This week, at long last, the sap is running full barrel. Farmer Jim said there have been years when he was boiling the last sap of the year by mid-March. But this year, due to the cold weather, the season is just ramping up. Farmer Jim expects there will be good syruping ahead for the next several weeks. So far, he’s boiled two milk cans worth of sap into syrup, which is waiting to be finished and bottled. Many more, hopefully, to come.
Farmer Rob had Jim and John the oxen out with a cart to help collect sap. One part of the farm was so muddy that conversation turned to what it must have been like for World War 1 draft animals to pull their loads through the muddy, war-torn roads of Europe.
I’ve been hanging around Howell Farm for many years now, but every once in a while I hear someone say something I’ve never heard before. Today I heard Farmer Rob explain to visiting school children that oxen are actually very fast. If they needed to, they could run a two-minute mile, about twice as fast as the fastest humans in history.
Farmer Rob had Jim and John the oxen out with a cart to help collect sap. One part of the farm was so muddy that conversation turned to what it must have been like for World War 1 draft animals to pull their loads through the muddy, war-torn roads of Europe.
I’ve been hanging around Howell Farm for many years now, but every once in a while I hear someone say something I’ve never heard before. Today I heard Farmer Rob explain to visiting school children that oxen are actually very fast. If they needed to, they could run a two-minute mile, about twice as fast as the fastest humans in history.
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