Dante

After a snowy winter and a good sugaring season, 2006 took a turn for the worse with the passing of Bill’s Father, Dante, two and a half months into his 96th year. Dad lived with us here, first in our farmhouse, and then at The Maples, the place we built together in 1999-2000. His obituary ran in his home town newspaper, The Providence Journal. Dad really loved the farm, and we will miss him.

Not much new to report, except that the blackfly season seems to be in high gear, and we've received a lot of rain. Summer vacation rentals are picking up, and it looks like it'll be a big year for wild blackberries and raspberries. We've spent a lot of time working on fencing and finishing sugaring cleanup (washing and putting away many miles of tubing). We're pleased that Kimberly Orzakowski and Jeremy Clark are now working for us part time. Kimberly is a mom of 2 in her early thirties, who has lots of farm experience, and Jeremy is a high school student soon to turn 18.

After spending a lot of time slogging through the snow setting up for sugaring, the season arrived in earnest in early march. Unfortunately, the initial good sap flows were followed by a period of weather that was just a little too warm to be ideal. Ideal sap flow conditions are night time temperatures in the mid 20's and daytime highs in the high 30's to low 40's. This year, the problem was not so much too warm daytime temperatures, but nighttime ones that just barely hit freezing.