The Mark Twain Mapleworks sap evaporator. (Provided photo — Jack Drury)

I grew up in farm country and one thing I learned was that I never wanted to be a farmer. I occasionally helped my farmer friends during the haying season and quickly learned how hard they worked.

Fast forward 60 years and guess what I’ve become? A farmer of sorts: I farm trees for maple sap.

Like my farmer friends, I watch the weather forecast religiously. But unlike my farmer friends, I’m not hoping for rain, or sunshine. I’m looking for below freezing nights and 40-degree days, the weather essential for good sap production. I’ve also learned that asking me how much syrup I’ll produce is akin to having asked my farmer friends how many heads of cabbage they’ll grow and sell to the local sauerkraut plant.

This maple season has been as squirrely as they come. Early sap runs had me scrambling to get trees tapped. Then we got a week of midwinter frigid temperatures with trees holding on to their sap tighter than my grandmother held onto her purse. March started with screeching winds that didn’t impact the sap run, but caused havoc to my maple lines that run thousands of feet through the forest. Immediately after the storm, I was too busy to check my sap lines because I was boiling the sap I’d collected and that of fellow sap farmer Walt Linck, the Sultan of Sap Obsession.

When I finally had time to check the lines, it looked like a hurricane had come through, which in a sense it had: The 50-mile-per-hour winds had dropped dozens of branches. Fortunately, only a handful of them had fallen on my maple lines. Most of them were easy enough to pick up, but one good sized tree required me to get out the chainsaw.

The main maple line runs a half a mile from the sugarbush (where the maple trees live) under the highway, under a driveway, under Algonquin Avenue across four private landowners’ property (I give them syrup in return for traversing their land) and finally to the Mark Twain Mapleworks sugar shack. There, this sap boils the trees’ sap and makes nature’s nectar — maple syrup.

Like Johnny Cash, I walked the line. I traversed behind the Inseide Dope’s hovel, down to the Plumb Tiny Homes to Algonquin Avenue. Up to that point there was nary a branch on the mainline. I was feeling pretty good until I crossed the street and headed into the last stretch of woods. Slipping and sliding, I ventured forth. Suddenly, I looked ahead and there was a hemlock big enough to make Paul Bunyan proud. Thirty feet of the top of the tree had broken into two pieces. One fell on the maple line and the other was leaning against another tree, trapping the maple line.

I headed back to get my chainsaw to cut out the hemlocks, and a ladder to retie the maple lines that had fallen to the ground. I cut the first tree with little trouble. The leaner was another story. It isn’t a good idea to work alone with a chainsaw so after a cautious attempt to tackle the leaner I gave up and headed back to the truck.

Sam Churco, a man of many talents, stopped by the following day while I was boiling what little sap I had. Sam’s one of the handiest guys I know. As the sap boiled, I lamented the maple season and the fallen hemlock. He sat and listened but didn’t say much. After hearing me voice my woes, he left. I then finished boiling the season’s first syrup and headed to bed exhausted, frustrated and ready to retire.

The next day, I got a text from Sam: “Do you need any help tightening your maple line?”

I quickly responded: “Sure, I really need some help getting that big hemlock out of the way.”

He arrived mid-afternoon with his chainsaw, helmet and chaps. I had a ladder, wire cutters and other tools for tightening the line. We walked into the woods and once at the hemlock Sam dispatched it with Finnish forester finesse.

With the tree out of the way, we had to tighten the line. The maple tubing is fastened to a wire and is tightened by pulling it from side to side with side tie wires. In order to get to my sugar shack it had to be about 10 feet off the ground through this section of woods. That meant climbing the ladder, stretching the mainline to the side, (sometimes with the aid of a come along) tying off the wire, then moving along the line 20 yards or so when you had to do it all over again. It was slow work, but we moved along at a good pace and right around quitting time we finished up at the sugar shack.

We got back to the sugar shack and broke out a bottle of bourbon. We poured ourselves a shot, added a touch of maple syrup and congratulated ourselves on a job well done. We shared some hunting tales, talked of family and friends and absorbed the beautiful evening.

I’m eternally grateful to Sam for his help in saving my maple season — and for the bottle of bourbon he brought to make the cocktails.