Archive for the ‘Life in Vermont’ Category

Posted on March 12, 2010 - by deCadmus

Sugaring Season in Vermont

Driving around Vermont this time of year you’re sure to see the telltale blooms of steam billowing from hilltop sugar houses… Vermont’s surest sign that we’re at the muddy intersection between a long, snowy winter and spring greening. I suspect I won’t have opportunity to head into the woods this year to revisit some of Vermont’s family-owned sugar shacks, so I’m reprising a visit I made to the Isham family farm and maple sugarhouse… just down the road aways in Williston, Vermont.

Maple sugaring is a tradition that has flourished at the Isham family farm for five generations. It’s on the verge of a sixth generation — Mike Isham’s daughter Jennifer may well prove to be the first iPod-wearing sugarer in Vermont — provided the weather holds out. Maple sugaring happens only in the subtle dance between winter and spring, where the cycle of warming days and freezing nights makes the sap run. In the face of global climate change, Vermont’s tradition of sugaring may be in danger.
The essential techniques of maple sugaring are unchanged from colonial times: tap a stand of maple trees to capture the sweet sap that runs in early spring, and then boil the hell out of it. Fresh from the tap, maple sap is about 2% sugar. Boiled for hours in custom-built evaporators, the sugary solution is concentrated until — at precisely 66.9 percent sugar — it’s Vermont maple syrup.

Technology, of course, has changed things. Complicated networks of plastic tubing (networks! of tubes!) syphon sap directly from trees into collection tanks, replacing much of the tradition of metal sap-buckets and draft horses. Not to worry, you can still find some family farms doing things the old-fashioned way… Vermonters are nothing if not resistant to change.

In the sugarhouse — sweetly-scented by wood smoke and billowing plumes of steam from the evaporator — there are still more changes. Freshly drawn sap is pushed through reverse osmosis equipment, removing as much as 80 percent of the water in the sap before boiling ever begins. Combined with a super-efficient evaporator, this concentrated sap takes only a quarter the time to boil down to syrup as it did in the good ‘ol days.

Boiling down thousands of gallons of concentrated sap still requires the patience of Job, and a certain sort of mindfulness, as the difference between pure maple syrup and a burnt maply mess is a matter of only a few degrees temperature or a coupla ticks on the hydrometer. And so it’s little wonder that sugaring tends to be a family affair, with an experienced hand on the tap, and a broad back or two keeping the fire stoked well into the night. You can make syrup only when the sap is running; and when it’s running, it waits for no one.

Sugarhouses all over Vermont will be hosting their 9th annual Open House Weekend March 26-28, 2010. To learn more, visit the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association.

Posted on February 24, 2010 - by deCadmus

White on white (on red)

Local news: an untold billion crystalline paratroopers cast their downy way down, whirling, twirling, tumbling to land — gently — on roofs and posts and caps and the occasional expectant, outthrust tongue. It’s winter… it should by god snow.

Mind you, this is heavy, wet stuff; surely the prodigious sort that (we’re told) Eskimos have a hundred words for. This is the stuff that sticks, that clumps and bunches on wet, black branches and gracefully-draped power lines alike, and on the occasion that the first leans a little too much on the second, then it’s good to have a backup power supply. A genny.

Meanwhile, it sure is pretty. And — fair warning — it makes for a right awesome snowball.

Posted on November 3, 2009 - by deCadmus

Oh, hi.

Wow… November, huh?

I mean, I’ve managed to go without updating Bloggle for a while at a time, but this is a stretch even for me.

I had the best of intentions, of course. And it’s only on the occasion that I picked up a bug and have been away from the office a couple days that I’ve found time even now to post something, so hey… this virus has been good for something.

Here’s hoping that you’re doing a better job of enjoying the change of seasons. Me… I’m a bit behind.

Posted on July 9, 2009 - by deCadmus

There And Back Again

Have I mentioned that I’ve been stupid busy lately?

I was certain I had, but… you know. Memory. Goldfish. Mad Cow. Mooooo. Regardless, I haven’t yet forgotten I’m supposed to be writing something here from time to time.

Let’s see… my last post was written while still at sea, making for Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. Made it. Got the pictures to prove it, at least some of which you can find on Flickr, and more of which I have still to sort through, as I’m still in the habit of taking several dozen photos for every one that I might want to keep. On this trip I averaged more than 1100 photos a day.

(I was an English major, you do the math.)

Alaska was one stunning vista after another, interspersed with too, too touristy ports of call and some of the most lovely sunny, warm days I’ve experienced this year. After telling folks for weeks that I was leaving for Alaska to escape Vermont’s chilly spring weather, nobody was more surprised than me (and maybe several thousand sun-burned Alaskans) to discover that was true.

All in all, I think the tribe of extended family and friends enjoyed themselves, and Mom & Dad well and truly were moved by our celebration of their 50 years together. And if they try to deny it, we’ve got video to prove it.

Meanwhile…  more recently I’ve:

• Made an offer on the quintessential Vermont homestead, which the seller subsequently withdrew from the market. Our string of real estate misadventures continues unabated.
• Upped the fitness routine to 60-90 minutes, most every day. I’ve lost only 5 pounds, but I can now bend iron bars with my thighs.
• Got a Palm Pre, which makes me feel more cool than I have any right to be. I’m enamored of this gesturing thing and dearly wish I could make the rest of the world respond like my Pre.

None of these is remotely like a viable excuse for not writing, so I guess I’d better get back to it… and perhaps with something substantive, besides.

Watch this space. :)

Posted on April 25, 2009 - by deCadmus

Uh-oh…

It’s sunny and seventy-eight degrees. The sky is powdery blue, and a warm breeze carries the scent of fresh earth and early blooms.

This can’t possibly end well.

‘Cause face it — this is Vermont. You get sunny days and seventies in the month of April you’re gonna pay for it. Fire, mudslides, tornados, a throng of poisonous snakes, or maybe lawyers; a werewolf uprising, a zombie apocalypse… Prepare now, for we are doomed, doomed, say I.

Posted on October 25, 2008 - by deCadmus

Ten thousand thousand fruit

The first time I really tasted apple cider…

…was in Hannibal, Missouri, in a park perched on the bluff of the Mississippi River. I was thirteen, and my freshman class had just trounced the sophomores in the annual October flag-football tradition known as the Turkey Bowl. Despite the flags, this was a grudge match: a hard-hitting battle that left most everyone nursing a few bruises, and the sophomore class nursing their egos for, oh… the next three years.

To celebrate we frosh toasted each other with plastic cups of cold, fresh-pressed cider from an orchard a stone’s throw down the road. I still think the sky has never been as blue, the air as clear, the oak leaves more golden than on that glorious day. And certainly the cider never so sweet and refreshing.

I’ve tasted lots of ciders since. And while none has ever matched the perfect, sweet cold essence of ten thousand thousand apples of that autumn victory — just between you and me, I can’t really expect any ever would — there are two that have come close.

In Kansas City, Stephenson’s was more than an apple orchard, it was a more than a restaurant, it was a tradition. It was where our family went to celebrate, where we took friends for an unforgettable experience, and where we only ever manage to save room for dessert once… and that was by cheating. Their roasted chicken was incredible, the beef brisket divine, the apple fritters addictive. But maybe the best part of Stephenson’s was waiting to be seated in one of the restaurant’s crazy, tangled knot of rooms, ’cause waiting meant helping yourself to the barrel of apple cider while you perched on a bench and marveled at the ancient farm implements and curiosities from ages gone by that filled the labyrinthine foyer of the old place. Sure, you could buy Stephenson’s cider most anywhere in Kansas City… but wherever you might buy it, it was never as good as the stuff that came out of that barrel.

Sadly, it appears that Stephenson’s is no more… at least the restaurant. I hear the orchard is still there, so maybe they’re pressing cider, still.

But I said two… and the second is maybe the more remarkable, for a number of reasons. The first is that Adam’s Apple Orchard is just a mile down the road from my home in Vermont. That’s handy in all sorts of ways… in summer months they’re our go-to place for fresh produce, much of it grown right there.

The orchard itself is sited on one of the prettiest pieces of land this side of the green mountains — you can see Camel’s Hump in one direction, the Mansfield range in another — it’s especially nice in the spring when the apple blossoms are blooming.

But it’s the cider — fresh-pressed, unpasteurized, unfiltered, unmessed with –  that’s the remarkable thing. It’s got that taste… of gold and russet autumns, blue skies and the oh-so-sweet, crisp, tart essence of ten thousand thousand fruit.

After Apple-picking

by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still.

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didnt pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem-end and blossom-end.

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking; I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

Posted on October 19, 2008 - by deCadmus

It’s Getting Scary Out There

The maple trees are throwing off their scarlet leaves much like our old golden retriever shakes off the rain after a walk in the wet. The smoke-tinged breeze has a bite to it that wasn’t there just a week or two ago. It’s the season, all right… but if you hurry there’s still time enough.

Time enough for jumping in piles of fallen leaves, raking them up and running and jumping again. Time enough for getting pumpkins and squash and just-picked apples at the farm stand down the road (and don’t forget to claim your organic, free-range and thoroughly mollycoddled turkey for the upcoming holidays… just a few left don’t you know). Time enough to check your firebox and flue, maybe put a match to the first fire of the season.

Time enough to carve a pumpkin or two or three. Time enough to have a sip of fresh-pressed cider with your  walk in the woods. Time enough to do those things that shouldn’t wait. Time enough… but don’t put it off.

Don’t wait. Not this time.

Now, the best part of pumpkin-carving:

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

• Seeds from one just-carved pumpkin (carving a political message is optional). About two cups.
• 2 Tbls butter. Yes… butter. Butter is better. Butter browns.
• Salt n’ pepper to taste.

Spread seeds from pumpkin in sheet pan, mopping up pumpkin juice and any remaining stringy bits with a kitchen towel. (Paper towels work fine.)

Melt butter and drizzle over seeds. Mix throughly to coat. Sprinkle with salt (I prefer kosher salt) and pepper.

Roast in 350 F. oven for about 15 minutes. Stir. Give ‘em another 5-10 minutes in oven, or until GBD (Golden, Brown and Delicious). Sprinkle with a wee bit more salt just from the oven.

Try not to eat them all at once. Just try.

Posted on October 19, 2008 - by deCadmus

Autumn 2008 Image Gallery

Posted on October 10, 2008 - by deCadmus

The Reason for the Season

Caught a snatch of this on our local public radio station… and was delighted to find that Phil has posted the whole schmear at VDB:

…once we’ve scammed everything conceivable from everybody conceivable, we return home, the girls dump their bags of individually-wrapped emulsified chocolate out on the floor, and then, after fighting over any full-sized candy bars, they eat enough to feel queasy and go to bed early.

Which gives my wife and me a chance to graze their half-melted candy piles, fight over any Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, eat enough to feel queasy and go to bed early ourselves.

It’s a beautiful thing.

But the last few years, something about it has begun to bother me. It’s come to feel like something crucial is missing. Maybe it’s the fact that the candy and the plastic pumpkins appear so early in the stores.

Whatever the reason, it’s begun to seem to me that in our rush to buy and sell and hype Halloween, we’ve forgotten what I call the reason for the season.

And the true reason for the Halloween season is not to fatten our kids with Gummy Worms or to dress them up like My Little Pony – it’s to scare the living bejeebers out of them.

[Image: Troy B. Thompson]

Posted on August 14, 2008 - by deCadmus

It All Adds Up in the End

Some quick, back of the envelope calculations…

Since making the switch to a scooter for my daily commute I’ve ridden about 1000 miles in the last month, despite record rainfall in Vermont this summer. (grumble)

Along the way I gobbled up 37 fewer gallons of gas — that’s $156 that won’t go to the oil companies, thank-you-very-much — and reduced my carbon footprint by about 740 pounds. More, I’ve had a blast riding, too.

Incidentally, that 740 pounds o’ carbon figure is about the same amount of C02 that you can eliminate by replacing just two incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Which is far cheaper than buying a scooter, if not quite so much fun.