Category: Agriculture

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit, with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! This month’s column is written by Phil.

One of the finest chores on a farm or homestead is harvesting maple sap.  It is a great reason to spend time in the woods and rewards abound. 

 We simply boil sap on top of the wood stove.  Our house in March is like a sweet sauna.  A forty-degree sunny day finds us in t-shirts with windows open, the sweet smell of maple syrup in the forefront.

 As the sap runneth over, it occurs to me what an exception maple syrup is to the rest of human culture.

We simply partake.

We have not, as far as I know, hybridized trees to make more sap, or bred them to raise the sugar content in their sap.

We simply partake.

In modern agriculture, production has had an 80-year upward swing in “efficiency.” A meat bird’s feed conversion ratio (grain: meat) has been cut in half.  A milking cow gives at least double what she used to. An acre of corn produces 4 times the volume.

 But maple syrup is really beautiful.  We destroy or harm nothing as we are given this marvelous treat that sweetens everyday life.  We do not plow, harrow, breed, or weed.

We simply partake. 

 Every year, the trees share the bounty of late winter with us as a gift we could not have planned, could not have conceived, could not have anticipated.  Yet here it is.

 What a wonderful metaphor for life the trees give us.  When your sap is flowing and you have it to spare, share it with the world.

Make it all a little sweeter.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column has changed a bit with all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways!

During the course of “winter,” I’ve been thinking of trees.  Specifically, our tiny maple bush.  We have about 20 sugar maples that are in a grove that is readily accessible, and we tap them every year for syrup.  We typically make about 6 gallons of syrup.  It is a system of convenience.  We heat with wood; so we boil down sap on the wood stove.  March here smells delicious, as the humidity rises in the house with sweetening sap that is headed to syrupy decadence.

The question these last few years is…when to tap the trees?  There have been years when we have waited too long, and March nights don’t bring the freezing weather that drops the sap back down.  We want 20-degree nights and 40-degree days.  That weather makes the sap run during the warmth of the day.  

This particular “winter,”  I’ve thought of these maples since January.  Not just, “is the sap running?”, but also we have no snow cover.  What does this mean for the ecosystem that is accustomed to a gradual thaw in March and April, when the accumulated precipitation slowly saturates the trees as they awaken for the year? 

Twenty years ago, we hauled a sled to the trees as we gathered sap.  Today, I lug the buckets to the tarred road, lest I tear up the soft field with my pick-up.

The beautiful thing, the thing we count on, will still happen.  

We used the last of our maple syrup this morning on our pancakes.  Just in time, the weather hearkens the change.  The trees, for all my worry about them, will follow their rhythm, and sap will soon permeate our lives for a short while. We will enjoy the change in the house–the scent of March, and recollect the memories of this annual Spring bounty that sweetens our lives the year round. 

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

By Heather Retberg, Quills End Farm

We live in a world where you can eat summer all year long.  It is not right.  

We are northerners.  As such, our diet depends on summer, but does not resemble summer.  The last of the tomatoes, kale, greens, and peppers have been frozen, canned, or consumed.  So, although we live in a world that offers you summer from around the world, I propose a winter cleanse, a winter diet that reflects where we live: bread, milk, meat, and potatoes.

There are but a few things more that Maine produces that last the whole year through, but these four… they just keep, or… keep coming. 

Listen!  No one in Florida shovels snow from their driveway in shorts, and no one in Texas revels at frozen nose hairs. No one in Arizona puts -20 windshield wiper fluid in their car. 

Let THEM eat kale!   

We need food that will keep us alive and well through the winter months, and that means a balanced diet of protein, vitamins, starches, and carbs; that means milk, bread, meat, and potatoes. Join us in the local food winter cleanse, where we embrace our latitude, our northern heritage, and our necessity to survive six months of nothing growing.  

We can patronize our local farms all year round by buying the produce of summer.  The yield we have left is hay, tubers, and small grains.  Fresh milk, a wonder, keeps flowing all winter long. Let’s eat!!!

Tinder Hearth bakes all year round, and their bread, pastries, and pizza are beyond world-class.

Horsepower Farm’s potatoes, carrots, garlic, and onions will have you welcoming cold days and nights in culinary ecstasy.  Quill’s End Farm makes it all delightful eating, because…Tinder Hearth bread with our cheese,  Horsepower mashed potatoes with our milk, beet borscht with Greek yogurt, carrot cake with plain Farmstead cheese frosting, 44 North coffee with our cream…mm-mm-mmm.

Rainbow Farm captured the summer sun in beautiful birds that await addition to your French Batard-garlic & chive-Farmstead-cheese pleasure. 

Now, some of you, who are undoubtedly thinking of different sorts of diets and cleanses, may see this option as bland, but it is actually full of variety. Alternate between cow milk and our newly available goat milk. Once you’ve had your fill of chicken, take respite with Quill’s End Farm’s whey-fed pork (coming at the end of the month!).   

The cows will give you the D vitamins to get you off the couch AND the B vitamins to get out the door; the meat will give you stamina to keep going through the day; the alliums will ward off ailments of all kinds, keeping you fit as a fiddle; and the bread will give you the chutzpah to brave the cold. 

We’re not encouraging gluttony, mind you, merely attempting to share our new year’s recipe for surviving winter, commodification, and globalism.

We aim to make it easy for you.  We work to make it possible for you to garner your diet from nearby, appropriate to where you live, and available year-round.  

So, belly up, we’ll provide.

Webmaster’s note: This month’s column is provided by Phil and Ben.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously given us permission to share some of her columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.