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Venture into spring's bounty

Jerry Davis For Agri-View
Mar 15, 2025
Mar 15, 2025

1 of 4

Roger James waits as Nina Miller empties sap from a plastic bag into a 5-gallon bucket in their sugar bush.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

A sap-cooking stove made from a barrel and fired with wood concentrates sap to make syrup.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

A male red-bellied woodpecker drinks maple sap from a soup can attached to a hybrid maple.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

A gray squirrel drinks sap from a feeder can attached to a maple tree.

Jerry Davis/For Agri-View

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Jerry Davis For Agri-View

Nina Miller and her husband, Roger James, are an outdoors team when spring’s outdoor gathering seasons begin. James is blind but can provide muscle when Miller needs a load of wood for a stove to cook maple sap. He also joins in earnest during syrup’s last step – eating pancakes every Sunday morning, drenched with homemade syrup from trees in their rural-Iowa County land in Wisconsin.

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Jerry Davis is a freelance outdoors writer. Contact him at sivadjam@mhtc.net or 608-924-1112 for more information.

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