of our native maples – red, silver, sugar, and box elder – can be tapped and the sap made into syrup and sugar, but none do it as well as the sugar maple.
Many syrup producers have been tapping their maples since early March when our temperatures hit 52°. I was curious if this was a particularly early spring for tapping, so to learn more, I called Bob Simeone, a professional forester, who has been making syrup on his property near Land O’Lakes since 1987. Early on, Bob and his family weren’t just casual producers. In 1989, they put in 1,000 taps and made 230 gallons of syrup, which is one heck of a lot work! They’ve since reined in their enthusiasm and now put in around 250 taps, which depending on the year, yields up to 43 gallons of syrup, a still substantial operation.
One thing became very clear as I interviewed Bob – there’s a science to doing it right, but there’s also a nuanced art, as well as unanswered questions.
Given the dramatic variation in year-to-year production, one essential question is why are some years terrific and others a bust? Bob’s answer: In large part it depends on the weather from the previous late spring and early summer. Leaf-out for sugar maples in our area usually begins around May 15, and from then to July 4 or so, the trees are at their maximum in photosynthesizing sugars. If the weather is warm and sunny, the sugar content of the sap will be at its highest during the next spring’s run. If the weather is cold and rainy, the sugar content will be at its lowest the next spring.
Sugar content in the sap from individual trees can vary from 1% to as high as 10%, but the average is around 3.5%. The spring of 2019 was one the best Bob ever experienced for high sugar content in the sap, indicating that the late spring/early summer of 2018 was likely warmer and sunnier than usual.
Other salient points:
*Over the last ten years, the season is now happening two weeks earlier, though there are anomalies. Bob and his family are also wine importers from Italy, where they work with 20 different family-owned wineries across 15 regions of Italy, and the grape growers are harvesting there two to three weeks earlier as well.
*Wind direction makes a difference in the sap run. A north wind slows the sap, a southwest wind boosts it.
*The deeper the snow, the longer it takes the trees to “wake up” and the sap to start flowing.
*The best run of sap typically occurs in early April even though producers often begin tapping several weeks earlier. The photoperiod is longer and the trees are metabolizing better as the spring progresses. However, as one gets later in the spring, the sugar content drops. If it drops below 2%, he pulls the taps. When the first 60° day occurs, it’s time to absolutely take all the taps out.
*Bob’s very conservative in how many taps he puts in, and has had no dieback of any of his trees over three decades. Too many taps, or tapping too early, and the tree compartmentalizes its wounds, impacting the vigor of the tree.
*The syrup from every sugar bush tastes different, and the variation is rather amazing. Bob’s trees produce a “butterscotch” taste.
*The highest producing trees are those at medium age and size, from 15 to 24 inches in diameter, because they’re growing at the fastest rate. The biggest trees are a little slower getting started, but the sap run last longer in them. It’s the tree’s vigor that matters the most, not its size.
*Remarkably, and rather inexplicably, stumps and trees that he has cut and that are laying on the ground from last year still have sap running like crazy out of them.
*Finally, the spring of 2012 was the strangest he and other producers ever experienced. By mid-March, all the snow was gone, we hit 80°, and the trees were budding out, almost two months ahead of when they normally do. Then in April it turned very cold, hurting the trees, and ultimately the insect hatch and bird survival. He didn’t get any sap that year, and he says he and others never saw anything like it.
Ice/Mud Season and COVID 19 – Time for Just Walking
“Social distancing” has unfortunately now become a new word in all of our vocabularies, but what better way to make lemonade out of this lemon than by leaving our homes and walking. In Iron County where we live, our population totals around 6,200 people spread out over 757 square miles, which by my advanced math, comes to 8 people per square mile. Just over half of the county is in public ownership (52%, or 258,469 acres), providing 41 acres of public roaming opportunity per person. In other words, we have enough space to get well away from one another, but more importantly, enough space to appreciate and enjoy the natural world.
While it may appear we’re being forced into loneliness, I would counter that we’re being given the option to experience what the poet William Wordsworth called “the bliss of solitude.” Solitude doesn’t equal loneliness. The value of experiencing solitude in nature is that it reminds us of all our connections to the natural world, of how we are sustained in every way by it.
So, while lots of gatherings are cancelled, walking isn’t. It’s time to feel the gathering of spring. Walking regularly in nature is simply good for the body, good for the soul. And have you noticed how easier it is to talk, to get to what’s important, while walking? We’re trying to get out every day and walk, walk, walk. Just walking.
Sightings – Snapping Turtle, Trumpeter Swans, Cardinal
Young Charlie Nemcek found a snapping turtle upside down on the ice of Horsehead Lake in Lake Tomahawk on 3/8. There were critter tracks all around, coyote tracks possibly, but I wonder also about otter tracks, given that the turtle didn’t end up upside down on top of the ice all by itself. Charlie and his family took the snapper to the wildlife center, and apparently it’s doing well and will later be released back into the lake.
On 3/7, Kent Dahlgren in Presque Isle sent me photos of two pairs of trumpeter swans and a lone Canada goose on some open water on Little Horsehead Lake.
On 3/12, the Manitowish River opened below our house.
On 3/13, Nancy Burns reported seeing four hooded mergansers on the Manitowish River. Waterfowl are returning!
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| photo by Bev Engstrom |
On 3/16, we had our first robin and first red-winged blackbird appear in our yard! We also have a male cardinal visiting and singing at our feeders in Manitowish. That splash of brilliant red is quite welcome against the canvas of snow. Now, all we need is a female.
Eagles Nest Building/Incubating
On 3/14, Sarah Krembs reported seeing an eagle near the Manitowish Waters library fly across the highway carrying a load of sticks in its talons, clearly engaged in nest building.
On 3/15, Bob Kovar on the Trout River in Manitowish Waters photographed an eagle’s nest with what appears to be an eagle incubating eggs. Eagles have nested on Bob and Carolyn’s property for decades, so he’s very familiar with the timing of nesting, but he questioned that this seemed awfully early for eagles to be incubating eggs. I thought so too, but for the real insights on eagles, I always contact Ron Eckstein, retired DNR wildlife manager who banded well over a thousand eagles during his career. He noted that “some eagle pairs are very early in nesting, especially on open rivers or when they have a good food supply. From our eaglet banding work we’ve back-dated some eaglets in northern WI to a likely egg laying date in mid-March. Eagles associated with the big rivers like the Wisconsin in Lincoln and Oneida Counties can lay eggs in early March. This year, the Minnesota eagle-cam eagles (southern MN) laid their first egg on Feb 6.” So, it appears likely that Bob’s eagles are in fact incubating eggs.
I asked Ron as well about the survival of both eggs and chicks last spring. Bob’s pair failed to hatch any chicks, while the eagle pair across the river from our house failed to nest at all. Ron wrote, “DNR has not funded nest productivity flights for quite a few years, so nest success is unknown.” That’s surprising to me – you’d think that would be something we’d want to know.
Celestial Events
Yes, indeed it’s spring, at least according to the vernal equinox that occurred yesterday, 3/19. And, of course, you’re slightly addled if you believe that. Nevertheless, our days are now longer than our nights, and one can feel the difference in the strength of the sun. In fact, we wii hit 12 hours and 31 minutes of daylight as of 3/26.
On 3/24, the new moon will be at apogee, the farthest from Earth that it will be in 2020.
Look in the southeast before dawn on 3/31 for Mars just below Saturn.
Learning is the Thing for You
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn . . . “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of based minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.” T.H. White, The Once and Future King
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