Reflections on a 5 hour commute

My two boys and I headed down to New York for Maple Sugaring last weekend.  Hubby had to stay behind because he was on call, so the three of us hopped in the car Thursday after school let out.  Four actually, as our crazy chocolate lab, Kiki, came along.

This is not my first trip down for work, in fact, it's my second weekend just this month.  It is 3 and 1/2 hours to the ferry in Bridgeport, Conn, then another hour and fifteen minutes on the boat.  The boat time is lovely.  We are out of the car, walking around, there's even a bar where I can get a beer if it's been a long day-- a bloody mary if the kids have been particularly exhausting!  The ferry makes the trip civilized, and is SO worth the extra $51- Especially considering how much gas is these days, and the toll over the Throgs Neck- now $6 or something.  More importantly, it keeps my driving time under 4 hours.  Going through the city adds at least a half hour to the travel time (often much more) and it's all sitting at the wheel, which means back pain and irritation for me, boredom and crankiness for the kids.  When I think about it, I have a lot of friends who commute from Long Island to the city on a daily basis-- to the tune of 3 hours or more- DAILY!  If you work it out, when I head down on Thursday, work Friday and Saturday, and head back Sunday, I don't have that much more time in the car than many 'local' commuters.  At any rate, that's what I think about to keep myself sane.

So, about that work.  This weekend was particularly manic.  Not completely a surprise, but manic none the less.  We had advertised a new program for Friday that would allow scout troops and other small groups to come and learn about maple sugaring in a more intimate, controlled setting than is achievable during our Saturday open hours.  This was in response to years of requests, and looking back, I think it went pretty well.  I have to give a shout out to the weather- which was bizarre, and resulted in more than half the scheduled groups canceling on Friday.  You would think this would be a negative, but quite honestly, we were over scheduled because the response we got from this new program was startling.  In an attempt to accommodate as many as possible, we had booked groups every 45 minutes, all day long.  So that one group would finish listening to my dad's talk on sugaring and head along to the next station as the next group arrived...  It would have worked even if all had braved the down pours and heavy winds, but it would have been really exhausting.  As it was, with half the number of groups, we were busy all day and tired by the afternoon.

Then came Saturday.  2 more private groups in the morning followed by a short lunch break and then the gates opened to the public.  I was out parking cars at 11:45 (15 minutes before we opened) and the parking lot filled up within 10 minutes-- as did the street out in front of the farm.  The lines at the gate wouldn't let up for over an hour, and a constant flow of arriving guests continued for the rest of the day.  In past years, we have had between 100 and 200 visitors come out to share in the muddy sweet sugary day.  This year we passed 650!  That's a lot of folks to handle in our winter state- snow piles from plowing still scattered about, no access to our overflow parking due to mud and ice... Did I mention MUD?  Still the day went surprisingly well.  I have become the maple candy guru over the years- maybe by accident, or because no one else wanted/wants to do it?  At any rate, I generally spend maple sugar days chatting with visitors and firing up my electric deep fryer every 45 minutes or so to show them how maple candy is made.  This year.... I didn't step away from that pot ALL DAY.  For four hours straight I heated up syrup to 242 degrees, back down to 212 (the boiling point of water), stirred till the color changed to caramel, poured into my candy mold of little maple leaf forms, lifted the mold for all to see as the candy crystallized before their very eyes, and then spilled the sweet morsels onto a tray and passed them out to the ravenous crowd of sugar lovers.  Smile.  Send them on their way.  Greet the next group of interested guests, and begin again, and again.

It's funny how your body reacts to unexpected demands.  I was set up outside on the event barn porch with my candy demonstration, thinking I could sneak inside between demos and warm up by the propane heater.  As it wound up, I never got away from that table.  I should have been freezing and miserable, but I was oddly euphoric.  Super chipper and smiling ear to ear as I repeated the same 10 minute dialogue over and over again.  I must have had a pretty big dose of adrenalin going- it's all I can figure- because when my lest demonstration finished at around 4:00, my body temperature dropped almost instantly.  I went from being totally comfortable to shivering, shuddering cold.  It hit me like a water balloon.

Oh, the farm and it's crazy mix of repetition and unexpected moments.  It's a funny place to work because it is so much of both.  In a sense the script is a little bland, but the characters are so unpredictable that you can't help but continue reading through your lines.  Teaching the same process all day long should start to make you crazy (maybe it does!), but each group brings there own set of questions and answers, and comic relief.  It's the smiling and talking and sharing that keeps me interested.  I guess that's part of why I keep heading back for more.  Needless to say, I was happy when we finished canning the last jars of this year's syrup on Sunday night (yep, another whole day of boiling sap awaited us on Sunday.)  Making maple sugar is one of a great many things that I enjoy once a year and am also so grateful to have done till next year.  Bring on the spring!