Boiling Mania

We had a free weekend and I would like to say we chose to boil but with approximately 80 gallons of sap we didn't really have a choice.  We need to get this stuff moving.  Living on a farm and not having an never ending bank account I think it is absolutely eccential.  I wanted to boil using wood this year to save money and for effiency.  It turned out that efficiency was the biggest challange.  We are extemely happy with our collection method.  It is efficient and reliable and best of all CHEAP!  For boiling I planned to use a woodburnng stove that just happened to be laying in our garage with no home.  So Saturday started out with two very large pots on top of the stove in the back yard.  After hours of working at a hot fire and still no hard boil frustrations started to set in.  We kept at it since we already had the fire going but it was very slow going.  By the end of the night we ended up with all of about 1 2/3 cups of syrup.

But sitting there watching the pot boil, literally, I had alot of time to think about how to correct this problem.  I planned up my scheme and got the husband to agree to give assistance the next day to make it happen.  This guy gives me the hardest time about some of these things that I do but he sure does work hard to make it all happen for me!  So today we had to wait until after church and lunch to get things going but the plan was to take off the top of the stove and get a more direct heat to the pots.  This is what our boiling system ended up looking like.

You can see how great of boil we got with this.  I am very pleased.

That is my seat in front of the stove.

I have one word, efficient!  And that is what we needed.  If I wasn't so exhausted my excitement about my ability to set it all up and make it work word come through my post but I am just getting through this post in a daze.  Between constant keeping up with the fire, wood splitting, animal chores, and family duties, and considering it is midnight and I still have a few gallons of sap boiling outside, I am spent!  At the end of two days we have a total of 6 cups of syrup.  Most of which were from today and we only got in a half day of boiling.  So things should move along better now with our "system".

And just for kicks here is this lovely guy I was telling you about.  I think he might  be going a bit looney...lol.