Summary

Originally Posted: 2020-03-16

Maple sap collection and boiling it down was the primary activity this week, followed by helping my son move. The usual trip to the grocery store looked more like a TV postapocalyptic horror film, everyone really needs to calm down.

This week had mixed days for sap collection, some had full buckets others had next to nothing. The temperature fluctuation played a great role in the amount collected. Despite only having 15 buckets when the sap was running the collection and processing took the whole day. It was a sweet effort, with several bottles made and bottled. This as you can guess made up most of efforts for the week. Add in a couple of trips to help my son move and there was only enough time to go to the grocery store.

The trip to the grocery store was an eerie feeling like being in a cheap horror film of zombies. The store I went to had no toilet paper, no Kleenex, no paper towel and no bread. Bread? Yes, no bread, it is a perishable what do you do with all that? Even more sensible supplies of cleaning material were almost out with the most popular being empty. People were buying odd things like a case of water with 10 packs of granola bars and a bag of chips. Nothing else in the cart. People were buying stuff they liked in large volumes, but oddly enough the rows that were the most full were the chips, candies and soda rows. At least that was a good sign!

The stores are starting to empty out with people as well as with inventory and I really wonder why. This like every other overblown media hype will pass, this is not the end of the world merely another virus. Fear will always be a powerful motivator however the damage to our world economy will take many years to repair. Today the industries that make our medicines and food warned that products are starting to be impacted by supply weaknesses. Forget for a moment that number of people who will loose jobs, homes, cars etc. there is a real chance that people who are medically dependant on things like “insulin” may face death as supply dwindles.

In my mind it is likely more will die to the weaknesses in supply chains than will from the virus. Hopefully someone will come up with a way for us to work before too much damage is done. Good luck to all of us.

By Barry