Summer 2020

Phew…What a bunch of great summer weather we are having! Since we are doing mostly woods work right now, it is great having firm ground, but wearing chainsaw pants and busting it in the woods has been pretty hot at times! I’ve been seeing the first few leaves changing, and know that too soon we will be pushing into fall. Currently I’m releasing great young maple trees at our expansion area on Clute Rd. Before installing tubing, its a really sound practice to do some TSI (Timber Stand Improvement). Sort of like weeding your garden, but we actually promote species diversity and try to leave a good amount of standing dead for beneficial wildlife.

We’ll add about 300 taps here, 50 of which will be from 3 planted rows of super sweet maple trees. Kebby and the late Lane Clute were producing syrup 30 years ago on this property, and he planted some good sized super sweet trees that are finally ready to tap. In these woods when I see the old tap marks or try to figure out a tricky section of tubing, I have a definite sense that this is not the first time someone has stood and thought about these things. I’m constantly reminded of the history and time they spent working here. Pretty cool.

Everything is so relative and I get a kick out of it. 2 years ago we had 130 taps, right now I’m stressing because I don’t want to spend too much time on a “small add” of only 300 taps! If everything goes somewhat according to plan, we should have about 4100 taps this year.