Newsletter #301 2025 Mar 24 Monday
The Pure Maple Syrup season came to an abrupt end. I can hypothesize, but I do not have an answer. I'm doing some spring cleaning; most around the Sugar House, the Chicken Coop, and the Barn.
Primal Woods
Pure Maple Syrup
This was the forecast from last week, it looked like we would see solid flow on Monday, and probably into Tuesday, and then again, possibly on Friday. I prepared by making sure all buckets were emptied of potentially fermented sap.
Nothing. Not a single drop of sap has flowed. My hypothesis is that with the very warm temperatures we have seen, the trees were able to heal the wounds caused by drilling to accept the taps.
Regular highs in the 50s range, and a couple of days we saw 70s. Due to some milling work on the calendar, I will probably not de-tap until next week, but the shortest season on record is over. And it was not just us, I have heard from others; it will be interesting to see if this has and effect on the market pricing of Pure Maple Syrup.
Sawmill Services
The big milling job on the schedule for yet this week, is with Joel in Indiana. Four of these logs are between 32 and 36 inches on the big end; it promises to be a full day.
Homestead Rebel
Snow this morning; it is already gone! After the morning chores I took on some “cleanup,” mostly down around the House and Sugar House, Chicken Coop. I am loading up the “car hauler” - Utility Trailer for transport to the dump. I’m using quite a bit of milled lumber that has been laying around and beginning to rot, to heat the house.
Back in the day, farm-types did not go to the dump; they created dumps on their own land. We have an old car rotting away in the woods, and a pit full of old glass bottles. I have also found parts of old wagon wheels; I am talking about wooden wheels, though all that was left was the hub and the “tire” (the steel band surrounding the wooden “rim”), the rest had rotted away. There were not plastics then, thank God.
Farmhouse
Geri has been handling a lot of Airbnb requests for the Farmhouse; it seems like a significant improvement over our first full year, 2024.
April looks good if you are interested, in May and June the weekends are filling up, and it gets even better (tighter) in July and August. The property is also being advertised as a hunting property in October and beyond. We hope to see you soon!
News and Notes
What comes out of the Epstein files will be telling, it seems clear that very powerful people were involved; it has been alleged that Bill Clinton made 26 trips on the so-called Lolita Express; but Bill is just the tip of the iceberg. It seems clear that Epstein was a CIA asset, and the child trafficking/abuse/rape was a cost of doing business so far as the CIA was concerned. Darryl Cooper is “Martyr Made” on substack, and an historian; if you want Epstein 101, and to know how far back and how far abroad this goes, you cannot do better than the 3-part, 5 hour series put together by Cooper.
It is just my opinion, but we need to leave Europe to Europeans. Unfortunately having been reliant militarily on us for 80 years, they are in no position to pick up the mantle. Meanwhile they have been spending the money they have not been spending on defense, on their generous social welfare programs. If we bail, those social welfare programs are toast, or taxes are going up significantly in Europe, or both.
Speaking of the CIA and child sex crimes…it is apparently an ongoing problem internal to the CIA, so perhaps it is no wonder that they made the trade-off in the Epstein case.
Books & Such
I have finished the four books related to my next post (the second) in the Resist Evil series, on Schooling & Indoctrination. The writing of that post is perhaps 50% complete, there is more to say on the subject than I thought.
Meanwhile, I am reading The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. Related to that reading, but not prompted by it, I put up a post this week:
The Political Power Problem
Regardless which “side of the aisle” you might be on, the extent to which we have empowered the executive branch of the federal government is a real problem.
Don’t go! We cannot do it without you! Help us to keep the wheels on this effort, by visiting the website, and buying some of our Pure Maple Syrup!
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All the best, and may God bless you and yours,
John & Geri
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