Site Discussions

Great to get your report. The gap between your 1st report and this one had me concerned. Now I see that you have been busy. I look forward to your reports and your style of writing about the sugarbush. Keep it going! Keith

Hi, this is our first time tapping , we couldn’t tell if a couple of the trees we tapped were sugar or what, but the raw sap from a couple trees have a barky taste while the rest have really no taste. Did we drill the tap holes too deep or do different tree sap taste different? I hope I’m making sense.

Beautiful. And what a year. So lucky you are to live where what you did can be done, and to have land. Such good fortune amidst the sadness

With love, appreciation, & respect,

rr aka two

For information on home burials in New Hampshire, go to http://www.nhfuneral.org/Home-Burial.html. Thanks for the lovely story.

I have a butternut tree on my rental property in East Barre area. It produced a ton of nuts this past fall and I’ve collected them in an overflowing milk crate. I’m thinking of trying to start a few but not sure what to do with the rest ... If anyone wants some contact me asap.

Ian in California,

I use a real thinned down mix of about 50-50 for the first coat of oil to turpentine; let it soak into the surfaces of wood in the axe eye and wedge.  Subsequent coats are thinned much less, maybe 5 to20 percent thinner, or none at all on a hot day. 

With less thinning, let the oil stay on the wood, but wipe off excess after about 20 minutes.  This way you get good drying and the finish is hard, not “gummy”. 

Many coats are good, then as needed over the years.

Ross Morgan

oh my god and please people, stop hitting your mauls/axes with sledge hammers to drive them through. THIS IS DANGEROUS!

The steel of both axes/mauls and hammers is hard and brittle,  striking the two together can easily send shards flying that could injure you or people around you.

If you need to strike the back of your axe or maul it should always be done using a softer material than the steel of the axe. Preferably wood. This is called “batoning” and is usually done with a heavy stick or wooden mallet. Safety first! Then teamwork!

I’d like to just point out that you shouldn’t be splitting wood on the ground, anyway. It should be on a stump or another log so that when your axe or maul goes through the piece you’re splitting, it buries itself in the end-grain of the one underneath instead of in the dirt where rocks can bash up the bit.

Even a blunt maul can take on a gnarly, deformed edge with too much misuse, and a messed up bit can lead to blade deflection and injury.

25 Feb - 8, instead of 2 mourning doves at feeder today - so thanks for the educational material!

Has anyone heard the expression “Bee hopper” in reference to a person who finds hives?

I remember sugaring as a child in St Lawrence County with horse drawn wagon & buckets. Then my Father work sent us from agriculture to West Side Story. No sugaring in Central Park. I returned to my love of farm country & for 21 yrs we lived in Northern VT - yrs of sugaring, sugar on snow parties, the horses etc - your blog gives me memories to enjoy & I thank you. I look forward to reading your blog in the days ahead.

As I’m reading this article, I can’t help but wonder about the practical aspects of rot-resistant trees. I look to the species that take the longest to decay, thinking of them as good for construction material, and notice that conspicuously missing from your list are species that are known to be rot resistant: Cedar, Locust, and Chestnut(?). I’m guessing that the research is not focused on discovering the best material for construction, but isn’t rot resistance essentially what is being discussed here for academic purposes?

Would appreciate more info, if it’s available. Thanks.

My guess is that the warm temperatures weren’t the cause of your bad syrup. I’d try again and see if things are better the next run. It’s hard to say what affect the warm winter will have on the trees. The sap may be less sweet this year because of the warm December. Unless the buds break, they should be able to deal with extreme cold.

Forty five years ago we built a house just inside the woods. In the backyard stood a dead 22”, 15’ beech. It fell 5 years ago. Counting the tree’s 80 yr+ life, 40+ years standing dead & 70 yrs on the ground it influenced the local environment for 2 centuries. Shouldn’t we be using a longer view when managing our woods?

Well I would find it hard to tell the age of a horse shoe without some kind of scientific metal testing. I was a Farrier for many year’s. I can say this though the thing on the front was called a toe grab it was welded to the shoe or I guess it could have been part of the shoe when it was being poured. It probably was a work horse shoe.

I was using a splitting maul? axe? and missed, splitting my fingers. The head of the maul had grooves in it that I thought were meant to make splitting the wood into smaller pieces easier. The injury caused my fingernails to be sliced in the pattern of the grooves.  I need to know what the name of this tool is. Someone told me it was called a waffle head sledge but I think that isn’t correct. Does anyone know what tool I am referring to and what it is called. Thank you.

In May 2014, on the airline trail between Village Hill Road and the power lines I witnessed a cat ~40 to 60 lbs run out on the trail, turn, run north about a 100 yard, then suddenly turn and lay down in the middle of the trail face my direction. The rounded ears, long tail was very distinct. Almost seemed domesticated. I tried to take a picture, quite blurry at that distance, then headed in the opposite direction.

Looks like a Phoenix brand horseshoe, probably 1970’s. They closed shop late ‘70’s - early 1980’s.

We had a very warm December with no snow and record setting high temperatures, unusually warm for about three weeks.

Then it turned cold until late January. At that time it started to look like a very early spring so I tapped my 75 maple trees. Sap ran well and I boiled it down immediately but to my disbelief it produced black bitter syrup. I had to throw it out and dumped all my sap. My theory is that the buds were already out and all I got was “bud sap”. Then temperatures went way down setting a new record at minus 36F below zero in Watertown. My questions are: 1) Was my bad syrup due to bud sap and 2) If so, would the super cold kill all the buds and the trees will then begin to produce good sap until new buds form?  Also what will this do to the maple trees?

This site was so interesting! My son in elementary school is doing a project on rivers and the mills that used to use these rivers for power.  A local river in CT used to have a tannery by it.  My question is the following: we know that the river water was used to soak and clean the hides, but was the water converted into power in the tanneries? If so, what was the power used for? I am guessing it was used to grind the bark, but we have not been able to find an answer to this question.  We know that the river water was used to soak the hides, but we have not yet found a source that says whether tanneries were converting water power into power to operate something in the mill.  Could anyone answer this for us? It has turned out to be a very interesting project, for both kids and parents!