The first clue was that +10 degree day. I saw a guy in the Sault wearing shorts on the seventh of March. Ol’ Petey, the Polar Vortex, must have been snickering up his sleeve.
Then he continued the joke and turned Lake Superior on its side. Remember those bone chilling winds? Well the lake sure does. Table sized ice chunks from somewhere ended up as ice mountains here at Montreal River Harbour on Superior’s eastern shore. And, thanks to the Modis satellite imagery on the GLERL (Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab) website, that somewhere was most likely Whitefish Bay, about 65 km south of here! On March 4th, the Bay was almost full, with just its mouth showing a big crack of a smile. By March 16th half the ice was gone. Gone alright! The infamous March winds blew that flat, 2 foot thick ice field straight onto our shore.
Yoikes! Cracking, crushing! The ice pans hit shore and tumbled end over end onto each other. With nowhere else to go, they went up! I felt like I was in the movie Inception or Dr.Strange where the landscape tilts on its side. After a full 24 hours of ice meets shore, the wind eased just a bit. What was left? Ice cliffs so high that in many places one can’t see the lake!
But there is some consolation (besides great photo ops). This March ice break up is the lead up to spring. Forget about snow and ice.
Turn instead to thoughts of the sweet maple syrup of early spring.
To get a feel for how some syrup production was going I called Doug Thompson at his place on St Joe’s Island. Thompson has over 16,000 taps on his 155 acres on the island, averaging 20,000 gallons of sap a day. I tried to be quick with the questions. After all he was on his cell phone at his sugar bush. I can’t imagine how much work it must take to run his operation!
But Thompson does have some unique help. He uses some very cool computer technology to make his collection system more efficient. Like most syrup producers, Thompson uses lines and a pumping system to extract sap from the trees. But the lines have a tendency to leak when squirrels make holes in them to get at the sap.
“Squirrels are the worst problem,” says Thompson. “All of a sudden they’re all over the country and they sure like to chew the lines.”
A few years ago, when Thompson was in Vermont, he ended up chatting about the problem of finding the leaks in the lines. Someone suggested that it would be good if there was a computer program that could help.
Thompson brought that thought back home and acted on it. “One day, out of the blue, I decided to find someone who could build the technology,” he said. “I was driving into the Sault and I had a choice. Turn right or left. So I drove left to Algoma Business Computers and found Trevor Bryant.”
Bryant, a sales person as well as programmer at Algoma Business Computers, tapped into the project and designed a way to map the route of the sap through the sugar bush.
“Doug Thompson just walked in and approached me with the idea,” said Bryant. “So I figured out how to monitor the vacuum levels across the property.”
That was six years ago and results have been great.
“Producers have increased their bottom line since they are now able to collect more sap,” said Bryant. “The program took off.”
Bryant explained that about 20 maple syrup producers in Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate New York have purchased the program. As well there is one in Wisconsin and also in Quebec. Of course Thompson uses his on St Joe’s, with great success.
“Now we know where to look; otherwise, you just flip a coin to find the leak,” said Thompson. “We can find and fix a leak so fast. I look at the computer in the sugar house and see a map of the lines. There’s a sensor reading at the end of them with colour coded results. Red is low, yellow is intermittent and green is a go!”
Thompson and Bryant must be pretty pleased with their efforts and their system. It’s a great addition to sap gathering technology.
I thought about all this maple syrup talk as I was wandering through our own maple bush. As I circled the trees, I noticed that each of the larger ones was showing bare ground at its base. The trees are alive, have warmth and have so much to give. I look forward to the coming days when that bare ground is everywhere and the trout lilies are brightening up the forest floor. I realized too that all barriers to growth, be it an unexpected wall of ice or an invasion of chewy squirrels, will melt, move on or be out manoeuvred. So let’s celebrate the coming season. For who knows what clues a fresh spring will be dropping our way?
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| the old fashioned way |
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| fog bergs |