Gathering Maple Sap Exercise Program
This week warmed up enough for maple tree roots to pump sugary
sap into trunks. It took quite a few days of above freezing weather to start
the sap flowing because the ground has been covered by a few feet of snow and
nighttime temperatures were, until recently, often in single digits. It takes
less than five minutes to drill a hole, tap in a six-inch tube, slide on a
gallon plastic jug and fasten it to the tube. We’ve found vinegar jugs the best
but milk vessels also work. I drill an undersize hole into the upper hollow
finger loop that each vessel has so the tube fits very snugly to prevent midges
and mosquitoes from getting into the jug. We rarely have to screen the sap.
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| Gallon Milk Jugs as Maple Sap Collection Vessels |
The sap level in the translucent jugs is readily visible
from far away and when days don’t go much above freezing or stay there very
long, it takes awhile for the tree to fill a jug. We have 14 taps going and, so far, only one tree fills its jug in 24 hours. The others barely produce a quart. To
prevent losing any sap from the productive tree, I slipped a connector on the
tube and ran a longer plastic tube into a five gallon covered pail. This
morning I checked the line of trees and none dripped more than a pint of sap
since last evening. So I went the quarter mile home without having to carry
extra weight.
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| Gallon Vinegar Jug Collecting Maple Sap |
It won’t be long when I’ll have to carry two full five-gallon
pails (80 pounds) and sometimes even twice a day when the exercise program
really kicks in. It’s all for a good cause: it takes 40 gallons of sap to make
a gallon of maple syrup and our friends and family can readily consume four or
five gallons over a year.
Recycling Nutrients
A long time ago we lived on a stream that salmon used for
spawning. Many thousands swam upstream in late summer to mate, lay eggs and
die. Our dog thought it a terrible waste to see thousands of fish rot along the
edges of the stream so she rolled on them and ate as many as she could. She
couldn’t digest them so had to throw them up, only to try again a bit later, or
the next day. I’ve since read articles on how salmon benefit valleys where they
spawn. The nutrients they carry from the deep ocean end up well distributed
around the valley courtesy of the birds and mammals that eat live and dead salmon.
One afternoon we counted more than 40 eagles waiting to
digest their last meal so they could eat again. None of the salmon lying along
the stream had eyes because seagulls fought among each other to pick them out
these delicacies: breaking through salmon skin was too much work! ….but not for
eagles.
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| Deer Dropping Fertilizer |
I think of them when I see deer and rabbit droppings all
over the snow covering our fields. These herbivores cover wide ranges and deposit many droppings where
they rest. It’s great to see a herd of deer spend hours in our grove of Douglas
Fir and then later see pounds of droppings everywhere. Each year we use the top of one of
these trees to celebrate winter holidays and the trunks and large branches for
firewood. It’s great that the deer gather nutrients from miles around and the fertilize our fields and fir trees without me having to lift a
finger!
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| Deer Droppings with Tracks Under Fir Trees |
Thousands of Fish Die from Lack of Oxygen
Our neighbor has a 10+ acre pond that is very long. Every
year we discuss placing a bubbling system in the deep end that would allow fish
to survive the winter. Last winter fish older than two years died under
the ice from lack of oxygen. We had a thaw in January, 2014, that opened up much of
the ice and thoroughly oxygenated the pond that lasted long enough for the
smaller fish to survive. The odor was pretty heavy for a few days in the spring
but it didn’t take long for mammals and birds to gobble up the few hundred
large bass and sunfish.
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| Large Pond Where Fish Died From Lack of Oxygen |
This year the very deep snow on ice that formed in December
and hasn’t yet melted. No January thaw.
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| Two+ Year-old Sunfish Died from Lack of Oxygen |
The edges are melting in some places and reveal thousands
of dead fish, including even last summer’ fry, see photos below. We’ll catch
stock from our pond with enough pairs for them to repopulate this much larger
pond. I hope this fall they invest in a bubbling system large enough to enable
their whole pond of fish to thrive. Insects, mollusks, salamanders, frogs and
turtles that also overwinter underwater should also benefit from
well-oxygenated water. Some of them may die but won't be noticed since they bury themselves in the mud.
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| Summer's Young Fish Didn't Make it Through the Winter |
