En attendant Godot? No, but spring would be welcome

Down here in the County, we're getting ready for Maple in the County (we tend to affix "in the County" to everything we market here in the County) March 24 and 25. Lots of folks are on board for the event presented by the Waring House Restaurant, Inn, Conference Centre and Cookery School at Warings Corner, including Cliff Foster, and his son, Dean, who’s Fosterholm Farms down near Sandbanks taps 7,000 maple trees. Cliff’s father started making maple syrup in 1924 at the 75-acre Home Farm near Sandbanks. Later, he bought Outlet Farm and now Cliff and Dean runs Fosterholm Farms. You can find them on County Road 11, near the junction with County Road 18, between East Lake and West Lake, just northeast of Sandbanks Provincial Park.

So while Lent doesn’t end until sundown on Holy Thursday, April 5, it’s a pretty safe bet that fasting won’t be part of some folks 40-day season of soul-searching and repentance – at least not on Maple in the County weekend. Seems the sign most folks down here are looking for is some visible tangible sign of spring. Maple sap running would qualify nicely. It’s been dang cold here since Lent started on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 21. Come to think of it, it’s been cold now since the middle of January, almost two months ago. February and the last half of January were colder-than-normal. The first half of March is still undecided, but to date this month is also running colder-than-normal. Winter arrived very late but when it did arrive it stayed, although Environment Canada is now whetting our appetitive for spring by promising 5 and 6 C temperatures a few days hence. I could have sworn the groundhog did not see his shadow Feb. 2, meaning winter should have ended in four weeks by March 2. Lying groundhog.

Our next “in the County” event after the big Maple weekend comes only a week later when “Culture in the County,” also known as the “County Cultural Rally” takes place for one day only March 31 at the Prince Edward County Community Centre in Picton. Organizers are asking, “What’s County Culture to you?”

Well, to me part of the answer to that question is remembering our cultural mosaic includes folks – that would be us and our neighbours – who according to the most recent Statistics Canada figures from 2000, experience culture (right after they eat and put food on their tables) on a median total income of $20,790, compared to the provincial median figure of $24,816. And where “government transfers” equal 15.9 per cent of income compared to 9.8 per cent as a provincial average.

As former U.S. President Bill Clinton put it in his first inaugural address Jan. 21, 1993: “We recognize a simple but powerful truth – we need each other. And we must care for one another … tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate, we – the fortunate and the unfortunate – might have been each other.”