Liquid Gold

 

Today after work my dad went back and got stuff ready to boil. I went up to the farm and fed my cows some hay and swept up the floor. There were sheets of ice dangling over the edge of the barn roof, so I thought it would be fun to knock them down and I also figured it would be a good idea before someone got hit by one. I used an ear of corn and chucked it up at the roof to break the ice. By the time I got back to the woods, my dad had the sap at a rolling boil. I pumped sap into our inside holding tank from our outside tank a couple times while I was back there. My dad and I took turns fixing the fire and then we refilled the wood rack with the wood that was tarped outside. I hung the tarp up on the side of the shack to block the wind from coming through and cooling down the pans because we still have 20 mph winds. Our neighbors Bruce and Stan Wingeier stopped by and kept us some company for a bit. Stan told me he can remember my Great Great Grandpa John, who built the shack, grabbing a bunch of wood and fixing the fire in the arch back when he was young. Stan used to stop by the shack on his walk home from school each day during syrup season.  I bottled some syrup and then came home for the night. I fed my cows hay to last them through the night, and then fixed the fire with 26 pieces of wood. We ended the night with 7 1/2 gallons of maple syrup.