The snow on either side of the trail I was traversing was higher than my four-wheeler. My husband, bound and determined to open a path to reach our sap totes and pickle barrels, had gotten the skidder buried in the drifts.

Dangling my feet off the end-gate of our old white farm truck parked along our ridge, I was waiting for the wand pump to inhale the sap stored in the tote. The totes, placed at the bottom of a south-facing ridge, is the perfect set up for sap collecting and convenient to unload. It’s a hobby my husband and I enjoy. Early spring, as soon as the weather cooperates, we’re up in the woods as often as the trees release their ambrosia.

In the throes of collecting sap again this year — our sixth season — I’ve come to the realization that every single season is different.

Early in February our buyer sent us a text from Florida: “When u tapping?”

“When are you opening?”

“When u have sap!” he retorted.

Growing up on a dairy farm, us kids had a couple of favorite cows and a few kitties. Our dad, when he was a little boy, had gotten bit by a dog, traumatizing him, so we had but one dog, and that was after us four kids cajoled and convinced him we should do this.

Morning chores when we were dairy farming consisted of hours of work before we came back in the house for breakfast. Opting to tend to the animals before we ate, my husband and I were on the same page.

I’m not sure when coffee introduced itself into my life, but I think it was back in the 1970s during my Shamoco Ford days. Fresh out of high school, a greenhorn in the working-off-the-farm world, I started drinking coffee.