David Heiller
People in our neck
of the woods woke up Easter morning to about five inches of wet snow. It clung to pine tree branches like
plaster, and coated the grassy church parking lot like lard.
Folks who normally have to be pushed into going to church had to be
pushed away from church, wheels a-spinning. Folks like us.
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| Malika and Mama hauling the sap, bucket at a time. |
The snow came at a lucky time for our family. We
had just finished boiling our last gallon of maple syrup on Saturday. That was
about the time the tractor quit working too. I had hauled in the last 40
gallons of sap on Friday evening, and it quit Saturday morning, right in the
middle of an idle. I guess it wasn’t an idle threat.
With no tractor, and with five inches of sloppy snow, I don’t know
how we would have brought in the last batch of sap. We were lucky, or maybe
more. Sometimes you wonder.
We ended up boiling down about 360 gallons of sap for our nine
gallons of syrup. That’s just right for our family. But that’s a relative term.
For example, Joy Naylor, a waitress at Partridge
Cafe, was telling me about their maple syrup operation southwest of Bruno.
During the height of the run this year, around April 6, they had 1,600 gallons
of sap WAITING to be boiled down, while they were cooking down 250 gallons.
They couldn’t keep up, it was flowing so fast.
Joy processes eight gallons of syrup at a time. This
is after a long day of waiting on schmucks like me. Don’t tell me people don’t
work like they used to.
The Naylors had about 400 taps out, and ended up with about 45
gallons of syrup. I asked Joy what they did with it. They give a lot away, sell
some, and use the rest up. “We have a big family,” she said with a laugh. So
yes, that’s a relative term.
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| Noah and his buddy, Jake. David always had chores for them to do, and they always found ways to have fun anyway. |
Noah and his friend, Jake, helped me take out our
42 humble taps on Saturday, before the snow hit. They had a claw hammer and a
knapsack and managed to pull out at least five taps. Their laughter and high,
excited voices carried through the trees like a spring breeze, and that more
than made up for any tap quotas that I had in mind for them.
Children work at their own pace in the spring.
Their hearts are more into clubhouses and creeks. Noah stayed overnight at Matt’s
house recently. When Matt’s dad went to wake them up for breakfast, he found an
empty bed. They had gotten up at 6:00 on a Sunday morning to go outside and
play in Matt’s fort.
Cindy wanted to take a sauna on Sunday night. I
wasn’t going to join her, until I stoked up the fire and smelled spilled maple
sap evaporating from the floor and benches. So we sat and sweated together, and
breathed in that sweet smell one last time, and cooled off on the steps,
arm-in-arm, overlooking the snowy yard and the sap stove and a tractor that won’t
start. We felt lucky on this Easter Sunday, blessed with good fortune, a good
family, good friends.
Blessed. Maybe the Virgin Mary had bad directions
and visited our field in Birch Creek township instead of that one in Kettle
River, where 3,500 people showed up on Sunday.
Gee, we could tap a lot of trees with 3,000 people
helping. (I’m joking, I’m joking.
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