Tending the Fire

Once in a long while,  I have to just sit down and pay attention to something without doing much else that engages my brain.

Tending a brush burn is one of those.   I have to be with the fire in the field, but I only add wood a few times an hour.  The rest of the time I just have to sit. Or stand.  Always with an eye on the breeze and floating ash.  Eventually the pile of wood is gone and I get to spend a few more hours just watching it burn down until nothing but embers is left and we can douse it.  It's a lot of time for my brain to wander.

I have a busy brain.   It reminds me of all the things I want to do but haven't.  Or need to do but haven't.  It reminds me of things I did wrong or could have done better. The things that I tried that didn't work out.  The time I wasted doing it.  It pulls up uncomfortable feelings about things that have happened and tells me that if I'm uncomfortable, then I must have done something wrong and so I should fix it. Then it goes round and round trying to find a way that I could have done things differently.  If I remind it that it's too late to change anything, it invites shame and guilt over for a play date. If it comes to the conclusion that the problem lay with someone else's choices, then it goes round and round and round to make sure, searching and searching for the mistake that I must have made.  It compares me with my favorite people - pointing out all the ways I am not like them.  It tells me I am stupid.  Lazy.  Unattractive.  Repulsive. A failure.  It tells me that there is no way I'm going to accomplish the goals I have and that the goals I've already achieved don't mean that much.

It will go on as long as I let it.

This is the main reason I work so hard and multi-task so relentlessly.  Working and juggling multiple tasks are my coping mechanism for giving my brain something else to think about besides telling me how rotten I am. 

It's a very effective strategy.  Except for the burnout.  Also the reluctance to make lasting relationships [with awesome people who I'm not at all like].  Also the reluctance to go out socially [great situations in which to make lots of mistakes].   And don't forget the depression and anxiety. 

So basically, what  I have finally acknowledged is that my tried and true methods for coping with my busy brain have some pretty nasty side effects. 

This year I spent some serious time and study finding new ways to think so that my brain isn't always beating me up.  I read some great books.  My favorites were Rick Hanson's Hardwiring Happiness,  George Pratt & Peter Lambrou's Code to Joy,  and Danielle La Porte's The Desire Map.    Each one gave me a new way of thinking about why my brain does what it does, how to teach it new habits and how to choose a life based on feeling good. 

So last weekend, when I was sitting, tending the fire for hours and hours and hours, I found things for my brain to do other than beat me up.  I spent a lot of time expressing my inner music instead.

With time and the right care, healing happens.

How does your brain treat you when you have nothing to do but tend the fire? 

Intention

I love the word Intention.   So much potential there.   I love potential. Potential for being my Best Self, living my Best Life,  being a Better Person, etc.  I also get overwhelmed by potential.  So many options - which is  the most efficient one, the most cost effective one, the right one, the best one.  Also, there's the whole - 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' thing - which clearly underscores the necessity for action in addition to intention.   And there's the intentions as wishes thing, but I like to think about intentions as baby goals.

Changes and actions usually start with intention, so I've been paying close attention to my intentions for the last while.  It's made me notice when I have mixed feelings about things, or when I'm letting fear be a guiding principle. [I think I want XYZ, but really I just don't want to be scared anymore - and then I realize I can get out of fear in other ways that may have nothing to do with XYZ.]  I've learned that I like to set Intentions that I can realistically be responsible for.   I can't decide how much yarn I'm going to sell, but I can decide to treat every client with kindness and respect - and become a better person in the bargain.

My intention for the next while is to be a more laughing/smiling person.  I need more laughing and I know the world is full of delightful and crazy situations so I'm going to focus on finding and sharing those. It's so good to laugh together. To that end, I found an old post from the blog that might bring a smile to your face.   This is what happened the day I tackled a rosebush with the mower.   I hope you get a good laugh.

What are your intentions for the next while?

p.s.  We'll be announcing details later this month for My Best Life Now retreat in October.  We're so excited!

I Hate to See October Go

© 2016 Robin Edmundson, I Hate to See October Go, watercolor, 9 x 12 inches

100 years ago, in 1984, Barry Manilow sang a song with that line as the chorus.  That line has been stuck in my head all these years.  Every fall I think of it as Warm Fall moves into Cold Fall.   I have been deep in that season as I painted this piece.  I tried to fill it full of that late fall glow, after the leaves are down but the grass is still green.  Before the snow flies here.

The painting is about 9x12.  140 lb cp paper - Arches.

This one is for sale SOLD.   $150. Signed front and back.   Framed with a white mat, conservation quality [That's the good kind]. Simple black frame, like the one I used for the painting in the museum.  Framed size: 16x20.   Email me if you're interested: robin at morenna dot com.

New Wood Stove

I finally decided on a wood stove.    This is the one I bought.  Vermont Castings, Encore.  [photo from their site]

Yes, it was expensive. But I got a discount for buying in July.   I went with the enamel finish because we live on a gravel road and have you ever tried dusting one of the plain cast iron ones?    I have.  Never again.  So we went with the more expensive, but ultimately easier to clean and therefore less stressful enamel.

It's a flex burn, which means we can do a super efficient catalytic burn or just a plain old burn.  Either way, it's a pretty efficient stove so we could go with the smaller size of the Encore instead of the Defiant.    I chose the brown, with a matte black chimney.    It will go against slate tile about the same colors as the mat below the stove above. 

With the money I saved from the summer purchase, I was able to get a heat activated fan that sits on the stove, a nice galvanized wood holder and a nice tool set, as well as a second ash pan so we can leave one to cool completely before we need to dump it.  

Why this stove?   I haunted forums and read dozens and dozens of reviews.   There are much cheaper stoves out there and some of them are very good.   I wanted to make this decision one time.   Everyone that I read loved this stove and it received the highest marks in consumer testing.  Also, I like the way it looks.  

Still a lot of construction to go so it will be Halloween before install.   I'll keep you updated.

Wood Stoves

We will be buying a wood stove this summer.   I've been doing a lot of research and we narrowed it down to these three:

1. Vermont Castings,  Encore:
 $3250 - enamel finish.
Heats up to 1800 sq ft.
Medium sized firebox
27" (W)
25-3/4" (H)
22-3/4" (D)
Burn Time: 12 hours
Converts from catalytic to non-catalytic.
Lower ash pan that swings out from the bottom for clean out.
Top or front load, 22" logs
Small cook top already on - no conversion

2.  Regency,  H200 

$2350

Heats up to 1500 sq ft

Medium sized firebox

23.875" (W)
27.625" (H)
25.125" (D)

Burn time:  6 hours 

Front load, 16" logs

Automatic blower
Top lifts off so you can use firebox as cooktop.
Ash pan pulls out like a drawer

3.  Quadra-Fire,  Yosemite

Starting at $2089

Heats up to 1500 sq ft

Small size firebox.

25.625" (W)
24.313" (H)
25" (D)

Burn Time:  9 hours

Side or front load, 18" logs

Cooktop under cover
Ash pan swings out?

A couple of weekends ago, in between snowstorms, we went to Economy Fireplace in Ellettsville, Indiana and took a look at them.  Jim Herbst spent a lot of time talking to us and explaining how things work and what all was on the insides of all the stoves we looked at. [Great guy!  Very friendly and knowledgeable.  He gave us a tip on gloves - Go get a pair of welding gloves; they last a lot longer than fireplace gloves.] 

We saw the Vermont Castings Encore up close and personal.  They didn't have the Yosemite, but they had something very similar by Quadra-Fire.  They had the larger Regency H300 instead of the H200, but it's essentially the same stove, just different sizes.  So, we feel like we have enough information to make a final decision sometime here soon.

It was interesting to see how the top load felt as opposed to the side load and front loads.  It was interesting to see the ash pan arrangements.   It was nice to see the finishes.   Prices differ depending on the finish - The Encore price up there is for the enamel finish. The Regency would cost more with the enamel finish and I'm not sure about the Yosemite, since they didn't have that one and I had to pull a price off the internet. 

Which do you guys like best?  

Maple Boil 2013

I confess that one of my favorite days of the year is maple boil day.   I get to spend the whole day outside.   It smells divine.    There's a fire to warm me up when I get chilly.   There is an unlimited amount of tea made with hot maple sap.  





It's a day spent sitting in front of the fire snuggled in a blanket with a book and a cup of tea.  

And it's a day spent hauling wood and sap buckets.  And moving the sap from pan to pan.   And taking pictures of the whole process for posterity.






Tea
If you're going to boil sap, then you have to try some tea made with it.   I like to use sap that's boiled down for an hour or so in the pot, but isn't too sweet yet.   Herbal teas like peach are our all time favorites for maple boiling day and we go through a lot of it.  

Fire
We boil in our fire pit.   Our fire pit that sits just outside off our patio.

Our fire pit that I completely dismantled in the fall so that we could dig it level and pour a slab under it. 

We did dig it level, but then it got too cold to pour the slab, so it sat in piles of bricks and blocks on the patio until the other day.  

When Lily and I remantled it.

Being that this is mud season and all, the place where we put it was really muddy.   Which is a problem for building fires and keeping them lighted.

Also, keeping the fire pit blocks from sinking to China.

So Eric laid an 8x4 piece of plywood down on the mud and Lily and I laid bricks on the plywood and then built the fire pit on the bricks, on the plywood and prayed it wouldn't burn.

It didn't burn.    Too much wet underneath the plywood and the bricks insulated the bottom plenty.

This year I built the sides higher so they'd surround the pans and heat things more efficiently.   It worked like a charm.  This was the best boil ever.

I got up early on Saturday and built a glorious fire in my glorious fire pit and boiled and boiled and boiled.   We boiled 35 gallons [8 buckets, 4-5 gallons each] in 12 hours.   Not super efficient, but pretty good.   That'll yeild us about a gallon of syrup when we're all done.    [Plus, the season isn't over yet and we may be able to get a few more buckets of sap off our tree.]

Which brings me to this little reminder.   You get 1 gallon of syrup for every 40 gallons or so of sap.   This means that you have to boil off 39 gallons of water.   Don't try to boil sap in your house.  You do not want 39 gallons of water vapor in your house.     A friend tried it and short circuited the electric in his kitchen.   Don't go there.

That said,   I often finish the syrup in the house, where I can watch it better.    We boil it down almost completely outside, then bring it in for the night and boil off the last gallon or so in the morning.    I put the finished syrup in jars and then use my steam canner to seal them up. 

Wood
Boiling all day takes a lot of wood and you want it to burn hot, so pick your wood carefully and plan ahead.

Use small dry pieces about the size of your forearm or smaller.   You want lots of surface area for burning.   In addition, I put larger pieces on either side to keep the sides a bit cooler [where we're standing and stirring] and to make great coals for cooking on later.  

The fire will need constant supervision to maintain a rolling boil in your pans.  Keep adding wood.

Pans
I use a huge turkey roasting pan that I got for $12 at Goodwill to boil in.  Each part hold 3 gallons.  I fill them both up with sap and as it cooks down, I pour the stuff from the right pan into the left pan.  The stuff in the left pan gets darker and darker, thicker and thicker.   I add new sap only to the right pan.

See that big 3 gallon pot up behind the roasting pans?  [Goodwill $6]  That pot catches a lot of heat from the fire and is an excellent place to pre-warm the sap before it goes into the big pan on the fire.     Prewarming is not necessary, but sure helps speed things up when you have big ice blocks in the sap buckets. 

I use a 4 cup glass measuring cup to move the sap from pan to pan and I use assorted ladles when I need them.     I keep a small strainer [the size that fits atop a wide mouth jar] close by to fish large pieces of ash and bugs out.

Boiling sap over an open fire this way is pretty messy.   Ash gets everywhere.   The occasional bug will fly in.   The pans will be covered, covered!, with soot and have to be scrubbed two or three times to get clean again.

It's worth it.   There is nothing like the smell and taste of your own maple syrup. 

I'm Dreaming of a Bread Oven

We saw this awesome bread oven in use at Fort Ouiatenon this year.   Those girls were leaning against it because it was warm.

They were indeed baking bread inside it.

Awesome.

As in, inspiring awe and wonder and a deep recognition that This Is The One.

I love this bread oven.  

I LOVE it, I tell you!

Here's the front. It was about 4' wide.  

They built a fire in the right chamber [You can see the smoke marks, above] and let it heat up good, then they moved the coals to the left chamber and let them burn out. 

The left chamber is wide enough to use one of those fireplace shovels, with an extra long handle,  to move the coals from the right to the left. 

Once the right chamber is good and hot and then emptied out, they baked bread in it.    It was hard to get a pic of the inside, but this will give you the idea.   They were taking one loaf out and you can just see two more inside.  

The whole thing was probably 6' long.  It had a chimney at the back, that came up to about 5' tall.  They said it was made of fire brick covered with concrete.   It had a crack over the left chamber, but still heated fine.   They made a lot of bread that day with it.

We don't need one this big, but this is the way we want it to look.    I'm thinking we only need it around 4' deep, with a narrower chimney on the back.   I love the hearth and the double chamber.   Ours will be built right next to a firepit, and we won't be baking all day long, so in theory, we won't need the left chamber, we can just pull the coals and light a fire in the firepit with them.   That way we get to enjoy the oven and watch a fire. 

A long time ago, I burned our hill

As you may know, I have a love/hate relationship with most mowers. It is a sad fact that I treat mowers more like battering rams than grass cutters.

Since our property is doing its best to revert to forest, it is a constant battle to keep the trees and rosebushes and brambles from taking over everything. It would look like Sleeping Beauty's rose covered castle if we stopped mowing for very long. In fact, there are places on our property that look like that already. I'm pretty sure that our place is the inspiration for the phrase, "Everything's coming up roses".

Our only defense against the ever encroaching thorny jungle is the riding mower. I have been known to mow down small trees and giant rosebushes with a small riding lawn mower. Here's how: Put it in 2nd gear, slightly uphill from your target. Let off the break, tuck elbows and knees in, scream Geronimo and ram the target.  It works very, very well.

Very well, I tell you.

It's amazing what a typical mower with a 36 or so inch deck can mow through. Our first little Craftsman mower was the best battering ram I ever had. I loved that thing. It had a nice wide bar at the front that sort of pushed things out of the way before they went under the mower. This is especially important when mowing through roses and brambles. You need a mower that will push them away from you as you go through them. It is no fun getting whipped across the face/head with a rose or bramble cane. Just yesterday I got hit right in the face with an old blackberry cane that left thorns in my nose and cheek. Blood ensued from my wounds. Curses ensued from my mouth.

I no longer have my beloved 36 inch Craftsman mower.   I'll tell you why.

One April, many years ago, I set out on my annual quest to tame the roses and brambles on this place. I mowed paths through the jungle so that people could walk around this place and enjoy its beautiful vistas and surprises - like the iris bog, the view of the giant old oak tree, the creeks, the view from the top of the big hill. I spent one glorious weekend, dressed in denim armor, wearing goggles, ear protectors and hats, clearing miles of paths through the acres of dead bramble canes and huge old roses.

Once I cleared the paths, I decided to take out some of the monster roses on our big hill. It's a great sledding hill, except it's full of brambles and roses, which are no fun to land in. Ask me how I know.

I started with the smaller roses. I set the mower on 2nd, gave it a head start and rammed those roses right over. Smack, crack, crunch. The mower chewed them up and spat them out, leaving a trail of stumps and masticated canes in its wake. It was brilliant.

I gained confidence as I gained experience. I took out bigger and bigger roses. I and my mower were invincible.

Invincible.

Rose after rose, bigger and bigger, they fell. And then I took aim at one Medusa of a rose full of dead canes and whippy live ones, rising out of a sea of last year's grass, in the middle of the hill. I rammed it with all the force of my trusty steed and overconfident personality.

And got stuck right in the middle of it.

Stuck. As in can't really back up out of it.

Then I smelled smoke.

And realized that the dried grass had been rammed up into the muffler of the mower and was now beginning to burn.

Crap.

So I backed up harder and finally got free. But by then the middle of the rosebush was on fire, so I turned off the mower so I could jump off and go put the fire out.

Except the mower wouldn't turn off.

As in, wouldn't turn off.

Wouldn't. Turn. Off. Even after I took the key out. Apparently the fire had burned out some important wiring in the mower.

And speaking of the fire, it was getting bigger.

So I jumped off the mower, praying that since it's got one of those seat sensors that it would go off. And it did. Whew.

So, I went to fight the fire with my.....feet. And gloved hands. Because I'm brave like that and have actually beaten out a field fire with my feet and a carpet, but I didn't have a carpet, so I was going to use my gloves if I had to.

But it's kind of impossible to stomp out a fire in the middle of a rosebush.

And you know how it's kind of breezy in the spring and sometimes kind of windy? This was one of those days.

In no time flat, the breeze had whipped that fire into a frenzy and that rosebush belched flames in every direction and it was clear that it was way bigger than me. So I jumped on the mower to get it out of the way and to get to the house to call 911.

But the mower wouldn't start.

As in, Would. Not. Start.

So I left it there on the hill with the fire and I took off for the house, which I reached a couple of minutes later, gasping for air and clutching the cramp in my side. [I'm not much of a runner, you see. At. All. I don't think I've run, even once, since that day.]

And I called 911 because by then I was scared spitless that I had just started the fire that would burn down my house and most of Greene County. It was terrifying.

And 911 said they'd get someone out there right away.

Right away is a really long time.

We live almost exactly 4 miles away from the fire station. It felt like forever.

So to kill time, I called my husband to fill him in on the action. Because nothing says, 'I love you', like sharing the joy of a field fire on a dry windy day. When he's too far away to help.

The truth is I was sort of hysterical. And we were waiting and waiting and waiting.  It felt like the fire trucks would never get there. And I was really scared that the fire would reach last year's leaves in the woods and really get going. And that it would jump the creek and get to the house. And that once it got to the woods, it would get my neighbors' houses, too. Talk about bad karma.

So I hung up from Eric and wrangled the 15 feet of garden hose that we had and was determined to defend my house and children against the fiery beast.

And the fire trucks still hadn't come, so I called 911 again. Just to remind them that we had a fire and I was scared it was going to get the house. In case they had forgotten. [I'm not kidding.]

She assured me that they were on their way. [And not very nicely, as I recall. Geez.]

In the meantime, Eric had called the neighbors, who came down the other hill from their place bearing shovels. They promptly began to regale me with stories of how they had set their fields on fire, too. They assured me everything would be OK.

God bless them.

About that time the first volunteer fireman showed up with a tank on the back of his truck. Halleluia. Except it was empty. I showed him where to get trucks up to the hill and he said, 'They'll be here soon. We just got done putting one of these out at my house.' I didn't know whether to be comforted or not.

Finally, finally the other trucks got there. You know, the ones with actual water in them.

And soon the field was full of firefighters with water tanks and sprayers on their backs and neighbors with shovels. They walked around the fire and sprayed and stomped and pounded it out. I'd like to say that I was up there helping them out, but the truth is I was trying to keep my kids calm. And my neighbors were trying to keep me calm. And some time during this part, Eric called me back, or I called him back and I was giving him a blow by blow account of what was happening.

It took a while for them to get the fire under control, though I must say that all those paths I mowed did indeed help them get to stuff.  When the fire was out around the edges, all the firefighters moved toward the center of the burned site, where sat my mower.  Smoking.

Slowly they circled the mower, spraying, watching, waiting.

There was a moment of stillness and I swear one of them crossed himself and they gave that mower the last rites. 

Then they packed their gear and said good bye and I said thank you about five million times and they left.

And then the fire started burning again. [I'm not kidding] The edge on the bottom side wasn't quite out.

So, I panicked and started screeching. And my completely implacable neighbor just looked at me, then picked up his shovel and went up the hill to pound it out. I vaguely remember feeling pretty bad about not helping fight the big fire and feeling like I ought to at least help pound a little, since I had started the fire, so I grabbed my shovel and ran up to help. Remember how I told you I don't really run? By the time I 'ran' up that hill, I was huffing and puffing and my neighbor looked at me like he was afraid I might have a coronary right there and said, 'Are you all right? I've got this. It's nothing much' And he pounded it out.

When I asked him if it was going to stay out, he looked at me and said, 'Yes.'

And he walked back down the hill to collect his family and go back home.

In the end, the fire burned up pretty much the entire east side of our big hill - a few acres.  When Eric got home we went to look at the mower, reigning supreme in the middle of a big black hill.   The mower was in remarkably good shape considering that the wiring was completely burned up and the tires were melted.

Unfortunately, most of the windows in the house face that view. So does the road. For a week that blackened hill and dead mower mocked me every time I looked out the window. It was awful. Finally, I begged Eric to at least pull the mower off the hill so I and everyone who drove by wouldn't be reminded of my stupidity.

We hid the mower behind a willow tree where it sat until another neighbor bought it for scrap. I was never so grateful as the day he hauled that away.

The hill recovered quite nicely - as you'd expect. In a week or so new green shoots came up and it would have been really pretty if it hadn't been so humiliating.

One good thing though. That rose bush?

Toast.

Feast of the Hunter's Moon: The food

Churning butter

One of the things I liked best about the Feast is .... the feast.    I love the smell of wood fires and cooking food.   Love it.

We cook over our firepit a lot and everything tastes extra good flavored with a bit of woodsmoke.   Except eggplant.   But that's another post.

There is no electricity at the feast.  If it was cooked, it was cooked over a fire.    Food was kept cold in coolers and off site in refrigerator trucks.  

Here are just a few of the food vendors we saw at the Feast and some of the ways they were set up to cook the food there.    [There were a lot more that I didn't get photos of.   Too busy eating!]

Here's the setup used by the guys making buffalo stew.   Notice that gorgeous cauldron.    I want one.   They run about $500.  [Yes, five hundred.]   That's cheap because it's not a really big one.   Notice the knobs on the sides where you can rig it to chains to hang it over the fire.  

These guys put their cauldrons on triangular iron frames stuck deep into the ground and then they build the fire underneath.   The iron plates around the fire are used to control the temperature and block the wind.   Very smart.

Here's a pic of the buffalo stew.   They boil the vegetables for an hour and then put the meat in and cook it for another hour.   They did a brisk business. 

Here's another fire set up.    Notice the frame stuck into the ground on either side. 

Then there's a hanging unit with the rack on the bottom to hold the pots.   See how the hanger has knobs at different levels so you can raise and lower the rack to the height you want?    Cool!  The copper pot in the pic isn't on the rack, it's hanging from its own hook.   There were a few blacksmiths at the show that made hooks of different lengths so you can have different options when you're cooking.  Just move the pot from one hook to another as need be.

Notice the big cauldrons behind the copper pot set up!  They're on tripods.   Nice set up!

One of my favorite set ups was at the croquignolles booth.   Croquignolles are fried bread sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, served hot with a French accent.    They were very tasty!  

I loved their set up.


 

They had a huge wooden frame with a long fire pit dug underneath and they hung their fry pots and coffee pots from chains wrapped around the frame. 

Here's a closer view of the fry pots and fire pit.   I ate one of those croquignolles.  It was delicious.

I heart sauerkraut!   I had mine on a venison brat, not in stew, but I had to show you this booth because it illustrated a great solution to the big question of How do you stir a big pot of something when it's cooking over an open fire?

You take a long narrow board, drill it full of holes, attach a long handle to it and give it to a kid.   This little guy stirred and stirred and stirred, back and forth.   Very practical!

The guy behind him has his board out of the stew and you can see the holes in it.   The holes are gauged to let the stew through so that the unit doesn't slosh things around.   They keep the pots full because they do a good business.

The last thing I want to show you is the difference in how the re-enactors set up their dining areas.  Here is a pic of one of the voyageur camp set ups.  They had a fire out back, but did all their eating on tables with china.   No sitting around a campfire for these nobles.

This is another camp set up from a significantly less noble camp.   They use the straw bales to sit on and protect the fire from wind.   

Small, but effective.   I love the hanging rack set up.

Making Maple Syrup

It's sap boiling time!   Time to gather wood, squeeze the 3 inches of rain we've had in the past week out of it, light those fires and boil some sap.   And we're doing it today!

This what we start with - plain old maple sap right out of the tree.

This is our goal - maple syrup.   It takes 42 gallons of sap for a gallon of syrup.  You're shooting for 66% sugar content.

Here's the unit we're using this year to boil. 

 Eric's on the left and Mike Bell is on the right.  Mike designed this arch ['arch' is what you call a sap boiling unit.] from a filing cabinet.   He used a barrel stove kit [available at Menard's] and put a door on one end and a chimney on the other.  The left side is where the fire goes.  They built up the floor to ascend toward the chimney - pushing the heat up to where the sap pans go.

 The chimney end.

You can see in the center of the photo the grate where the fire goes.   They're using fire brick to line the ascent to the chimney at the other end.

The assembled arch with the pans in place.   The chimney is at the left of this photo.  

The fire end, packed and ready to burn.

This is Mike using a propane torch to dry out the wood and get the fire going.  [It's been raining and raining and raining here....]

We heart fire!

Sap in the pans, ready to go.   The darker stuff on the right has been boiled down some already.   We put the new sap in the left and as things boil down, we move the sap to the right.   The pan on the right will be syrup first.  

Boil, boil, boil!

This is our starter pan.  We heat the new sap up on this fire first before we put it in the pans.   It speeds things up.  

At the end of the day, we take the darkest stuff inside and finish boiling it on the stove.   This is so fresh that it isn't filtered yet.   Filter through cheese cloth or other food filters to get the ash out.   It's prettier that way.