Today dad and I went up to the farm and I fed the cats and cows while dad worked on some stuff. We then had some people show up for some hay. We loaded 82 bales of hay onto their trailer and then they took off. We counted the hay that we have left in the barn and then came home. We loaded up some light fixtures into our side by side and then we came back up to the farm later. A bunch of snow had fallen off the barn roof and was blocking the door shut, so I had to shovel the snow and ice out for it to swing open. I had to make sure the snow that was hanging over the edge of the roof didn't fall on me otherwise there would be issues, so I opened up the barn door upstairs and poked at the snow with a board until it fell. Dad unloaded the lights and then helped me roll over a new round bale to the stairs. I cut it in half and threw some of it down to feed the cows. I came home later, and dad had already gone back to the shack and got the condensed sap from the front pans. He had the propane burner with the big pot on it ready to go, and we started boiling down the sap shortly after. Dad went up to the farm and sold another 8 bales while I watched the sap boil. Dad and I drove down the road to our other neighbor's sugar shack to return their sap hydrometer we had borrowed. Carl Fuss was back at the shack doing the last boil. Dad and I helped him by fixing the fire and splitting up some wood. It was mainly just him back there running the show. Bryan Daly was back there bottling syrup for him. Dad taught Carl some things about boiling and ended up taking over the operation a little. Carl wanted to call it quits because he didn't want to run out of sap and burn his pans. As we kept making syrup, he ran out of glass bottles, so dad came home and looked around for some miscellaneous bottles. I kept the fire going and continued to boil. When dad got back, we put all the sap into the pans and then pumped water into their tank to chase the sap with. In the end we made almost 4 extra gallons for them after he wanted to quit. I bottled up all the syrup for them and then helped them shut down for the season. We left and came home after being there for over 5 hours, and continued to boil down our sap. Carl had given us the highly concentrated sap from his last boil tonight to boil down on our burner for us. I came up to the farm and fed the cows and began to fill one water tank. I bedded them with straw and then closed up the barns. After the tank finished filling, I blew the hoses out and hung them up and came home. I put 20 pieces on the fire for the night. After the sap finally turned into syrup, dad and I poured it through our filters and brought it inside for the night. My sister and I counted all the syrup we have in the basement and made note of it.
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