About Tim Rowland

Tim Rowland is a columnist, author and outdoors writer living in Jay.

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  1. Joe Kozlina says

    Boy I hate to be the Debbie Downer here but no one else has stepped in. So here goes. I have a sugar bush I make syrup for my family. It is small, just enough for about Two gallons of syrup a year. I use the old way of tapping, spout and bucket and sled to get my sap to the sugaring house. My neighbor is using the PLASTIC vaccum tubing, with the electric powered vaccum pump, to get the sap to the GAS fired evaporator. He runs circles around my making of syrup, so with those modern unstainable practices, I cannot compete with his prices or volume. What is happening is the plastic tubing crisscrossing the sugar bush and the practice of sucking the sap out of the trees has become common place and if you want to compete you most likley have to follow suit.
    What nature is telling us is the climate has changed and the sap flow has changed and we as mammals sharing this planet should take note that the trees are doing what they can to survive this change by not producing as much flow as in the past, in order to survive to the next year. So what does man do to recieve immediate satisfaction? String multi colored PLASTIC tubing thru our pristine sugar bush and vaccum the life out of the maple tree.
    Allowing the tree to drip its sap into a bucket at a pace that, over centuries has proven not to kill the tree, was just too slow for man. Now we have started another experiment by sucking the life out of the tree at an unsustainable pace and will do studies over the next 10 to 20 years only to find out this method has killed off most maples. We all have seen this before. Just look at picture of the Adirondack Park 100 years ago. Denuded by the need for wood faster than the forest could regenerate its self.
    The question will be asked, should we go backwards to collecting sap by tap and bucket and sled? I am clear that the answer is yes. I know that sounds radical but it is not. What is radical is look at the condition of our planet and its future and tell me what we have done to this point is not radical.
    And lastly the plastic tubing flowing thru our forests is not only unsightly, it probably was created by the plastic carried on the train that derailed In East Palistine Ohio.

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