Bad Mistakes

I did an inventory earlier this week -just three pints of liquid gold left. Three pints of homemade maple syrup are all that stand between me and the “stoah boughten” stuff. No, there is nothing wrong, I guess, with the stuff from the store – Its uniform color, grade, and taste. OK, that is precisely what’s wrong. It’s all the same, jar after jar. The syrup from my little sugar bush varies depending on when it came from in the sapping season, the conditions that day, and how thorough I was in boiling the sap down. That should goose me into looking for the pails, lids, tubing, and taps.
OK, there you are in the snow every late, cold February and March afternoon. You carefully trudge through the ice or snow with buckets full of sap. Watch out. Don’t spill it! You spend hours boiling it down and searching for lids for the Mason jars you were sure you bought last year. At last, there it is- sweet gold or dark, a liquid ambrosia.

Putting it in perspective, not tapping the trees last year was a blunder. At the beginning of February, it left me with a bare three pints remaining and the threat of store-bought maple syrup on pancakes, french toast, baked beans, flavoring for all sorts of cooking, and God forbid none to put on ice cream.
What in hell was I thinking last year?