Caught Up On Boiling

This morning I went up to the farm and fed the barn cats and threw in three square bales of hay in the outside feeder for the cows. I came back home and then my dad and I went back to the sugar shack to start boiling. We did our routine of draining the pans, hooking up hoses, filling the wood rack, and getting the fire started. After we got everything going, I came up to the farm and dragged the hoses out to the barn. I filled almost two tanks, and while they were filling I rolled a round bale of hay next the stairs and proceeded to cut it open. I threw down some straw into the pen and dispersed it evenly. I swept up all the hay and chaff that was on the ground and tossed it in for them to eat inside and then I brought another two bales out to the feeder for the cows. After the tanks finished filling, I got the hoses drained and hung back up and I came home. I grabbed some food to bring back and then I headed back to the woods again. I pumped more sap into the inside tank and then I put some food in a pot and tossed it in the wood stove's oven to warm it up. We went to test the sugar content in the sap, but the hydrometer had a crack in it, so it got liquid inside of it. I got some sap in a bucket and went down the road to our neighbor's shack who was boiling syrup as well. We used their hydrometer to check the sugar content, which was still about 1.2%. We had some new people come back to our shack, so I had to give them the tour of how the syrup making process goes from tree to bottle. Mom brought back stew for dinner and kept it warm on the stove. My sisters and I came home later and did chores. I fed my cows for the night and they got eggs from the chickens. We went back to the shack again and finished up boiling the last of the sap we had. We did the shut down process of cleaning filters, draining hoses, and washing stuff. Mom bottled 9 3/4 gallons of syrup tonight bringing our total to 102 3/4 gallons so far this season. We came home later and brought all the syrup inside and I fixed the fire with 22 pieces of wood. 

Me cutting the 6' by 5' round bale using a hay knife