Dear Curiosity Journal,
I’m officially DONE canning the 2024 maple syrup! We achieved our 20-gallon goal, which means we boiled around 800 gallons of sap. The sapping season was odd and early, but abundant, nonetheless. In the morning, Rufus and I attended a Conscious Food Systems Alliance webinar titled, “Cultivating Joy in Food Systems: A Consciousness Practice to Transform Food Systems” to celebrate the United Nations International Day of Happiness. It was a fascinating gathering of people from all over the globe who are passionate about food. We were in a breakout room with women in Zimbabwe and Panama and heard from presenters in France and the UK. The theme of the conversations centered around how the energy we put into growing and cooking food translates into the flavor of the dish, the energy gained, and the experience of the eater. For example, organic, sustainably grown vegetables, grown and prepared by high vibrating, intentional farmers and cooks are reported to taste better, give higher quality energy, and just make people feel good. I thought about this concept as I boiled the 7th batch of maple syrup, how my attitude has been in steep decline in the last few batches, feeling ready to move on, just over it. I perk myself up with a moment of gratitude, but still decide to discard the final 2 five-gallon buckets of near syrup, which were a bit on the spoiled side, and probably would have been further soured by my “so done” attitude. It’s one thing to manifest abundance, it’s another to boil it down to the sweetest parts and preserve it.
~Joy
