( 12:58 PM )
Move story
Moving a family and 10 years worth of crap is a mentally and physically draining experience. I can't imagine anybody doing this more than once.
Here's a quick funny move story: On my last trip from old house to new house with a truck load of crap, I stopped at a shopping plaza to pick up something (at Office Depot, I think). After I got home I realize that a garbage can full of miscellaneous items was missing from my truck. Stolen. I pretty much knew what was in it – old toaster oven, bag full of spices, some misc clothing items that never made it into a box, etc. Nothing really critical. I laughed mostly at the thought of the expression on the thief’s face when he opened it up. Anyway, a week doesn't go by that my wife can't find something and claims that it must have been in that garbage can. At this point, that garbage can must have been like a Dr. Who garbage can, as the amount of stuff she claims is missing would fill up an entire dumpster.
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( 10:00 AM )
Hebron Maple Festival
So I recently moved up to the charming town of Hebron, Connecticut. Quite a different lifestyle from the hectic pace of Fairfield County life, within the shadow of New York City. Up in Northern Connecticut life revolves around the simplier things in life – with more focus on nature and wildlife and the environment. I grew in New Hampshire and Maine, so I'm use to that way of thinking, but I never really knew it existed in Connecticut.
In our newly adopted town of Hebron, Maple Syrup is a major part of it's lifestyle and heritage. Several sugar houses producing genuine Connecticut Maple Syrup exist in town, and this past weekend Hebron celebrated it's 16th annual Maple Festival. This was only our third weekend in Hebron, and while we had long ago decided that this was a charming, farm-filled town that we knew we would enjoy living in, we were still unprepared for the charm of Maplefest.
 Now, since I grew up in Northern New England, I'm no stranger to seeing sap buckets on trees in the early spring – but I don't recall seeing anything like sapping in Hebron. Without exaggeration, literally overnight, sap buckets by the thousands popped up on seemingly every tree in town. We felt awkward being the only house on our road with bucketless trees. Whether there be 5 maple trees or 100 maple trees in your yard, people slapped a bucket on it.
It's a good look. Those traditional tin buckets hanging on a tree a few feet off the ground, add a New England picturesque postcard feel everywhere you look. And most of the sap buckets on residential properties and along the scenic roads of Hebron adhere to this traditional and (dare I say it again) charming look. But like most businesses, no matter how traditional and historic, eventually need to forego the charm associated with it in exchange for bigger, faster and more profitable techniques.
 Welcome to "sapping 2006". Instead of the tin buckets, white plastic compound buckets are used. The buckets are left on the ground while plastic tubing runs from the tree to the bucket. We saw these "sapping farms" in the back woods near the Sugar Houses and were a bit taken back at the look of a beautiful wooded forest littered with thousands of white compound buckets. But before we could discuss the shame of it, we stumbled across an even worse look. On another stretch of wooded property, multi-colored tubing ran from tree to tree to tree, throughout the forest, collecting sap from the trees like some sort of intravenous sap highway.
 While I'm sure this technique is not new – it's my first exposure to it. The reasons are obvious – easier and faster sap collection. But just like a sapping spout drains the sap from the tree, this new sapping technique saps the charm out of the whole process. Business needs over esthetics.
It's not enough to take away from Hebron's overall charm, but it does add a question as to the future of the small town Maple Syrup industry. My hope is that tradition and nature's beauty and appeal will prevail over profitability.
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