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From Where I Lie: Winter Madness

Tuesday January 18, 2011

By Larry Johnson

    My father always insisted that if you wanted winter to go by faster you should take out a loan in the fall that has to be repaid in the spring. He made a good argument. Psychological time is always different from clock time, and winter, by far the longest season in Vermont, has a psychological dimension that can make life downright unpleasant. But if you owe someone money, due and payable in April, the winter will just fly by.

     Sometimes, no matter how much money you borrow, or when it’s due, winter madness sets in early and stays late. I don’t mind the snow; I can get out and ski and do serious damage to my aging sub-structure, but unbearably cold weather discourages me from outdoor activities, especially the ones that cause pain. I am, I hate to admit to myself, no longer a kid.

     Years ago, when I was a kid, winter was a time of “rest” for a farmer.  In those days milking cows, fixing machinery and spreading manure were the primary activities of winter, and compared to harrowing, plowing, mowing, raking, baling and storing hay and corn, winter was downright relaxing. It was also monotonous. By the time March had rolled around, those of us who hadn’t thrown a rope over a tree limb were ready for some outdoor activity.

     Maple sugaring, for some, was the ultimate antidote to the bone-chilling boredom of midwinter. Nobody ever expected to make much money at it. At best it was sometimes just a break-even enterprise. It was a time of freezing nights and warm, thawing days with temperatures of at least forty degrees. Even the horses seemed to like dragging the sled through belly-deep snow. They had been stalled all winter and they suffered, I suppose, from cabin fever, just like the rest of us.

     The horses’ first job was to distribute the two thousand buckets throughout the sugar orchard, so that when it came time to tap the trees the buckets would be at hand. This required many trips for the draft horses and the loaded bob sled. This was a short sled with steel runners that would be used later on to carry the sap buckets back to the sugar house.

     Tapping the trees with a hand bit and brace was a tough job. A one-half inch diameter hole, two inches long was drilled into live wood and a spout was inserted. This was a process that sometimes needed to be repeated before the season was over. A galvanized bucket was hung on the spout and a cover was slipped over the top. When the bucket was full, it was emptied into a galvanized tank on the sled, and the horses moved ahead on their own volition, waiting for one of us to bring more sap. This went on day in and day out until the days and nights got too warm and the trees threatened to bud out and ruin the sap.

     Boiling the sap into syrup required experience and an artist’s eye, otherwise there was a real danger of burning up the boiler, or the pan as it was called. Constant watchfulness was necessary or the whole batch of syrup, along with a very expensive piece of equipment, would end up as junk. Dad was an expert at determining when the viscous brew was done. He could tell by examining the color and by tasting the cooking sap when it was finished and what grade of syrup was the result. Many times I saw him fill a
 water glass with hot syrup and drink it down. He would then often dip into the pickle jar and retrieve a dill to “clear his palette”. Boiling went on day and night, especially during a good sap run, and Dad would stick to his job, drinking pots of black coffee and smoking Pall Mall cigarettes, one after another.

     March is the month when spring comes tiptoeing around. One day it is here the next day it is midwinter again. It retreats as fast as it advances and it teases our senses and exploits our vulnerability. But as fickle as March is, it can’t hold a candle to April. T.S.Eliot had it right in “The Waste Land” when he wrote: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilies out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Mud season is not what we want to think of as spring, but that is what we get, and spring, or what we always anticipate as spring, never really materializes. It is a perennial fiction. But it is a fiction that gives us hope and keeps some of us from throwing in the towel and driving our Buicks and Oldsmobiles to Florida, that great parking lot to the south. I must admit I’ve given some consideration to driving south, to some enchanted land during our annual season of white despair, but, if I did, I fear I might miss that very short season of May  flowers and peeper frogs. That magic we refer to as spring.

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