Hop Kiln Road 2014

Riding Forever Beneath The Streets of Boston

Already another Valentines Day! M made a couple of pretty stiff ole mother flipper floppers and we were already spinning those Kingston boys and singing along watching it snow, already dry and toasty in our slippers. M uses blackberry ice cubes, puts a couple wheel barrows of blackberries through my tomato machinery and freezes 'em in ice cube trays. Sheer genius. Well we'd already decided on another round and as she leaves the room she says, "Treat, I've already picked up an Italian bread maker as my Valentine so you don't have to get me anything." Good lord...Adrenaline spike! I mean making bread is already hard work, getting up early and all, and we already have a spare bedroom, but just why would I want a bread maker dude around the house? Whoa Valentine! So I'm already out of my chair when she starts hollaring from the kitchen, "Treat! Treat! Treat! The grey goose is gone!!" So I quickly figure that local fox is already on the town-o and hustle to the mudroom, where my carhartts and boots and snowshoes are already already and high hoof it down to the barn. Well everything there seems okay and I try for a beak and bill count but there's already so much bobbing and weaving I just get dizzy and head back figuring my next flipper flopper ought to be already already. Nope, why I get back and M was already waiting for me at the door with my headlamp and she says, "Treat, you already forgot your drill." Hell with the bread maker dude and my ole grey goose will just have to fend for himself, boys, it's time to tap and I'm already.

The Grey Goose is gone!!!! What are M and the italian bread maker going to drink now?

Hmmmm, Blackberry ice cubes and Grey Goose, I may have to try that.

Okay, pretty palpitating tapping even after I got the Valentine issue straightened out. The bread maker ain't a dude but just another machine that sits on the kitchen counter. M says I'm getting too old to handle multiple flipper floppers. Told her I was just all jumpy from reading the Maple Trader way too early in the year. I mean jeepers, outta nowhere guys are all firing up RO's, Plainfield has a maple cotton candy complex, Red Roof has gone Cupertino, SweetSap has a frigging BUBBLER and I don't even dare look to see what new haul vehicles the Andover proletariat has acquired or figure out what equipment Amber Gold hasn't updated - I'm thinking maybe his drill, nope he's got Alden on that - while all I got is 140 new gravity taps and I busted butt just to highwire them over the Tucker trail. M says it all sounds more like anxiety from the shingles medicine but who knows?

Love reading these threads!!!

Hilarious. Keep it coming.

Well I got two orchards dialed in, barely, and on snowshoes. Digging/chiseling in the cage tanks. Digging/chiseling out the drops. Trees are only weeping. Man looks like everything else could get really frozen in next week. Fortunately I had checked out things on the hard snow back in January. And had already rerouted the Twist Hill 1 mainline, after its poor 2013 performance, and fertilized. But the cluster tapping was severe; the guy nailed the tees and must have been using 12" drops for 15 years. Almost looks like a lightning strikes up one side of the trees. Only solution is increase the growth rates. Also had installed Twist Hill 2 mainline, including jumping the 20,000 tap Tucker track at 11.5 feet; had to drag in a ladder. Most of the guys in Bow have traded up their sleds for gentlemen SnoCats, guess they're warmer and more comfortable. A couple have Bombardiers. All with sweet paint jobs, decals and fly burgee flags on whips. One guy claims to be rebuilding a Zil-29061 but nobody has seen it, yet.

Geez Doc RB showed up this wet afternoon full of news and in no condition to finish the tap out. Says I'm way too early and will only imperil my health. Been out in Colorado checking on the humongous drop in his chronic chairlift thigh mail order business and driven back straight through and too twitchy to tweak a drill. Said around Cleveland he came up with a plan to snatch his business back from the competition and swung by to run it past me. Maple infused hashish made in Marrakesh, Vermont. Whoa...first, I told him, there wasn't a Marrakesh in Vermont. Wrong, he had already iphoned in his app and gotten a ZIPCODE for Marrakesh, Vermont. Oh five four twenty, he said. The postal people will do anything to preserve their pensions. I got on my dial up for a couple of minutes. 05420 puts it somewhere outside of Burlington, right in the maple friendly lime rock basin. Okay, second I countered, Vermont hasn't legalized pot. Go ahead, hold your breath he says. See I'm going to play the huge contradiction card: socialists driving Beamers on bad roads trunking bulk syrup over to New Hampshire in stainless steel just to get the extra nickel when they can simply USPS it up to 05420. Look, the classical psychiatrists used to shrink their patients' personalities back to a manageable size and hallelujah, the patients found happiness. Today, with all the talking head jaw flapping facebook posting, it's quicker and cheaper to medicate happiness...both trains stop at the Euphoric Street Station. Doc says the Vermont, Inc. folks in M-town are already salivating viral, thinking a State IPO and a tax flow worthy of an interstate sap vacuum. After he wound down M put him in the spare bedroom. She says, Toot-Toot Everybody!

Went over 400 taps today. Sunny, nice, gorgeous day to tap. Trees running .25 gpt. No help from Doc RB cause he didn't arise until 3PM. Making my famous Gunpowder Schnitzel - got the recipe from a little old lady in Kitzbuhel - with assorted apple applesauce, parsley potatoes and pickled beets for dinner. Touching it off with a '09 Elk Cove Single Vineyard before dinner and a snappy Bodegas '09 Hito with dinner. Potato bin in the cellar is getting low and the green mountain eyes are budding but so what. Doc reports a Colorado source says APPL's new GTAT million sf plant is a much bigger deal than being reported. Translated for my Vermont friends, that's more than 23 acres under one roof growing sapphire crystals. Think it's going to draw 50,000 megawatts, but that number dwarfs me. And for the record, GTAT is a NH company, which begs the question out to what lunch were our DRED people. That aside, Doc says APPL is going to implant solar cells in the sapphire glass and produce an unbreakable, self-charging iphone, among other things. That's right, you'll be able to run over or drop it in the surf overnight with no performance issues. I can only speculate what APPL's conversation with TSLA was about. Alas, after dinner is Doc Toot-Tooting off to Vermont to check on his mom and I guess make a presentation to the Vermont, Inc. Board Meeting.

How dare you.... The DRED people are the most amazing people they have ever had the pleasure of meeting. At a meeting one time they were so proud to tell us how much they helped local business by being available to answer questions on how to fill out the many forms they require you to fill out for interstate commerce. I asked, wouldn't it be more helpful to just have less forms... long pause... bewilderment then confusion.

Keep up the blog, I love it. Have a great season.

Snow pack thickened and made movement easier. So the tap out nets about .75 gpt. Still got two orchards to go - but all the drops are out of the snowpack - and a clean out boil and a membrane wash/rinse, which I've never done. Might have to track down Miss Je T'aime in K-Bek for a couple of pointers. M did snowshoe up to the sap line crossing over the Tucker track. You can see the bubbles drifting down the line against the sky. She said it was a work of art! And stop PM'ing me for the Gunpowder Schnitzel recipe. Got it in 1971 and I my lips are sealed. You want it, you go over to Kitzbuhel and consort with the granddaughter for a week and see if you end up with the heirloom.