Stephen Heard

Little bit of everything towards the end of the season, but flies and moths by far the most!

A 2 litre plastic pop bottle (Dr Pepper Zero, if you must know) full of clear sap, held in my hand against a snowy back yard

A low snowbank running along the back of a porch. Two pop bottles are half-buried in the snow.

Just four litres of sap, collected and nestled into my SASSS (Snowbank-Assisted Sap Storage System - I'm a scientist, I have to sound very fancy). Probably won't run again until the weekend, as temps are low today and tomorrow.

A white 4-gallon pail sitting in the snow. It hold four 2 litre plastic pop bottles, and there's a blue plastic funnel in one of them.

Big sugarbushes use tubing and vacuum pumps to bring sap back to be boiled. For #BackYardSugarbush2026, I have a bucket of pop bottles. Very sophisticated!

Yes, I want to hear about the birch!!

There's nothing flying/crawling yet (we're a bit too far from the river for winter stoneflies). But later in the season, yes - some flies and small moths visit and often get trapped in the sap. They're filtered out before I boil. (Modern closed-tubing systems don't have this issue).

Best moment of the spring!

A sap bucket with a few cm of sap in the bottom

Not much accumulated today - a couple of cm in each bucket. And it will be cold tomorrow. But it's a start, and the weekend looks promising! #BackYardSugarBush2026

FIRST SAP!!!

The piece of writing that just won’t die This week, I’ve been deep into proofreading.* Checking proofs is an annoying bit of drudgery at the best of times, but it’s especially awful when the proofs go on and on and on – for 374 pages, in …

Checking proofs for the 3rd edition of 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing', and I'm thinking about the weirdness of having a piece of writing that Just Won't Die. scientistseessquirre... 🧪

I'm guessing the season is briefer where you are. Now you can anticipate next year!

View of a back yard, with snow-covered ground. The bare maple trees are at left; in front of them, a row of small hemlocks and spruces lightly covered with fresh white snow.

Too early today to know if the sap will run - but a light dusting of snow overnight has the sugar bush looking lovely!

But: not a single drop of sap today. The last couple of days have been very cold; perhaps it will take more than a single day above freezing to wake up the trees! Tonight, -3 C; tomorrow +7. Promising! #BackYardSugarBush2026

a view of the line of 4 maples. You can see two buckets on the first tree, and spot several more on more distant ones. There's hemlock foliage at left, and a thicket of saplings around the large trees.

All buckets in place. I have 8 taps total - how many can you spot? Three on the nearest tree (one is out of sight behind the trunk); one on the next tree, which is small; and two each on the two in the background.

Same tree, same spile, but now a white plastic bucket hangs from the hook, with a blue plastic lid hinged to the spile above it.

First bucket in place. But no sap dripping! At least, not yet - time to tap the rest.

A good spot is at convenient height, but not underneath anything like a damaged spot, a split or crook in the tree, or a dead limb.

Closeup view of the grey, scaly bark of a maple tree. At upper left is a freshly drilled hole. At centre left is last year's hole, still quite distinct. At bottom is an older hole, visible only as a roundish feature in the middle of a bark crack.

Same hole, now with the spile hammered in, so there is a metal spout protruding from the tree. A hook dangles from the spout, but there's no bucket on it yet. There is no sap dripping from the hole. Out of frame there are, however, tears dripping from my face because of that. Only temporarily, though!

First hole drilled! The new hole is the one at upper right. At centre left is last year's hole, still looking pretty fresh. Bottom is an older hole, hard to spot now.

We move the tapping spot around from year to year, so we aren't trying to pull sap from recently repaired tissue.

Here goes.

Endorse! I always proofread on paper.

Plastic buckets stacked in a rough pyramid on a back porch, with maples and hemlocks in the snow-covered yard beyond.

A spile: a funnel-shaped piece of metal about 3 inches long. At the narrow end there's a small hole where sap enters; at the wide end, a drip spout. From the funnel hangs a hook to mount the bucket.

I'm not sure if it will run today - it's been cold (-20 at night, -10 during the day) the last couple of days. It may take more than one warmer day to get things going. Only one way to find out...

The gear is ready. Eight buckets, and a spile for each. Time to go drill some holes!
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View of a line of large maple trees, with many small saplings around them, along the property line between two houses. It's sunny and there's a light layer of snow on the ground.

It's time! Today we tap for #BackYardSugarBush2026. It's warm (+3C) and sunny, and the trees are calling to me. Here's my little sugar bush: 4 sugar maples in a line along the side of my back yard. Time to tap!
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This is gorgeous. But "uncanny resemblance to a brain in a transparent skull"? Maybe with the involvement of a whole lot of psychelics...

The piece of writing that just won’t die This week, I’ve been deep into proofreading.* Checking proofs is an annoying bit of drudgery at the best of times, but it’s especially awful when the proofs go on and on and on – for 374 pages, in …

Checking proofs for the 3rd edition of 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing', and I'm thinking about the weirdness of having a piece of writing that Just Won't Die. scientistseessquirre... 🧪

It’s morning of day 1 of my shark field research skills class! Wish us luck, and let me know if you want to sign up for the fall! 🦑🧪🌎🦈

Writing Field Notes and Using Them to Prompt Scholarly Writing - Raul Pacheco-Vega, 2019

#RPVQual #RPVMethods

This is one of my most cited methods-specific articles and it's #Free2DownloadAndRead

"Writing Field Notes and Using Them to Prompt Scholarly Writing"

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

In which I argue that we may use field-notes to break free from "writer's block".

I'd take that bet. I think an LLM-written one would be much better - smoother, more grammatically polished, less tangled.

None of which undercuts your point in any way, of course!

Screenshot of weather forecast showing Tuesday high +3 C, low -5; Weds +7 and -3; Thursday +4 and -12.

Looking good!

A pair of cardinals sitting in the bare branches of a crabapple tree

Female cardinal sitting in the bare branches of a crabapple tree. Buff with an orange-red bill; feathers are fluffed against the cold.

Male cardinal sitting in the bare branches of a crabapple tree. Red plumage and bill with a black facemask and a sharply peaked crest; feathers are fluffed against the cold.

Now look, how am I supposed to get any work done with you two looking so handsome right outside my window?

Probably similar! Or like fudge. My dad used to help make it, and if you didn't stir enough, or boiled too far, you got big crystals (at best).

It's definitely harder to make - you have to stir continuously and the line between "finished" and "oops" is very thin. That's about all I know, though - I've never tried making it myself!

I'm tapping Tuesday! #BackYardSugarBush2026