For your depressing global climate change news of the day:
WEST BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — It’s on the calendar. It’s widely advertised. This year, everybody knows about it but the trees. And they are the central characters in Vermont’s annual maple syrup open house this weekend, when tourists descend on the state to watch trees being tapped and sap being boiled
Sugaring season ended early for many syrup farmers in southern Vermont, sabotaged by unseasonably warm weather.
Lisa Hamilton has finished making her maple syrup. “We were done last week,” said Ms. Hamilton, who was able to boil out just over 100 gallons of syrup — about a third of what she produced last year.
[Click to continue reading In Vermont, Warm Weather Sabotages Maple Syrup Making – NYTimes.com]
Maple syrup season was always my favorite time of year as a kid: spring meant snow was beginning to melt, plus there was lot of opportunity to play in mud as I walked the mile home from where the school bus dropped me off. I didn’t participate much in the actual maple harvesting process, but it does have an evocative smell which I can still recall after all these intervening years.