The colors are slow to turn this year, but, soon, we’ll have a rainbow on the grass and in the trees!
Maple News
Fall approaches. And with it, at least this year, mapley happenings all across sugar country. Maple syrup workshops coming up in Kentucky, maple tours in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, new maple events afoot in Ontario, and, here at home in Vermont, the Maple 100 begins for the second year running.
New maple flavored foods are also emerging in the marketplace, some quite possibly wonderful and others likely horrendous. A new vegan ice cream shop in Maine features maple as an ingredient, as does one flavor of Bud Light’s new “Fall Flannel” line of hard selzers. Someone finally thought to bottle the delicacy that is maple milk, and you can now taste maple in a McDonalds “Sweet Burger.” Either the most or least wonderful of them all: a maple-beer ice cream named “Chunki Boi” that reportedly pairs well with . . . more beer. What could go wrong?
New stories about old traditions are also coming to the fore: enter Jane Laskey, founder of Wabanaki Maple in Neqotkuk (Tobique) First Nation in New Brunswick, and interviewee of this great Q&A about women of influence in business (personal goal!). Congratulations on pulling your small business through this pandemic, Jane! We’re right there pulling with ya.
Backyard News
We are mindful that many backyards are in flames or under water right now and that is so sad. And while that makes it hard to keep things light, we’ll try to do that anyway, for you.
Just keep in mind that it could be worse (Tom Cruise could be in your backyard) and we hope it gets better. After all, backyards are for attracting bats, visiting with Cassiopia the Queen, unintentional archeology, DIY sawmilling, making high-end smores, happy hybrid tomato accidents, rental chickens, sour cherry orchards, backyard putting greens, a vanilla orchid farm and the first-in-the-nation public Persian tea garden.
But even if all one wants to do there is watch the sunset or cut the grass, we wish everyone back to the backyard soon. Let’s take care of each other and the planet!