Had a warm spell this last week, with temperatures cresting sixty degrees. For me, that means breaking out shorts, feeling the sun again after a long winter.

Strictly speaking, it’s not yet spring. That comes on the vernal equinox next week. But, with the sun shining and the snow mostly melted, I’ll beg forgiveness for my premature celebration.

Tapped three maple trees last weekend and have yielded about five gallons of sap. We’ll conduct boiling operations tomorrow, hopefully with assistance from the kiddos. Good run the first four days — good enough that I wish I had tapped a few days earlier — but recently, with nights not quite dropping below freezing, the run has dried up. Hopeful, but not optimistic to collect another gallon or two before closing up shop.

It takes, by the way, about forty gallons of maple sap to yield one gallon of syrup. And that’s if you’re tapping sugar maples. We have red maples1. They still result in a syrup, but due to a lower sugar content in the sap, will likely reduce at closer to a 50:1 ratio.

I think it tastes richer.2

I’m looking out my window now at another red maple, whose branches are just beginning to bud. I would suppose there is some folk wisdom which might correlate the length of the maple run with the progress of budding — but I’m too lazy to look it up.

Went with my friend

Turkey season is, in the hunting world, synonymous with spring. Whereas most ungulates mate in the fall, turkey are amorous in the spring. As the weather warms, their winter flocks break up and Jakes and Toms set off to find love, gobbling their brains out.

We’re optimistic that, as the first early seasons greens are harvested on the farm we plan to hunt, we can pair them with wild turkey for a true farm-to-table experience.

I haven’t seen any turkey in the fields yet this year, but I haven’t been looking especially hard. It’s still early.4

Due to a confluence of factors, we still haven’t taken down all our Christmas decorations.5 Even if most remain, I should get out and take down the evergreen wreath from our front door. Should put up one more seasonally appropriate, too.

Usually, this time of year, a robin uses it as the backdrop for her nest. Given it’s location underneath our front porch, well-protected from the elements, and overlooking our front yard, filled with worms and other bugs, I can see why. It’s a nice spot.

I’d hate for her not to be able to use it this year.

There’s a saying that you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I sometimes use the malapropism that you should dress for the weather you want — and you can finish the rest. Either way, that’s part of the reason why I like to switch over to shorts once temperatures consistently reach the sixties: I’m trying to manifest both the weather and a lifestyle.

As woo as it sounds, I do believe that manifestation works. That you can set an intention for the universe and that eventually you’ll find yourself fulfilled. It may not work for everything — as hard as I’ve been manifesting an eight-hour stretch of sleep for the Monkey, it has yet to come — but for many things, it works.

If you lay out the pieces with intention, they have a way of falling into place

I’ve had a fixation on doing real things lately. I find myself seeing other people thinking about it, too, and then, gradually and suddenly, I am doing more real things rooted in the real world as well. Tapping maple trees, organizing hunts rooted in radical eating, creating meals and conversation with new friends — ones I met in the virtual world but have broken bread with in the physical one. The right attitude and intentions might not solve every problem — can’t solve every problem — but they certainly can get you headed down the right path.

It might just take a little time.

Sam and I have discussed this fixation at length. About his desire, too, to stay rooted in the real world — the local community — and to do something more than let a computer do the work from which we derive a livelihood. And with Sam, I agree — there’s something wrong with a world where our strongest ties are those made by electrons sent through the air. But, I’ve also heard the saying that building a community is like building a river: it’s not something that happens overnight.

In this way, it’s much like the fecundity of spring. What seems like miraculous growth — buds appearing and flowering, new shoots rising, bright blue robin’s eggs appearing on your threshold — is in reality the result of seemingly imperceivable progress over long stretches of time.

A seed, a bulb, an acorn, an egg. Everything starts with intention.

Anyway, next week is Saint Patrick’s Day, so you might as well make corned beef and cabbage. As I alluded to, I got together with my friend

If you’re too lazy to read Eli’s instructions — or to brine your own corned beef — you could pick up a corned beef brisket from the store, and add it to a pot. Cover it with water (and some Guinness, if you’d like) and cook for +/- 3 hours until tender. Add quartered cabbage and some carrots for the last 30 minutes or so of cooking. Slice against the grain and serve.

So there you go folks: corned beef and cabbage. I hope you most of you are well beyond your days of green beers and drunken parade revelry — but if you’re not, I hope you celebrate safely. Otherwise, the Family CWD will be here, conducting business as usual, planting seeds and boiling down maple sap into syrup. Setting our intentions.

However you choose to spend your weekend, I hope you spend it thoughtfully.

We’ll see you back here next week.