Good to the Last Drip

I think we caught the last, best day of the sugaring season when we headed up to VT for a quick visit this past Sunday. We had the Andersons in tow, caravaning behind the mini-van to experience their own taste of sugaring. The day was gorgeous. Bluebird skies and warm enough to go without a jacket if you stayed in the sunshine. The two boys were in heaven, bursting out of the car doors as soon as they were opened and running around like tops that had just been wound up. Chickens to feed, eggs to gather, sticks to wield, forts to build, buckets to fill and dump... we could barely get them to sit down for a few bites to eat at lunch, which was splendid at the sunny picnic table in the back patio.

Haley got her first maple steambath in the sugarhouse, and she schlepped around the sugarbush with me as we dumped all the buckets in the woods. Rich and Heidi trooped all around the forest collecting sap too, enjoying the melting snow and the smells, sights, and sounds of mud season. When the boys got tired of filling their smaller blue buckets with sap, they found the old wolf tree that fell over a few years ago and imagined they were Barred Owls creating a nest in the old tree. They were climbing in and around the tree, poking and scraping and hooting for a good hour with HaPa supervising nearby. Who-Cooks-For-You? Who-Cooks-For-YOOOOUU-ALLLL? was riniging out through the woods when we finished with the sap collecting. One little owl got a bit of wolf tree bark in his eye at one point, and boy did he howl! It's painful to get grit in your eye, but we got it out eventually thanks to a little eye-cup my mom had, and Aiden got a "band-aid" for his eye to give it a rest for a moment. Happy to report that the owl has completely recovered by now, and his eyesight is as keen as ever!