Delayed Spring.

So, last evening just after the sun set I stepped out on the deck and heard the first Woodcock of the year. That caused me to write this on my Facebook page:

Aah! Spring must be near. I just heard my first Timerdoodle (aka Woodcock) of the year "peent" in the field across the road. Then the twittering flight as he rose to attract a mate. Hope the poor bugger doesn't get too cold and lonely tonight!

And, of course, his evening it's snowing. *sigh*

Not much snow falling and we shouldn't get much in the way of accumulation, but it's been falling in varying intensity all freakin' day there's enough to be annoying. Everything is white again and that just makes it feel colder than the 27 degrees we've currently got or today's "high" of 30 that we had around 4 PM.

The two week forecast shows highs in the upper 30s to low 40s (they took the 50s out yesterday) with overnight lows in the 20s and even the teens. This is good news for the maple sap collectors in their sugar bushes, but not much comfort to those of us looking longingly at our gardens.

Phil predicted an early spring but it appears he may have been working part time as an economic forecaster for the Democrats. Spring and recover are both delayed.

Farm Wars: Conflicting Nature Signs

Running around to do some things this morning I happened to notice lots of plastic tubing running through the sugar bushes capturing sap for maple syrup. Syruping requires lots of luck in that there's a definite benefit from warm days and cold (below freezing) nights. The warmth draws the sap up the tree during the day and the cold forces it to run back down at night. (If it stayed in the smaller twigs, they might burst from expansion of frozen water in the sap.) So these contrasting temperatures are a boon to the person tapping the trees. They get a heavy rush of sap into their tubes (or buckets if they are old school) when the sap goes up and another rush when it comes back down. If the night time temps aren't cold enough, that night time rush doesn't happen and the next morning there's no big flow going up since it's still up there. Plus, when the sap stays in the twigs and buds long enough, they start to bloom and the sap flavor changes for the worse.

Anyway, my main chore this morning was to visit a place in Millerton, PA, that sells fishing licenses. Not only did I need to purchase mine for 2010, but the Tiadaghton Audubon Society has had some posters printed up for the eel project and we've been trying to get to all the license vendors in the county. Along the same road and in the next town over is Draper's Super Bee Apiary and I was asked to stop and get some Orange Blossom Honey. (I also picked up some Pure Clover for myself. Delicious stuff!) I commented about the spring-like weather and said something to the effect that the bees would be active soon. The clerk told me that they already are active and that they are working some of the red maple flowers appearing in the trees across the yard. That is NOT a good sign for the maple folks.

Watching the dairy cows milling around the barns and feed piles of hay, I got to thinking about something Threecollie of Northview Dairy said the other day. She was wishing mightily for the pasture grass to start growing so they could turn the herd loose amongst this "free" food that is better than stored hay. Of course her wish for fast growing fields of grass might not benefit the syrup man working the sugar bush on her property, but if they got some bees....

Signs of Spring

Last fall, just days before the first snow and freeze up, Terry and I spent an afternoon burying a bunch of bulbs and corms in the wooded area on the hillside and in the garden. Now that the snow has finally disappeared and the frost is leaving the soil, some of those bulbs and corms are starting to poke their green little snouts above ground and produce flowers. (Some of the pictures aren't quite the best. I had the telephoto lens on the camera and couldn't get far enough away to be sure of a focused picture.)

Crocuses

Hyacinths

Irises

In the flower/perennial/herb beds:

Daffodil nods to the strawberry.

Tulips are just breaking ground.

The tulips are on the northeast side of the house nestled between the ell of the garage and the living area and seldom get any sun until very late in the day. This is also where the snow shoveled from the driveway or drifted off the roof ends up. That might go a long way to explaining the slow appearance of these plants.

Aaaahh, Spring!

It's spring time and the weather is acting like a yo-yo. Up and down, up and down, repeat.

Yesterday turned out to be a glorious day after the showers and 40 mph winds of Saturday. Not a cloud in the sky all day, nary a wind to be found and temperatures soaring into the mid 60s. Of course that changed after dark.

Clouds moved in after sunset but still the gibbous moon was shining brightly hen I went to bed at 10 PM. At 3:30 AM I woke up to the sound of heavy rain (and Terry getting up to take care of her beeping, battery depleted cell phone). Then at 4:30 AM Julie started caterwauling at the door and when that didn't get us up, she banged against it. She gave up after 15 minutes. Chester didn't start until 6 AM but he didn't give up--so we did.

Monday morning it was still drizzling and the temperatures had dropped to 40 degrees. The rain would stop but the sun made only very brief appearances when the clouds couldn't keep their act together. And despite the clouds coming out of the south, the temperature got no higher than 45 degrees all day.

Terry took off for an EGA (Embroiders' Guild of America) meeting in Horseheads around 9 AM then she headed off to New Jersey and a party with her lady friends in the Garden State Chapter of SAGA (Smocking Arts Guild of America) tonight. She'll stay at her mom's tonight and tomorrow night, taking our daughter out to lunch/dinner (im not clear on this) on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, I'll be watching carefully to see if we get the 1+ inch of snow that's forecast tonight and/or the snow showers predicted for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. The high tomorrow will be around 40 degrees--maybe. Then Thursday were back over 55 again and a reasonable day. They say we'll get showers on Friday and temps in the high 40s. Saturday brings a chance of showers and mid 50s again.

The occasional warm, sunny days interspersed with the rain has brought a change in the scenery. I raked the lawn and spread some fertilizer a few days ago. I don't know if the fertilizer has been washed away, but the grass that's out there (and there are lots of bare spots) is turning bright green. You can see it in the fields down below, too. Or at least you can see it on those fields that were cut/cropped close last fall. All of a sudden they are switching from brown to green. You can almost stand on the deck and see it happening.

The shad bush trees are starting to bloom and the red maple buds are going to burst open any second now. The latter are already showing quite a bit of red. Most of the farms that had buckets out to collect sap from their sugar maples have pulled them for the season. It's not cold enough at night and the trees are starting to produce bud sap which has a different and very inferior flavor. You can still see places where they have the plastic tubing up draining into large containers, but most of that will be spilled or go into animal fodder with little boiling to thicken it until they get around to pulling the tubing and its taps (spiles?) from the trees.

Oh, another sign of spring: The Mets won their opening day game today, beating the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 behind 5.2 innings of 3 hit ball by Johan Santana and 3.1 inning fo no-hit ball by Sean Green, J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez. Dan Murphy knocked in both NY runs with a solo home run and a ground out. On a negative side, the Mets had 9 hits and got 7 walks yet only scored 2 runs? What's up with that?

Actually, the Mets winning on opening day is hardly news. As it says at the link above, despite losing their first eight opening day games, they have the best record in baseball ever for opening days. They are 31-17 on opening days. It's September when they seem to have trouble.

Phil is full of it!

Okay, so Phil saw his shadow this morning and heading on back to his borrow for another six weeks of winter, the big sissy! Who needs him to tell us when spring will arrive anyway. We've got Major League Baseball to tell us that! (Can't trust NHL hockey or NBA basketball any more. Hell, they're still doing their playoff thing in JUNE for crying out loud.)

Let's take a look at the Mets' schedule. Yeah, pitchers and catchers report in about 10 days and that starts SPRING training, but the first official game isn't until April 6th in Cincinnati. And they don't have a home opener in the new Citi Field until a week later. April 6 is NINE freakin' weeks away!

Okay, okay. How about fishing season (and none of that ice fishing stuff unless it's for ice in a glass of Scotch)? Let's see....New York State always starts its trout season on April 1 come hell or high water, although there's more frequently a blizzard or two lurking in the wings. That's still EIGHT weeks away. What about Pennsylvania? Shoot, the trout season up here in the Northern Tier doesn't open until April 18...10 and 1/2 weeks from now. (It does start two weeks earlier in some southeast counties.)

Shoot, Phil's phorecast is starting to sound pretty good.

Aaaaah! Spring Time!

The weather here at the Aerie has definitely swung into full spring mode. The temperatures have risen to the mid to upper 70s today and the lows at night have been in the upper 40s for the past day or two. The forecast is for more of the same until early next week.

Terry and I washed all the windows today and put all the screens in so we can air the house out. The three cats acted a supervisors and occupied the window sills as soon as we moved on to the next window. They too appear to be enjoying the fresh air.

While none of the trees have yet opened their leaf buds, the poplars have begun to flower and their silver-gray catkins are providing a welcome softening to the hillside. The red maples are on the verge and will be popping out in flower any day now.

All the redpolls have long gone to be replaced by the purple finches and even a goldfinch or two ave been showing up at the feeders. I'm sure, their numbers will be increasing as word gets out that there's a free lunch to be had. Somewhat surprising to me is that there are still six to ten evening grosbeaks around. I thought they would have taken off for their northern breeding ground by now but, perhaps, they too have been lulled into staying by the pines in the area and the free food that's available.

I'll be heading out early tomorrow for a few days up at the Bolt Hole to asses what maintenance needs to be done. There's a growing list of rebuilding and landscaping chores on which Mark has been working. Too much water has gotten into the garage from both the roof and poor drainage around the base. All that snow we had, when melted, just ran into the garage and froze on the gravel floor, effectively cementing the ATV, brush hog, and log splitter to the ground. Something has to be done about that. The roof sagged considerably under the weight of the snow and ice and small, but damaging leaks persisted for much of the winter. And the back corner of the garage has been slowly sinking because the wooden sill is pretty much crumbling to powder from beetles and rot.

Luckily, cutting firewood will not be a priority this summer as we burned very little of what we cut last year. And if we decide to cut any, there are more than enough maple and cherry trees blown down by the storms of last August/September to provide.

If Mark is there for a day or two we'll do some emergency work on the garage and clear out some scrub pine from around what used to be an apple orchard in the hopes of bringing back some of the trees that have persisted in growing there. We (meaning mostly Mark) have already opened up a nice little area behind the garage and some of those trees produced apples last year that helped attract deer to the property.

It will be good to get out and start doing some physical labor again that doesn't include shoveling snow. The trick will be not to jump in too deep and over do things. After a winter of leisure that could lead to more than just a few aching muscles with my back history. Before you know it, I'll have to be making regular trips to the Bolt Hole just to cut the grass.

More Spring signage

Just got or monthly delivery of propane which fuels our heat and hot water and the bill was fully one-half what it was last month. YAHOOO!

(Still, the per gallon cost is wild crazy!)

Sap Season

Things have been rather sappy around here lately. By that I do not mean "sappy" as in mushy, romantic kind of way. I'm referring to the weather.

It is early spring and that's the time to see all the sap buckets hung on the sugar maples. There are still a few farms that do that sort of thing around here. (And I know the Burt Farm in the town of Ohio, New York, near the Bolt Hole still uses buckets in their sugar bush.) Some sap collectors have gone to hanging plastic tubing from tree to tree and gather their sap in 1000 gallon tanks along the road.

The recent full moon takes the name "Sap Moon" from the activities that take place in the sugar bush. With the daytime highs ranging above 35 degrees and the nighttime lows dropping to the teens and low 20s, the sap in the maple trees flows heavily during the day. Up it flows during the day carrying nutrients to the buds at the tips of each branch and twig and down it flows at night to avoid the freezing that could shatter the small phloem and xylem tubes within those twigs.

But the buds do not swell and burst into flower yet. They are gathering materials within their folded scales in preparation for that event, of course, but when that occurs, or even if the buds get swollen to the point of near bursting, the syrup maker's season is over. Bud sap is inferior to that which is collected at the tail end of winter and the very beginning of spring.

The gathering of the sap is just the beginning of the syrup making process, of course. It will take 7 gallons to 10 gallons of sap to make one gallon of good quality syrup. And to get that reduction, you've got to boil away all that extra water. To get maple sugar, you'll have to boil all the water away.

Farms that make some maple syrup on the side have special equipment and structures to do all that boiling in. If you wanted to do it on a very small scale, you could do it in your kitchen but I recommend--based upon past experience--that you do not. Should you decide to try, be prepared to spend a week cleaning all the walls and replacing all your wallpaper. That is once serious amount of steam you are going to produce. (I did it with just about 1 gallon of sap from some red maple trees--definitely inferior in sugar content--and got 1/4 cup of syrup for the effort. Steam-cleaned the entire kitchen, however! And had to replace the decorative border at the top of each wall when the paste just gave up the ghost!)

Or maybe not...

Yeah, there were a few Vs of geese fling north this morning. Hope they brought their overcoats with them. The forecast for tonight into tomorrow is bouncing back and forth from just rain through ice (up to 1/2 inch) to snow (3-4 inches possible). So much seems to depend upon the exact track of this storm.

We did get some big, juicy, wet snow flakes this afternoon, but that doesn't mean much. The icy line dividing the rain/snow is said to run from the southwest to the northeast and is currently located just 15-20 miles that-a-way--over towards Wellsboro and running up between Corning and Elmira.

Signs of Spring?

Warmish, sunny weather the last few days melted much of the snow in the pastures around the Aerie and we've seen numerous robins hopping about the grass looking for the early worms that the melt water has flushed out of their holes.

Several European starlings have wandered up the hill to the feeders as well. They didn't stay long however and went to find their buddies down around the fields where the dairy farmers have been spreading manure.

Monday I spotted two huge skeins of geese flying in ragged formations overhead. (It was windy and you could see they were having trouble.) But they were flying northeast and not due north, so perhaps they were headed for New England instead of Canada. Still, the fact that they were on the move was encouraging.

This evening, I heard the first "peeent" of a woodcock in the woods just west of the yard at sunset. If the snows forecast for the next couple of days stay just to the west of us as forecast, the male woodcock will perform his little evening aerial display to establish territory and attract a female everyday. Last year two or three of them competed around the Aerie and could be heard and seen from the deck. During May I kicked one up of a nest on the edge of the back field.

The presence of these birds (especially the woodcock) are all indicators that spring may indeed be right around the corner. But first we'll have to negotiate a few (hopefully) light snow storms.

The daylight hours have certainly increased. In the morning, it's starting to get light around 6 AM and, where it was dark by 5 PM back on New Year's, it is now quite light at 6 PM. Add the change of the clocks this weekend ("Spring ahead") and, although we'l lose some of the morning light, it will be 7 PM before it gets dark on Sunday evening.

We are on week 5 of Paunxetawney Phil's "six more weeks of winter" and I certainly do not want to go through a seventh week or an eighth or ninth.... You get the idea.