Maple Tapping and an Interview

Our friends Jan and Gale tapped four of our maple trees while I was off on the road.  I made the rounds with my daughter yesterday pouring off sap.  We collect it in a big plastic barrel.  Jan and Gale boil it down and give us half the syrup.  Pretty good deal for us.  It’s fun to do this with Amy – she quickly learns which trees yield the most sap and talks to the less-productive trees like a disappointed parent…  It’ll be interesting to see how production is this year…we had a warm run followed by a deep subzero freeze, so we’re wondering if we missed any sap during that first stretch.

Yesterday when Amy decanted the last tin pail hung from our biggest maple, she saved a few teaspoonsful and drank it down.  “It’s like the best water in the world,” she reported.

A while back writer Gay Davidson-Zielske stopped by my favorite coffee shop and interviewed me.  I am told the interview is now out in Issue #43 of Rosebud.  Here’s a newspaper article about this unusual Wisconsin-based literary journal and why it recently received a note from Stephen King.