The Boil Begins!

News from the Sugarbush

We collected our first sap on Tuesday, and did our first proper sap boil on Thursday this week. Between Tuesday and Thursday we turned about 50 gallons of raw sap into about 1.25 gallons of concentrate. The concentrate still needs a few percentage points of water boiled off before it becomes syrup, but I try to do that final finishing step on a stove where I've got more control over the heat.

We also made about 60 gallons of biochar, and I learned an important lesson about not leaving my polyester gloves on when I'm working with the fire. The burn is healing up ok with some antibiotic ointment, and the melted polyester came off within the first day or two, but it's a good reminder to always wear proper safety equipment. I had welding gloves sitting six feet away that could have prevented a very painful experience.

It's going to rain all day on Tuesday, so if there isn't much sap I'll probably cancel Tuesday's boil. Thursday and Saturday look promising so far.

Other News of the Commons

We got the keys to our Artisan Market cabin for this summer. We'll be in cabin #12 this year. It's on the righthand side if you're facing in from the street, next to the Friends of the Library shed. I think last year it was the lady with the houseplants in there. (I hope she comes back in a different shed. My spiderplant is still alive and I think I might finally be responsible enough to get a second houseplant.)

In the Broader Movement

The Dance For Democracy protests down at the Weathervane (every Friday at Noon) have continued to grow, as have the postcard-writing lunches at North Grove afterwards. John Moolenaar, our local congressman, hasn't done a townhall meeting in more than 10 years, and lately he hasn't even been answering his phone, so postcards are a good way to get in touch with him. If you want to let him know how you feel about the corporate coup, here's his mailing address:

246 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Solidarity This Week

How many library cards do you have? Did you know that signing up for a library card is a great way to help a library out, even if you don't plan on using it much? It helps demonstrate to funders that people in the area care about the library's survival. A lot of folks don't realize that the Montague library and the White Lake Community Library are part of different library systems, so you can get library cards from both of them. Plus, you can borrow a metal detector from the White Lake Community Library, and you never know when you're going to lose something in the woods. The oak leaves out at Treespeaker have claimed a surprising number of wrenches.

Recommendation Corner

Want to take a mental vacation in a futuristic but realistic utopia? Want to support an amazing author in the way that helps them out the most? Want to support The Book Nook? You can do all three at the same time by pre-ordering Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers on Bookshop.org.

Monk and Robot is a paperback release of two of my very favorite sci-fi novels, A Psalm For the Wild-Built and A Prayer For the Crown-Shy. Author Becky Chambers creates a world where everyone has their basic needs met, everyone lives in ecological balance with the world around them, and then asks what comes next. They're considered two of the foundational texts of the "solarpunk" and "hopepunk" genres, and I like to use them to remind myself of the world we could be working towards.

Pre-orders play a big role in a book's success, because publishers use pre-order information to decide how much publicity and marketing effort to put behind a book launch. Pre-orders also count as sales that all happen on the day the book is released, and that can help a book land on the best-seller list for the week it comes out. Plus, if you're anything like me, you'll forget that you placed the pro-order, and then you get an out-of-the-blue book present from your past self when it shows up in May.

This Week's Nails

You made it to the end of the newsletter! That means you get to see what I've been painting on my nails this week while I typed it all up. This week I did a "Skittle"-style manicure, because I've been trying to swatch my (admittedly ridiculous) nail polish collection onto little plastic dots that I can stick on the caps of each bottle to show what the polish actually looks like on the nail. I figured while I was at it I might as well swatch them on my actual nails.