DAY 0

Winter isn’t ending, and the sap isn’t flowing. This is the latest it’s been since we’ve been here, and I am sure local folks who live from maple syrup are worried about what promises to be a short season.

We’ve been in Montreal the past three weeks. When we arrived last night, there was about 40 cm more snow. There is at least a meter out there – infinite white.

It’s been a long winter. Remi’s death has been a constant companion. Grief is an odd thing. It has the feel of a blanket, but also of a cool breeze. Fortunately, my friendship with Remi was so rich and pure (odd word, but really this is the closest feeling I have when I think of him) that I have no regrets. I just miss him. And of course this is the season that I have most been dreading: the seedlings, the mapleing – these were our days.

Today I planted the seedlings for the first time by myself. Thanks to beautiful seed packets from Mie’s step-mother, I have approximately 95 kinds of tomatoes planted. I promised to tone down my excessive tendencies this year. Oh well.

Tomorrow people will start to arrive. It looks like the sap might flow two days from now. We will clean on Saturday. And soon, maybe even later today, I will post pictures of the cabin, which we have loved throughout the winter, finishing the renovation job Remi and I started.

Thanks for being alongside.
Erin

Another DAY 0

Sorry for the quiet, but that’s what waiting feels like. Endless. There is still so much snow – we had another few centimeters 2 nights ago and then more last night. But it’s now changed to rain, and we are expecting 11 today. We will cook.

Generally a rainy day is not a good cooking day because the atmospheric pressure makes it hard to get a hot fire going, and the sap flows much better through the warmth of a sunny day. But I suspect it will flow anyway, and yesterday the vat was 3/4 full.

It’s been slow-going – this is the latest season for decades (folks here are speaking about these temperatures being closer to what they were used to when they were young). Climate change is confusing – mostly what happens is that you can’t predict anything.

When we arrived a week ago and went up to the sugarshack, my heart fell when I realized that someone (could have been me) mistakenly left the large vat closed. This meant that we had 400 gallons of ice. I tried to stay calm, but I knew that if we didn’t break all that ice we wouldn’t have a season. I went in several times with an axe, as did both Matthew and Marc, and over 2.5 days we got it out. Nick also came with a heater and built a little hothouse around it with tarps. The group effort was beautiful, if wet. Someone who has photos should post them!

Matthew, Marc, Oana and Erica were here to boil, but they left before anything started (though we are excited to be getting Erica back when Christoph comes tonight!). Right now we are Erin and Brian, ro and Michel, Julio and Will.

One sign that it is going to flow is gutters dripping. We have no gutters at the house so I watch the front terrace for the snow melt. I look for edges. When I see that, I will go up and begin. We still haven’t quite set up the sugarshack, so this morning will be for that: getting all the tubing attached, doing a last wipe down of the vats before letting the sap in, and making the first fire.

Soon Oana, Xin Wei and family will arrive, and tomorrow Sohail, Cesar and Saehee. These will be days of turnaround – a lot of people coming for a few days. Sunday we are excited to see Morgan and Sybil, who will stay for a few weeks. And then on Wednesday, Mie and Natalie and Reza.

It’s wonderful to have so much enthusiasm for this frustrating and beautiful process!
Erin

DAY 1

What a day! Around 10 this morning I walked up to the cabin and was soon met by Michel and ro, and then Brian. We set up the evaporator, connecting it to the outdoor vat, made the three fires (1 in the cabin, two in the sugarshack), and we were off. Not surprisingly, ro and Michel are naturals. Morgan, you have found your match in ro, her attention to that 1.5 only matched by yours!

The first batch came quite quickly, mostly because we added what we had left of last year’s syrup, which means the sugar density was higher than it otherwise would have been. I think we began pulling the batch after only 5 hours, which is really quick for a first batch (the first year it took 12 hours).

Before lunch, Julio and Will came, and worked really hard with Brian to get rid of all of the detritus from the cabin renovation that was now becoming visible because of the snowmelt. It rained and rained and rained today, which was welcome (less snow!). Usually the sap doesn’t flow well in the rain but the trees had had enough too! This winter has been endless (there is still 1.5 meters of snow in the forest).

The first batch came up fast and was almost a disaster. For those who have been here, it was one of the times when the temperature just shoots up in the front pan. We had blocked the back, and when the temperature went up fast there wasn’t enough time for the cooler sap to mix with the highly dense sugar. It was really scary: for those of you who have never been here imagine not being able to turn off the stove under something very close to burning. When I get really scared, language leaves me. I was having trouble finding words for the help I needed. But eventually I managed (it was probably seconds but felt like hours) and we all rallied, getting cooler sap into the front pan, thereby making it possible for the next batch not to be wasted (if we’d thrown water in, which he had closeby, it would have made it impossible to have a new batch). That was “cosquilla.” A beautiful big batch, soft tasting with orange (ro, correct me!) aftertastes?

Then locals arrived: Dany, Nalini, Thomas. Julio and Will decided to go back to the house. We started cooking again (once my body stopped shaking from the intense stress of almost burning a pan, which would have been the end of the season because you can’t replace pans during the sugaring season – they are custom made). First Michel and ro made a small fire (while I bottled with Brian and his helpers), and then we made a hot fire. Within two hours we had another batch, no stress (almost!). “comme tu veux”.

Just as we started bottling Erica, Oana, Xin Wei and Oran arrived, and got to taste a warm new batch. This one tasted completely different. Caramel and vanilla (and a more robust aftertaste, as I recall). [I can’t taste as I am diabetic].

We called it a day. The large vat was about half full with sap still coming in (which means we will be continuing tomorrow). Unlike many maplers, we don’t continue all night (with the requisite nonstop beer drinking). So we just sat around in the cabin for a bit, enjoying the company, and then made our ways home for dinner. A beautiful beautiful day.

Thanks all!

Tasting notes

Day 4

It was a day of élan vital. But the third batch actually took the name of Belief.

The day started early. ro was up at the cabin, as was Oana, and they noted that the sap was coming in fast. So, earlier than I had planned (I am struggling to finish a translation), I went up. It has been an emotionally rough time for me. I miss Rémi dearly (he would have been here for everything we are doing at the moment – the mapleing, the seedlings), and it’s gotten more acute through ongoing harassment with his family. I have been mostly keeping it to myself (what is there to say, except that it’s hateful and extremely exhausting, and that it makes me feel doubly sad that he died of heartbreak at their actions), and wasn’t sure there was a day of mapleing in me. But when you walk up the hill toward the cabin, and see the two buildings on the bottom of the sugar maple mountain – the cabin and sugarshack), they beckon with such welcome that it’s hard not to put all other worries aside. When the houses are also full of kind, warm, brilliant collaborators, a day can be fashioned.

ro had already started the fires in the cabin and the sugarshack (the small stove) and unbeknownst to me (because I rarely look at a device when I am not in our house), pictures of the flood. What had happened is that we left the tap open to the large vat and overnight sap had pushed in (despite our well-adjusted float), filled the back pan and spilled all over the floor. A new problem! Every day brings a surprise problem we hadn’t prepared for.

Maryse, a neighbour, Erica, Anoush and I took out the extra sap in buckets (which we later fed back into the evaporator, as its levels got low) while ro calibrated the thermometers. About an hour later we were going.

The first batch, patch, was, like all batches yesterday, recalcitrant. The weather was crazy: hail then snow then rain then sun then rain then a snow storm. When the pressure is low, the fire feels damper (it has a heavy feeling, and the steam is more dense). This slows the process down. What became patch was named for a moment of sun-patch in the sky.

Patch was, unanimously, a typical maple syrup. Perfect and slightly undistinguished, as typical is. It will be appreciated for being exactly what it should be. But with all the neurodiverse creatures around, you can understand that there was a tinge of… disappointment? No, that’s far too strong. It was completely delicious and a gorgeous big batch. But the twinge of difference is prized here.

The second batch was sloooooooow. It always feels like it should come fast after the first one, since the sap close to what we pulled was quite transformed. But yesterday it just lagged and lagged. I must have said 10 times that I thought this was the last fire. And then it wasn’t. And it wasn’t.

But we had such beautiful company – Sybil and Morgan had arrived, and Oana and later Michel – and the feel of the environment was so warm, that we soldiered on. The weight of my grief was lifting, and it was wonderful to hear the strong women around me emphasize that no defamation suit could take me down (they are wanting to sue me for Unsettled).

Duration eventually emerged, as it does. It seemed like a very small batch when we pulled it, but actually it was quite good, more than average. It ended so suddenly, though, that it seemed like we could pull another one quickly (the fallacy). The fire had gone down suddenly and we’d lost heat. So I had ro bottle (first time anyone other than me has bottled) and Erica and I took care of the fire. But again I was wrong.

It wasn’t one fire. I stopped counting after believing too often that we were now working with the last fire. Dany, Nalini and Thomas arrived, and intense discussions about direct action were happening while Erica was convincing us that elan vital was coming. Brian called it, saying it was all over, trying to be the goddess of anarchy, but Erica looked up at him and said NO! Belief!

Belief did come just at that cusp when it was being most strained. I want to say belief is the best ever (Duration was said to be very sweet, a simpleton!, though ro disagreed with the derogatory name!) but I don’t remember what people said about it! By then we’d been boiling for almost 12 hours.

Exhausted, we made our ways home, lifted by a weathery day.\

Tasting notes

Duration: so, before the spoon came to the tongue, the words simpleton had spilled into the sugary shack. this tongue is differing (without begging for this swerve). Not at all. a modest yet irrefutable refined delicacy waits in the curtain, pausing on her modes for entry, sure of potentials and possibilities, and discerning the conditions for coming into themselves. Duration sparked thoughts on how not only do taste sensations change from initial heats to the next day’s cools, but that in those first 12 hours (and thereafter in slower paces, perhaps) a taste is still coming into themselves, still composing. Duration: the thicks of intensities layering, tentative becomings, kindling complexities.

Belief: buttery buttery beginnings, spritely sugar tones dance the middle hillock, making sure you’re awake! and then, YES! mineral hues lake the whole event, mineral mineral mineral cradle the afterimage – bliss. Belief. Her lights carrying gold.

More on patch to come!

the next day of the next day

I’ve lost track of time. There was a day 4 and then some cold days and then a warmer day and then today. So it’s technically day 5, but really it’s day more-than 5.

We have had some cold days – and have taken advantage of that time to remember this is a writing residency. Mie reminded us when she arrived yesterday, resetting the tone. We missed you Mie! Natalie also came and we are excited she will be here for 2 weeks. Very sadly, Morgan and Sybil leave tomorrow. It’s gone by so fast…

It’s a blur. Monday we cleaned – I do remember that. And then I guess we recovered for a few days.

I knew today would be a big day. There has been a turn in weather – in some places you can even see the earth! Oana sent me a picture of the vat around 6:30 and it was almost full. I was there by 7, and Oana had already started a fire in the small stove. We were out of the split wood (we split the harwood into smaller pieces for the high fires toward the end) so I spent a few hours doing that and tending the first fires. Then ro, Sybil, Morgan and Oana came, followed by Mie, Michel, Natalie and Erica. Brian arrived just as the first batch was coming. He had been cleaning last year’s bottles – a thankless task. We also had a gorgeous visit from Mario, who is working on next year’s firewood and came to have lunch with us.

“Byplace Lullabies” is a beautiful, full-bodied batch. I can never remember the details, since I can’t taste it, but what I can say is that it was embued with the beautiful out-loud reading of Sybil and Morgan’s gorgeous piece on byplaces. It’s really a startling work – so precise and careful and lyrical and philosophically rich. All about the sites that emerge vaguely for life to wander through them and be born through them. The brambles are present in that batch, at least speculatively. As is the lullaby of being read to.

Is it the magic of the conviviality? We have become pros. Erica is a fire wizard, passing the logs with grace. Michel is good too, but never quite as good as Erica 😉 ro dreams of râche-restaurants, brings us vivid taste descriptions and has become a diviner (almost as good as Brian!) of the block-technique. Morgan knows her place at the evaporator, keeping us at 1.5, while Sybil moves into whatever post we most need, attuned, as are Natalie and Michel, to whatever needs to be done. Poor Oana had a long long day of student critiques.

What stands out is the ease. Truly there is a completely different quality to the process as compared with past years. We have honed techniques, and they are easier to share and tweak. We also have such an attuned group, and it really helps that people have stayed for several batches – the dance is seamless. It’s hard to believe.

Batch two came within two and a half hours. “For once it was” was up and down, as second batches tend to be, but also decisive and firm. She tastes strong and sweet with a bite, if I am remembering correctly.

It’s rare that we do a third batch, but on what became a 12 hour day, it felt possible. “Vertigo” came more easily than those late afternoon batches usually do. She is softer, more buttery, than the earlier batches, and I believe has orange overtones. Each of the three batches was enormous – we really are finding our stride.

It was a magical day. I miss Remi dearly, but the absence was beautifully held today. I felt him come in and out several times. I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by such otherworldly forces. Thanks all!

some photos Oana took~

April 10

On the 9th in the evening I told people with confidence that we could take a day off. It was going to be snowing the next day and we’d used a lot of sap the day before so the vat wouldn’t fill up. I was wrong.

Sitting on the couch in non-sticky clothes, getting ready to face the 700+ unanswered emails, Oana texted me that the vat was overflowing! So I changed my clothes, wrote to Erica and ro, and went up. Oana had started the small fires and together we did the early morning tasks. Fortunately I had split enough wood the day before that I didn’t need to spend time on that. So we brought in the hard and soft woods, swept, cleaned, labeled, calibrated, filled and we were on our way. Soon ro was there, and then Erica, Mie, Michel, Sybil and Morgan. We knew it was going to be a short day because in the afternoon Erica and I would drive to Mont Laurier (very sadly) to take Morgan and Sybil to the bus. To cheer ourselves up, we would then go to the second hand store and fill up a large bag for $30 (some weeks we have “blue bag day” at the local St. Vincent de Paul).

It was a magical day. ro and Michel brought passages from different texts on affirmation. While Erica sadly had to attend a university meeting in the cabin, the rest of us read out loud (and I listened, while keeping an eye on the process). There were short texts from Nietzsche, from Deleuze, from my work. There was conversation and close reading and story-telling.

”Affirmation” took its usual five hours and she surprised us. She is golden-transparent, buttery and delicate. She takes a moment – asks to be tasted again. The ones who are sugar-resistant (Mie, Michel) found her to be a top candidate. The ones who love the thick caramel felt a twinge of disappointment. She is a sweet cared for creature on our journey for the forest differential.

April 11

It is sunday the 12th and I am about to head up to the flowing sap. Yesterday was another rich day. Brian and I headed up around 11, and Oana had already gotten the small stove going. People soon began to converge: ro and Erica and Mie and Natalie and Michel. Nick came to install the hot water in the cabin (?!?!?!?!) and then Christoph, Lévy and Diego arrived!

Dany was also there, and Real and Marianne – two locals from the early hippie community – arrived. A full house! It was a bit hectic – running in and out of the sugar shack dealing with the hot water heater and speaking to visitors and showing them around – but we’ve had enough time together that I can actually leave the sugarshack and know that things are not only under control but thriving!

Everyday we calibrate the thermometers because the atmospheric pressure changes. Yesterday we recalibrated them three times because they felt so off. But they weren’t. It was just one of those strange days when things boil at higher temperatures. Instead of making syrup at the usual 219, it was 221. I still don’t quite understand the effects of atmospheric pressure but I can tell you that all our work on valuation is true! Nothing is fixed. 🙂

The first batch arrived quite promptly, if 4-5 hours feels prompt. It was delicious (I know I am repeating myself but we’ve never made such high quality syrup in such large, relatively easy batches). Brian has the rhythm down of letting in sap from the large vat (the hardest job, I would say) and Erica is the master-calibrator! ro keeps a steady eye on everything while Natalie, Michel and Oana fill in wherever needed in a generous relational movement. Since they had just arrived Christoph and Diego mostly got settled – Christoph cleaning the cabin (aka the palace) and Diego asked his thousands of curious questions (Diego is really about 2 and a half years old). Then they made a delicious lunch of – Didi! what are they called??? – an argentinian bread made of chickpeas and salad and Michel’s apparently magnificent guacamole.

Having Didi there changes everything. How could it not? The trickster energy is exquisite. But he didn’t get his way in naming the first batch, which was “eau chaude.”

He did, however, for the second batch, which was batch 13, named eleven. That’s Diego – what can you do.

As usual that batch stalled – the late afternoon atmospheric pressure is always challenging – but we were home and getting dinner ready by 7:30, which is a pretty quick day. Eleven made people swoon, but we never really know what they’re like until the next day, when they’ve cooled down and settled.

Another feast was had at 131: baked salmon with grapefruit, garlic scapes, fried halloumi, two delicate crunchy salads (I am still tasting ro’s delightfully sour-savoury one), rice, lentils, broccoli and cauliflower. And of course delicious conversation.

Here we go again!

Sunday April 12 (before the break)

Today we arrived at 15 batches, which is our goal for the season. We will make more because the season’s not over, but since many people are leaving tomorrow (Erica, Christoph, Diego, Michel, Oana), we have decided to turn our attention to the writing residency. So today had the feel of celebration: ending the first run.

It was cold last night (-6) so I knew it would take time for the vat to fill. We started at 12:30, and surprisingly, were done by 6:30. An unusually short day, especially with two batches.

”Money” came relatively quickly, spurred by reading Brian’s working paper on money. The writing residency has become a tradition, it seems, and it was time to talk to each other about finances. 3E will never limit activities to people who have money, and staying at the cabin will always be free. 131 (the large house) will also always be free during events. But last year Mie showed us there was potential for generating some funds by gathering people around a writing residency. People could come when they want to, and contribute as they can.

Money is a sticky issue. Even though we practice revaluation of value, money still brings uneasiness. There is so much precarity, and also, alongside, the shame of not feeling one contributes enough. We decided to take this on directly today, and it was such a fantastic conversation. Years ago we had a practice (that didn’t “take”) where we had a nice box in 131 where people could just put contributions. I think it’s time to go back to that – we have so many generous and engaged people around. So the 131 writing residency will continue, but in the years to come we will leave it to that more quiet way of gathering funds. It helps the project when people contribute, but that contribution should never be seen as giving some kind of special access. We have to keep these things separate. To give to 3E is always a gift. And the gift is never reducible to money.

”Money” was a relatively small batch and though people wanted to dismiss it, it turns out it was quite sticky, and yummy. Not the most favourite (mostly because it’s money, I think), but not despised either.

We were going to name the final batch “Victory” after Orban’s defeat, but as often happens, the batch name didn’t stick. What stuck instead was “Glass”. The spoon held the syrup in such a glassy way – it really did look like stained glass.

Glass feels special. Delicate (too sweet for Michel though!), complex and round.

It’s been such a joy being surrounded by everyone. Come back soon! And for those of you far away, thank you for sidling!

Tasting notes

it’s a work-in-process – some tasting notes! please lean in with any angles you might wish to add! … posting unedited 🙂

7. belief (continued): Days later… butter swaddles with pronunciations perking the middle hillock, she’s chirpy — and songs swells into wiiiiiide scapes.

8. affirmation: Orange! (Colour) immediate butter, lightness, sugar tones across the back tongue, delicate — dances lightly away from the tongue,

Some days later…  sooo light! in colour, texture, taste. The colour of tangerine orange wine. The sweetness dances with subtle round caramel.

9. byplace Lullabies: sunshine. gentle rounds velvet kiss the tongue.

Red barks with mosses, it’s the next day.

Spices the tongue’s edges with hugs, while she licks cool up the middle brow. Thick thick greetings.

10. for once it was: yellow corners in red flood. she alerts the middle node with a bite, her high cook greeting you, the sweeter lovers lover.

Days later… The bite has mellowed, textures elegant, orange tones are pulling forwards

— lovers with thimble berry tea – Morgan and Sybil’s love in the cup!

râche restaurants: Mushroom, orange, wild thyme, mountain herbs of Greek islands (including mastic? might this then be silver birch inner greens?)

11. vertigo: lighter, more golden — butter, lemon.

Marshmallow! râche: ranging colour-tones and textures, we’re reminded of crustacean frequencies, sonorous roundings.

Râche: magnesium and potassium rich… will we crave less chocolate (thanks Oana!) and sleep better? The soils love it. The futurity restaurants snacks after it 🙂

The Literal: Dreaming of râche restaurants, radicchio râche with lentil dressed in grapefruit juice (wow, this! thanks Sybil!).

note to self, do not never forget Calabrian licorice root powder again… this surely loves râche, too!

12. eau chaude: “it’s close Curtain,” remembers Mie — number 8, 2025. Sweet note dance so light, also — but sweet for certain, with bitter râche middles. She’s loose, in her liquid, gently rocking away in her ebbing sways down throatwards. Cooked from 2.3 brix.

13. eleven: for Diego’s already-trickster quality spontaneities. Gentle round, earth sweets, with a spikes edging the backs of the … Now we were cooking 2.6 brix – the old-growth forest symphonying 0.3 brix through the arc of the day!

14. money:’s a tongue hugger, soft, deeper red, beginning from 2.45 brix. 5 minutes later and their entrance is russet

15. glass: is stain glass window. Thick butters… oh so much more to say! loop back with time

Silver birch’s new shoots: nudges us that we’ll soon drink her sap, uncooked. Splice open to chew on its inner greens, we chewed and wondered through a panoply of taste notes not quite finding what it was, so so familiar, that memory sharp and absolutely reachlessly fuzzy! Mastic? yes! And mountain herb automatics of Greek islands flood back. We returned and chewed again, she’s skirting anise and a root beer.

Wednesday April 15

It was the power of suggestion. I woke up this morning, set myself up to address the growing incalculability of flagged emails (729 this morning) and got a text from Mie. “Are we boiling today?” Of course not, I thought. It’s grey, it’s rainy, it’s infinite winter, and I have to answer emails.

But Mie planted a seed. A few hours later, Brian went up to check the cabin and put it to sleep (because who was boiling?) and checked the sap. It was overflowing. We talked about how it would have been a good day to boil. He said it still tasted good. I worried about the sap getting too old (when it warms up outside the sap needs to be used within a couple of days) and went back to not answering my emails.

Then we talked about how to get “réduit” (the cooked sap, before it turns to maple syrup) to Marc, who is our resident Acerum maker (with Matthew – happy birthday!!! – in assistance, I am sure!). Réduit also only lasts a few days in this weather. We kicked ourselves for not having taken it to Montreal yesterday when Brian drove (back and forth) for a dentist appointment.

Brian went back up, took out 10 gallons of réduit (that still tasted good as well) and put them in a snowbank. Despite the warming weather, the snowbanks are still several meters tall (and there are still a couple of feet of snow on the ground in most places – just enough to make sure you sink to your thighs when you walk anywhere, cursing the fucking endless snowscape). We mused again that it would have been a good day to cook.

And there it was, the germ was seeded.

Before I was quite aware of it, I wrote ro and asked whether she wanted to cook. She said she had just been wondering too. And within an hour we were up there, splitting wood (I am getting good with an axe!), lugging quite wet wood (thanks ro!), getting thermometers calibrated, starting fires. By the time Mie got there, Brian had moved a lot of softwood in, ro had managed to free much wet hardwood from the ice, I had a good pile of smaller pieces. Mie then dislodged some “croute” (the wood crust that remains after you cut planks), I got stickers on very cold bottles (they didn’t want to stick) and the evaporator started heating up. And Natalie arrived and took up her post by the evaporator, sieving râche.

We could have called our delicious batch Dance Party. We didn’t, but we did dance! Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, Carol King… And, having read together on artfulness and intuition, we could have called it Intuition (though Mie did say intuition still has time). But in the end the batch – amber, spiky, intense – resisted. It is called Pinstripe for the gorgeous piece of wood we burned, etched with three black lines.

A gorgeous day. But we missed you, our resident calibrator (Erica!). Mie was a star though, so you better get back quickly!

Tasting notes

15. Glass, wow. Different level! Texture -texture -texture — syrup glass, she’s still curtaining 🙂 Auburn lifts, carry us over to smokey notes in the mouth’s roof. She fringes, then, to pinch the back of the nasal, inviting the nostrils to tweak. Singularly something else.

16. Pinstripes: she’s passing through the conduit differently, tastes deeper red, immediately pulling forwards on the tongue… what’s to come…

Friday April 17

Simi and Dowitcher have little respect for our sleep – I think they get bored around 4am and think – “time to get the big creatures up!” Today they won. At 5 I was out of bed and a bit before 6 I was walking to the sugarshack to wash the pans (you take the cooked sap out, wash the pans with water, and then put the sap back in – we do it every 3 batches or so).

Marc drove up last night to pick up some “réduit” – the cooked sap that hasn’t yet become syrup. He will continue his experiments with Acerum (a rum-like alcohol made with sap). It was so great to see him!

This morning, after I had finished washing the pans and started the fires, on his way back to Montreal, Marc came to get the réduit. Brian had told us where it was, mentioning he had dug it into the snow and we would find it because of a little piece of wood he had put on top of the snow. Because of the rain, the snow looked completely untouched. It seemed unfathomable that there could be anything under it. We looked and looked for a sign of snow having been dug into. Then we dug where the wood was. Nothing.

Brian likes his morning sleep, but Marc likes his réduit more. So we woke him up. It turns out the réduit was just a few cm further from where we had been digging. Poor Brian – a third cat getting him up.

Then Mie and ro arrived, brought in wood, calibrated the thermometers and we were off. Within an hour Brian was also there.

There was a lot of scheming today. When Marc was there, as we were talking about the Acerum, he mentioned that we might want to get some barrels. We’ve had this idea of making a kitchen for food experimentation – we want to “rent” a cow (that would stay on Yoland Bilodeau’s farm) and make cheese (vegan and dairy), ferment… When Marc mentioned the barrels I thought that would be amazing for my vinegars. Within a short time, Marc and I were off, already retired in our collective kitchen, almost ready to buy a goat (not really, but that would be really fun, don’t you think Emma?).

It’s not surprising then, given the generativity of the space, that a few hours later Mie, ro, Brian and I were in full-swing restaurant mode. This is the proposition: we open a restaurant for 2 days/month May-November. ro is our chef, but we are all of course involved. We offer a 2-day package, quite pricy. It involves 2 nights at 131 (we could host 6 people, 2 per room), and they get meals. We also perhaps offer an activity (foraging?). Brian thinks we need a cedar hot tub we’ve had our eye on since we bought the place (it has a fire that heats it). We would prepare the sauna for them and make aromatics with local flowers. There would have course also be maple scrub.

The food would be local, with a focus on things we’d prepared in advance (different sauces, ketchups, ferments etc). We would follow the seasons and keep it local (I will have 95 tomatoes in the garden this year, 8 kinds of cucumbers, about 10 kinds of lettuce, 8 kinds of garlic, 5-6 kinds of onions, 4-5 kinds of leek, 3 kinds of asparagus – so we could definitely play with the variety). We could fish in our creek during the fishing season and might even have a moose dish in the fall when all the local hunters go out to hunt. We would of course specialize in râche (the mineral residues in the unfiltered syrup). Brian was thinking it might be interesting for europeans so we’d have to get some good bouche-à-oreille going. We’d build it close on the other side of the sugarshack, where there is a beautiful look-out and dig a large cold cellar (and put up a few solar panels). Who’s in???

And then Licorice Dreams was ready!

She is a dark one, deep amber-black. I saw people congregated around her but I didn’t hear how she tastes so I need help here. But I did see lots of smiles. I unusually left the sugarshack before everyone else because it was sunny and warm (16!) and I just needed to get to the garden…

16th batch.

Tasting notes

Liquorice Dreams’s râche –or perhaps sooner unfiltered syrup– is undoubtedly the best we’ve met lips with – this delectable scopes from liquorice black moist earth to marshmallow pillows, she spikes with her filtered sister attuning soft lemon notes, with a curl of pine nut, smoke, taffy coffee-bitters highs and afterimages… complexity all the way down.

– each spoon akin to rolling in wet moss!

we saw the first butterflies here today, the sun gleamed through the vet, the proposition with no exaggeration a life-dream in the making, below the view from the kitchen-to-come-window

Sunday April 19, penultimate

I’ve tried to convey the force of the sugarshack, but it was never as apparent as yesterday.

Saturday was the day of breaking down. Mie and I drove to Mont Laurier to pick up Erica at the bus. It’s a 55 minute drive, so the car had a lot of time to warm up. But after it being off for 5 minutes while we waited for Erica, it was completely dead. We were at a garage, but they didn’t even have cables, so I had to buy some to try to boost it. I convinced some guys in a car (they weren’t jumping out to help) and we finally started it. They thought the problem was the alternator, since the battery should have been charged from the long trip. We got as far as across the highway when it stalled again. I found another guy who really didn’t want to help. He boosted us, but like the earlier ones, left too quickly and the car stalled again. Fortunately it was in a parking spot this time (about 30 meters further than where it had stalled before). And even more fortunately, the parking lot was in front of the best (and only) cafe in Mont Laurier.

Erica bought me a cappuccino while I called Nick. He offered to come. So Mie, Erica and I sat on the pavement on the first warm day of the year, drinking our coffees, and waited. No one was stressed. After about an hour Nick arrived and I learned some things about alternators, electrical connections, loose battery poles and changing oil. Many things were tweaked – the true cause of the problem was not really clear. But the car worked again, and Nick followed us back to Ste Anne to make sure we didn’t stall again.

As soon as I got home, Brian came to find me to tell me there had been a disaster here while we were gone: in tethering the very last battery for the cabin solar system (he had been charging them individually, so had to reconnect them), he dropped one of the conduits, it fell on the wrong pole, burst into flames and reversed the charge of the 16 solar batteries. My heart fell.

For the next 12 hours, life was very hard. Batteries are extremely expensive, and Brian is so careful. This really was a fluke accident. But it was also too much: the first years of the project were really hard – everything was always breaking or broken, and Brian and I carried so much. I think we were both projected to those years, and on top of the financial fear, it was just more than we could bear.

That was a pretty sleepless night, with Brian going up to the cabin several times to check. In the morning he went again. Nothing had changed.

I had said we were boiling so I went up after lunch to get things started. I was feeling very heavy. Nick had just come, though, and told me he thought things were going to be ok. That he didn’t think the charge had been reversed. Brian’s reader still told him they were, though, so it was confusing. And we hadn’t reconnected anything to the system, and so didn’t know if it had fried (the inverter and the other components could have been affected). When Brian arrived, he and I went into the cabin to try to connect things. In the interim Brian had made a discovery: his reader, which we inherited from the (dishonest and hopeless) people we bought the properties from, was plugged in backwards. The batteries weren’t reversed – the machine to test them was!

Both of us were too shaken to really believe this. Twice we tethered the 16 batteries and the system and it didn’t work (we are not great at these things). The third time it worked and everything started. Still, we were scared: would it overheat? Was it safe?

I wrote Nick and said (in French) – we’ve put the system together. Afraid of overheating. Boiling in the snow.

Seemed clear to me.

I went back to boiling, the force of the machine, and the beautiful creatures around it, slowly recalibrating a very anxious body.

The day was quite cool, with snow/freezing rain at times, the fire a bit slow.

We were at our third fire when Nick drove up, very anxious.

He thought the cabin had exploded and we were boiling in the snow!

Brian does chide me about my missing topic sentences…

“Boiling in the snow” is a very large batch, deep and dark (almost blue-black). The colour of the syrup does change as the season progresses, so that’s where we are. Wednesday will be our last boil.

Last batch

This has been a season like no other. It’s many factors coming together, including experience, but one thing in particular has made a difference: letting the sap overflow. In past years we’ve often struggled to have enough sap, so when it did flow intensely, we felt we couldn’t stop. This is typical of mapleing: Yoland Bilodeau, who has a large maple shack with over 10000 trees, has been boiling straight for 8 days. When you make big quantities and have an industrialized system, this kind of exhaustion is typical. This year we didn’t do that. We decided early on we would only make as much as we think we can (hopefully) sell, and would take breaks. This has also meant that we have wood left over, which is a relief. We will still need to supplement with about 5 cords, but it brings down the cost for next year (of the labour, since we pay Mario to do the work, and I accompany him).

The day got going with an Inflexions meeting. Christoph has proposed bringing our journal back to life, and we’re on our way! The first issue will be Giving Land Back to Itself. The next issue will be Institutional Psychotherapy – Schizoanalysis. Exciting! We will work on the existing Inflexions files (none of us have Leslie’s skills, or Matisse’s, or Ben’s) and connect to fui.tes (thanks Ben and Jonah!). Our tech team will be Joel A., ro, Morgan, Jonah, but we will all learn. If you have tech aspirations, by all means get in touch! We need all the help we can get! 🙂

We made it to the sugar shack around 1. I was there first, struck by the turn in the weather. It was 12 yesterday and the snow is now melting fast. In fact, halfway through the day I looked out at the forest, which I assumed still had a half meter of snow, and the snow was completely melted! It’s dizzying how fast things change! Snow glories are up, their deep blue always an early spring balm, and tulip stalks are everywhere to be seen. Remi’s garden still has snow, but so many shoots already. And yesterday I planted lettuce and spinach seeds in the cold frame. Today I will begin hardening off lettuce seedlings in the other cold frames, and I will plant the first set of snowpeas where the earth is warm enough. Amazing, given that a week ago all was still snow covered.

Simon has joined us, so now we are ro, Erica, Mie, Natalie and Simon, and of course Brian and I. We have weeks of experience at the sugar shack and everything flows smoothly. Because we were starting late and the vat was overflowing yesterday, we brought things for dinner, which was served in the sweet, warm, beautiful cabin after the first batch. Such a joy to feel things coming together!

The first batch, five hours in (with the typical endless infinite 3 degrees – where the thermometer stalls 4 degrees from the desired 7, which is 219 fahrenheit or 7 above boiling), is called Celebration. It is dark and thick and full. The second batch, two hours later, is called Scarlet Runner – for those gorgeous purple beans that were in our dinner (from last year’s garden), and in felt memory of those hot, intense fires that burn my legs every fifteen minutes! It is Brian’s favourite dark batch – a bit more frontal in the palette, sweet and soft, also very dark but with red tones.

This morning I bought a label printer to put the batch names on the bottles (we didn’t do that last year, but it’s a shame not to). So I will be labeling in the weeks to come! It will be a lot of work. but it will be worth it, I think, to signal to folks that there are real differences between bottles.

Brian will do the final tally today. We’ve made bigger batches and used less wood (though still a lot!). And I am confident that each batch will hold up, which is a relief (in the past some batches were undercooked and needed to be cooked again during the year, which is a lot of work). Yesterday Brian and ro and Simon cleaned up the yard in front of the cabin (there was still quite a lot of garbage from the renovations) and soon we will have a hot water heater again (it burst in the cold temperatures a few nights ago), and someday a second hot shower will be had (ro has so far had the only one!). The pond is opening up, so a jump into the water from the sauna is a real possibility in the next week before everyone is gone.

In the sugarshack we continued to scheme about the restaurant (which still has no name). Now there are dog sled trips (we know people here who do them) and we have our holidays planned out: restaurant opened 2 days/month Jan-April and July-October.

The sap continues to flow. It will flow for another two weeks, I think, but it’s already turning – its sugar levels are lower and as the trees begin their own process of waking up, it will turn to what we call “sève”, which is unusable. This afternoon we will gather around the large vat and open it out, letting the sap flow back to the earth. Our new spring witchy ritual!

Mie, ro, Brian and I will begin the untapping on Sunday. It’s a beautiful task, to walk to each tree of the 800 or so trees on the sap line, take out the tap and put some alcohol in each line to clean it over the winter (it will come out in the spring when we tap again, letting the sap flow onto the earth to rid the tubes of it). It feels like we are thanking the trees when we untap, and welcoming the spring. There will already be food and flowers starting to grow – hopefully we will be able to pick ramps – the early wild garlic.

We were sad to end. That’s also a sign of a really full and joyful season. Thanks for accompanying us.

Tasting notes

The sap is still flowing.

The days are getting longer, the sun brighter and higher in the sky. These are warm days — 15 yesterday, 18 today and going up to 21 for the next two days. Then spring piggy-backing on winter comes back, with nights of -4 and days of 1 or 2. After that the temperature rises again, but not as high as it is now. Still, the surprise warmth of these few days is much appreciated. It truly is remarkable to see the flowers blooming while there is still snow on the ground.

Yesterday a carload left. It already feels like a month has gone by. Time is so strange. Erica, Mie, Natalie and Simon have returned to Montreal. ro is here in 131 for the next week, when she too will leave, though Erica and Mie will likely return around then for a few days then to help untap.

Untapping is beautiful – the wild forest-floor flowers (trilliums, trout lilies) will just be coming out, the buds forming on the maples, and no bugs. It’s strange, the quiet air. Once the bugs come, we won’t remember that quiet air until September, though they will have lost their fiendish force by July. Blackflies are a true reminder of our insignificance (or of our place in the food chain).

I have been spending time in the garden. Remi is with me as his garden begins to flower, the crocuses and the snow glories up. Today I will plant poppies. Before they left Erica and Mie helped me put more manure in the hugelkültur I built this fall. I still have two to fill, but there is time. Most things won’t be planted into the garden until June.

While we were in the garden, Simon, ro and Brian were busy cleaning the sugar shack. What a gift to have help for these onerous tasks. We will leave the sap in the evaporator to ferment. In late summer, the smell atrocious, we will clean. It’s not the most fun job, but the fermented sap is the cheapest and best way to get all the residue off. If we are feeling lazy then, we may even leave it to the Perceptual Ferment event. It’s definitely a perceptual fermentation!

One dreaded task was weighing on me: building the metal greenhouses I bought last year, each of which has hundreds of pieces. When I look at diagrams for these kinds of things I have an immediate sense of panic. Nothing makes sense.

I now know ro is the queen of the modular diagram! She is careful and patient and her meticulous attention to detail means that we already have the first one half up! We will continue today – I promise to send pictures if it actually comes together (and she is confident it will). I can’t quite believe it, but I am looking forward to another day of slow study, ro at the helm (I would have given up a hundred times already if not for ro).

Restaurant conversations continue. Big dreams are germinating. It’s been such a gift to be in this rich surround. Thank you Oana for seeding it and being here with us, Matthew, kg-family and Marc for coming before it started, Morgan and Sybil for making it all the way from Vancouver, Cesar, Sohail and Saehee for joining for a day, Christoph and Diego for bringing the sun, Natalie, Mie, ro and Erica for carrying the spread of the writing residency (reinventing the concept paper and reactivating the knot!), Melissa for the speedy few days, Simon for being here the last week and for reawakening the wheelbarrow method, Emma for always following alongside. Extraordinary meals were had, the pull of diagramming was felt anew, amazing syrup was made, along with sticky saunas, revived râche, and tomato dreams.

could you be more impressed?!?