Well, the Ides of March has come and gone. According to Google, the Ides of March is the 15th, and has become a sign of impending doom. I have to agree with it, if you live in the
Maple syrup season is getting started up here, and hopefully the cool nights and warm days will make for a successful season. I used to work for Burr Kingsley when I was a kid and enjoyed the season. Burr’s power supply in the woods, where we gathered sap by hand, with buckets, was a pair of horses which had been lying around the barn all winter. Needless to say, they were quite spirited when they first started working in the spring, and I remember many a scary ride through the woods with a runaway team and a full load of sap in the gathering tank. The road was rough, to say the least, and the sap splashing all over, and the trees whizzing past made for a long memory. I actually moved into the Kingsley household during the syrup season, and shared a room with Allen Kingsley, Burr’s son, and a great friend of mine. Burr was a pretty easy guy to work for, quiet and calm, and undemanding. Somehow he made you want to do a good job for him, with little fanfare. I took some of my pay in syrup and some in cash – not much, but it was over 50 years ago. We usually gathered sap in the afternoons, when the sap was really running good, and Burr ran the evaporator half the night to make room for the next day’s batch. He always burnt wood in his boiler, and spent a lot of time the rest of the year accumulating a large wood pile for the project.
My plants down cellar are doing nicely, and I may have overwhelmed myself again. I had to get grandson Peter over to help me make some more shelving and move some lights around, and I can see that I will run out of space again in the near future. I have transplanted lots of Marigolds, some Batchelor Buttons, and am about to start on the Zinnias. There is also a batch of Snapdragons, which are very slow growing, but look healthy, and there is nothing to do but wait. I can only hope that the weather gets warm enough to move some of my seedlings into the garage. I have a wooden table with wheels that I put them on and move it into the sunshine when the weather is nice, and back inside because of the night frost. This works well, and my solve my space problem.
4 comments:
You forgot all about Clyde didn't you -- you helped the Oney's with this syrup gathering too but you were much younger and Clyde didn't want you pulling his red wagon....LOL
ah, the good old days when we really worked to get syrup--I remember them well; well, maybe not as far back as horses, but we had the taps and buckets and a small Ford tractor with a remodeled old manure spreader that had the gathering tub in it--6 of us kids, my Father, Grandfathers and a few uncles and cousins made for less work for all and lots of fun. For some reason the adult females generally stayed home, but would drop in now and then to see how things were going. Did you ever hard boil eggs in the sap? My Grandfather always did, he swore it made them sweet--I don't seem to recall.
Oh boy it's time to get out the turkey deep fryer and stand for 8 hours watching it in order to make a gallon of syrup.
This method is also great for removing wallpaper and paint indoors.
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