By the way

The town is spring cleaning. Picnic tables have sprung up around the ice cream stands. (Who invented the picnic table? That sturdy A-frame defines camp grounds and outdoor sandwiches on crumpled napkins, but there must have been a time when it didn't exist. There must have been a time when campgrounds didn't exist.) Street sweepers are out, and drain cleaners, and shirtless men walk on flat rooftops checking for leaks. Beds of earth are turned over beside the sidewalks.

The parks are spring cleaning too. Great Barrington's Riverwalk held its first cleanup day last weekend, and Berkshire Sanctuaries in Lenox invites volunteers to put on gloves and clear its trails, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Cleaning the Housatonic River, Eagle file.

Whether you take clippers along or not, these mild days are good to be out in. And as the nights get longer and warmer, another mark of the season appears: lights. My neighbors stoke up their cinder block grill with wood kindling, and I can see the embers glow. Walking home a week ago, I saw a string of small lights lining stairs and railings. Candles, I thought, and wondered why — were they devotional, or a remembrance, a reverse Halloween or a sign of Passover, a gift to travellers?

Maybe all of the above. Close up, I saw they were electric, but they are a sign of warmer weather. They are a sign that not long from now, I will be able to stretch out on the deck, with a lamp burning on the rail, and listen for bats.

Posted by Katherine Abbott at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Once, I got invited to a musical potluck in mid-New Hampshire. Thirty or forty fiddlers, whistlers, banjo pickers and players of mandolins, guitars, pianos and standing basses sat on a warm, red rug, playing reels — one would start and others would listen and follow, and the tunes ran around the room. They had a long table full of casseroles and desserts; one made with whipped cream and cranberries in a sweet crust I'll never forget. They had a log cabin halfway up the hill, a moonlit stumble through the woods, that a wood stove heated into a sauna. And they sold eggs new laid that day.

I got a dozen for two dollar as I left, and I have never had anything like them. The yolks were rounded and deep orange. They cooked up firmer than store bought eggs; they looked and tasted brighter. It's the season to celebrate eggs now. Many traditions recognize them as spring food, food for the start of the growing season. It's the season to celebrate what's young and quick and new too, and the first red buds on the trees.

Spring chickens at Taft Farm, Eagle file photo.

So here's a toast to chickens — warm buff chickens and tall leghorns, irridescent green chickens and coppery hens with red combs, and roosters with feathered ankles like bellbottoms. And here's another to fresh eggs. I set out this afternoon to find out where I can find eggs from the farm around here. There are still farms here that grow them.

At the north and south ends of the county, there are a range of choices. Taft Farms in Great Barrington raises chickens in its clover fields. Caretaker Farm lets its chickens range free. In mid-county, try Otis Poultry Farms, or hang out by the poultry barn at Hancock Shaker Village and listen to the roosters crow.

And if you feel a need for more young life in the early spring, you can always rescue a rabbit.

Posted by Katherine Abbott at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

On a raw, wet morning, when snow on the slopes is as coarse as wet sand and dirt roads wallow in runoff, I'll head for Hancock. Steam rises over the hillside. Friends gather in the entryway of a wide, red barn, talking over wooden buckets and two-handed saws. In the next room, sap boils. Tubes run like arteries up the mountain, feeding sap from the trees into the boiler.

The season is changing — and corn muffins with maple butter are coming back. Farms across the county are maple sugaring, and many welcome visitors. Ioka Valley Farm has opened its maple breakfast. From now until April, all through sugaring season, they serve their own maple syrup and maple butter on pancakes and muffins. If they're full when you come, wait a few minutes in the barn across the way and watch the syrup in the making.

This Saturday, Hopkins Forest and the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation at Sheep Hill will get together for a comprehensive maple festival. Explore the forest's sugaring shack in the morning, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; taste fresh syrup on pancakes and icecream and syrup candy cooled on snow, and walk in the woods. College musicians have been known to walk them too, with fiddle and whistle and drum. From 4 to 7 p.m., come to Sheep Hill for crafts and bread making and a maple banquet.

People have bunged holes in sugar maples here for centuries, and in other trees too. Many kinds of trees have sweetish sap; box elder makes a clearer and paler sugar, and birch makes a syrup with a wintergeen flavor. But here, above all, we have maple trees. Walk or snowshoe among them and hear their stories — Tall Tales of Tall Trees — this Saturday at McLennan reservation in Tyringham, with Trustees of Reservations, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Berkshire Grown will throw their annual maple dinner next week too, Wednesday March 12, at Spice Restaurant on North Street in Pittsfield, with music at 6 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. The harvest season is beginning.

The trees are waking. We are celebrating, some with plans and events, and some without. It doesn't take a party; it only takes a phone call, or a whim, or a walk in the woods. Hopkins Forest and Ioka Valley are open any time the kettle is boiling. Many others are filling their sap buckets too. Come on out and join in.

Posted by Katherine Abbott at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)