Sugar

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

Sugar House on Fort Pelham Farm (2)

The forecast for the weather today is very mild – they say in the 40’s.  When that happens in January I always start thinking about maple sugaring.  Bill and I sugar with our friends Russ and Carmen in the next town over.  We do it because it is a really fun time (most of the time) and gives you a real sense of accomplishment.  Russell and his son started laying the pipeline last weekend.  Things will be ready when the time comes to tap the trees.

The photograph above was the sugar house that was in the back of the house in Rowe.  There are still remnants of the metal equipment that they used out in the wood lot  although I confess I personally have not seen them. I’ve walked to that area a few times but what was once a sugarbush is now over grown with huge pine trees.

In the middle to late 1800’s there was a lot of maple sugar made on Fort Pelham Farm.  The first record of it was in the 1860 Farm Census where 700 lbs of sugar was recorded for that year.  1860 holds the record for the most maple sugar ever made in the U.S.  One of the reasons being this was the ramp up to the civil war and people were boycotting cane sugar due to slavery.  They replaced a lot of that cane sugar with maple.  In 1870 they produced 300 pounds and in 1880 they produced 450.  I am assuming that pounds of sugar was both syrup and sugar but it may have all been sugar.  Until 1860 there were only wooden spouts to tap the trees and iron pots to boil the sap in.  The process involved a number of pots at various stages of boiling so instead of having an automated draw down to syrup as we have today they were manually transferring sap from pot to pot until it reach the sugar stage that they were looking for.  When I read that 700 lbs. of sugar was made it came as a huge surprise just considering the amount of work that is involve.

So I decided to do some math.

On the average, it takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of pure maple syrup.  One tap hole in each maple tree gives 10 gallons of sap in an average year. So, 4 maple trees, 40 to 200 years old, are needed to make one gallon of pure maple syrup.  Some trees have more than one tap but all should be over 10 inches in diameter.

Maple sap is 2% sugar and weighs 8.35 lbs. per gallon.

Maple syrup is 66.9% sugar and weighs 11 lbs per gallon.

One gallon of maple syrup makes 7 lbs of maple sugar.

All I can say is wow.  The best year we ever had was 2 years ago because it was a long season.  We made 130 gallons of syrup.  We had 1,000 taps on pipeline and about 200 buckets.  We used a reverse osmosis rig to take a lot of the water out of the sap before we even started to boil it.  We burn slabs from a local sawmill and the fire is stoked every 4 minutes – yes, every 4 minutes.  I’m not sure how much wood we burned.

They were just using buckets to catch the sap.  Each bucket had to be emptied at least once a day by a person, stored and boiled.  They must have been boiling 24 hours a day everyday throughout the season.  At the time on the farm they had two oxen which I’m sure were worked gathering sap.  Fortunately the season is short.

Then I remembered a conversation Bill and I had a couple of weeks ago about the amount of wood it would have taken to heat the house.  We figured anywhere from 15 to 20 cord a year.  Add to that whatever they needed to make maple sugar and these men had to have been doing nothing but cutting wood year round – with saws, axes and mauls and those oxen. This is why they tell you that you could see to the ocean from Western Mass.  Every tree had been cut down and burned by the time 1880 came around, that’s when people began burning coal.

People always ask me why the price of syrup is so high and I always tell them how much work is involved in it.  I don’t think we even get enough to justify any of our time, we do it because we love it.  I can’t imagine thinking it was fun half way through the season in 1860.

Sugar Orchard at Fort Pelham Farm (2)

Bunny Tracks

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

IMAG0312

There is a lot of snow in Rowe.  Bill plows out paths all over the property with the tractor.  I think he does it for something to do more than anything else.  This morning when I went out with the dogs there were rabbit tracks everywhere.  I started following some of their little trails around and found it amusing that they use Bill’s plowed out roads more than anything else.  They will go over the banks to get under something but it appears they’ve turned Bill’s roads into quite the highway.

I love seeing their tracks everywhere, I rarely see one in the winter.  It makes me feel a little more secure about have the little dogs running around everywhere, especially in the evening.  There were a number of years when we had coyotes in the back forty almost every night.  There wasn’t a small critter to be found anywhere on that property.  We found the carnage of a deer kill over the bank near the new perennial garden one spring as well.  Friends lost their cats.  They are quite scary, especially when you know they are there, you hear them but you never see them.

About two years ago I stopped hearing them barking at night.  Then the critters started coming back.  The rabbits are new to us here.  As long as I can remember there were never rabbits in the back behind the barn.  Now you see them when you drive in the driveway or go out early in the morning with your coffee and in the winter you see evidence of them everywhere.

Nature’s Easter Eggs

/ handmadebyjo / 3 Comments

IMAG0311

Sue brought up some fresh eggs for me last night, her hens have just started laying.  She has Araucanas, Barred Rocks and Buff Orpingtons as well as the mystery rooster.  He oversees all 26 hens.  He’s a busy boy.

I had two of them for breakfast this morning.  I always find it delightful to see that egg stay contained, tightly held together as a fresh egg will.  They were delicious.  They were also beautiful.  The brown eggs are all different shades that tend to the pink side and the Araucanas’ eggs are just a delightful green.  I think I want to paint a room one of these colors.

Fannie

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

The School

 

It’s seems a little funny to me that the only photograph I have of my favorite teacher of all time is of her as a student standing in front of the one room schoolhouse she attended in Rowe.  She’s second from the right in the back row.  Her best friend, standing next to her with the blonde hair, is Olive Wright, the last Wright to live at Fort Pelham Farm.  This is all coincidental because we didn’t move into the house until 1967 which was the last of the four years I had Fannie von Reuss Chenburg for a teacher.

Rowe is a very small town.  When I started school there were 6 of us in my kindergarten class.  The next year it dropped to 4 and that’s the way it stayed until I entered a nine town regional in Buckland.  Mrs. von was my teacher from the third through the sixth grades.  Until the last year she taught it all to all 4 grades at the same time.  I’m sure that it took a little different skill set to do this but this is how she was taught so it didn’t really seem that different.

My memories of her are so mixed but I have to say that I loved her.  She was well-traveled in exotic places and would tell us stories of her time in the Middle East and Europe.  She also told us about her escapades with Olive.  I remember how wonderfully she would tell these stories so your imagination would take you to a different time and place.  Those stories stick with me still.  We did flag drills in Phys. Ed.  We drew glorious maps in geography, learned our math diligently and reading was always a top priority.  I was writing critical thinking papers in the fourth grade.  My most memorable topic being “What would happen if there were too many people?”. She was an outdoors woman walking to school many days and telling us about the otters in Pelham Lake that she would watch on the way in or what birds were at her feeders.  I remember her having and teaching an enormous respect for life.

There was the dark side that any of us that had her for a teacher would tell you.  I honestly can’t remember what precipitated some of these incidents but I do remember chalk being thrown and yard sticks being slapped on your desk.  The sound of the chalk clinking on her wedding ring as she rolled it back and forth in her hands.  We always knew she was in a good mood when she wore earrings to school.

We made kites. We would play outdoors for extended recess on those first true spring days when the only place to play was the pavement because the snowbanks were too high.  We jumped rope and played rolly at the bat.  We played a game, school wide called “Run Sheep Run” which I think was a take on Capture the Flag.  She would have us come to her house where her flower gardens were a sight to behold.  They must have been pretty wonderful, I still think about them today.  We have a peony in our garden that comes from hers.  These were all magical moments.

Fannie von Reuss Chenburg helped mold some wonderful people.  We all took away a little bit of her.  You can see it still in all of us as adults  – that love of nature and quiet, that sense of adventure, the caring about each individual.  When I get together with the kids in my class, now long into adulthood there is something that we all have in common and I think it’s her.

Poor Sophie

/ handmadebyjo / 1 Comment

IMG_0351

When Sophie is in Rowe the only thing she wants to do is go outside.  It doesn’t matter what the weather, if someone is outdoors she wants to be there.  When Chester is out there without her she sits on the back of the chair so she can see what he’s doing and what she might be missing. And cries.

Genealogy Rabbit Hole

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

I’ve just spent the better part of this morning down a rabbit hole of genealogy which I have to admit happens quite often.  It all started out with a thought about sugaring.  I figured I’d do a little research on what sugaring was like on Fort Pelham Farm in the mid to late 1800’s.  I will still do that but that thought led me on a little adventure.

Sugar House on Fort Pelham Farm

 

This photograph was taken in the late 1890’s to early 1900’s.  I decided to try and figure out who the people in the photo were as best I could.  I have a number of other photographs with the names of people on them so I figured I’d just have to do some comparisons and maybe I could have an idea of who each person was.

The man farthest to the left is most likely Henry Wright, the next older gentlemen is Edward Wright.  The woman next holding the bucket is Charlotte Mills.  I think the man kneeling down is Lucius Wright but I could be wrong on that one.  The last one I know is Daisy who is second from the right.

In dating old photographs one of the clues is in the clothing they were wearing.  Daisy’s jacket is really of early 1890’s vintage.  The rest of their clothes could be anywhere from 1890 to 1910 so we can probably assume that residents of Rowe were not on the cutting edge of fashion. I figured I’d look at the marriage date for Henry and Daisy Wright since they are together on the farm during sugar season.  January 1, 1903 they were married.  Then it happened.  I opened the 1900 census for Daisy Negus and find her living with her aunt and uncle as a servant.  Hmmm, now how are J. Frank and Mary E. Brown related to her.  I search their family trees to find that they lived in the house next door to Fort Pelham Farm and Mary was Daisy’s mother’s sister.  In addition to finding out they were neighbors I read on to find out that J. Frank and Mary were killed in a railroad accident in Zoar on December 21, 1903. Wow.

None of this really had anything to do with my quest to identify people in the photograph but these little searches sometimes do enlighten you about circumstances that you may never have known about.  Daisy was Wright’s neighbor for a number of years as she was listed as a servant for her aunt and uncle who rented out rooms next door in the census.  She was born in Readsboro, VT so I often wondered how they came to know one another.  Mystery solved.  That left a lingering question for me – how did they all feel on that tragic day in December 1903?  It’s something I can only imagine.

The Weaving Adventure Continues

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

IMAG0300

 

Over the holiday break I spent two days warping the loom that sits in the library at the house in Rowe.  I learned a lot.

I first went out to the wood shop and made myself a raddle and a thread cone holder.  It cost about $4 in materials, saved me about $70 more or less.

I wound a warp of various colors for the first time.  Everything went along beautifully until I slayed the reed and realized that the left side of the warp threads were a good 2 inches shorter than the right.  Uh oh.  I figured I would just see what it would do since I hadn’t used this loom before and figured if nothing else I’d find out what kind of issues it has (there are sure to be some right?).  After tying the warp to the front I opened one of the sheds to find that the tension on the left side was too loose and it barely opened.

This was a long warp so I’m thinking it may not have been beamed tight enough or  I wound it unevenly.  Honestly I think the the loom was not square as well as sitting on an extraordinarily crooked floor.  After looking at the problem and stepping back from the loom I could see that the front left corner was lower than the rest so the whole loom was twisted.  Hmmmmm.  I walked away.

I know I have to rewarp the loom.  I also have to replace the harness cables.  The ones on the loom now are leather, dried out and all different lengths, those will be ordered this week.  When they arrive I will replace them and rework the whole loom to make sure it is square.  Then I will move it into another room where the floor is more level and start over again.

I have to say that this is really one of my favorite parts of the whole weaving thing.  So many things can go wrong but it all has to do with the mechanics.  If I can get the machine to do what it’s supposed to do then the only problems I will have will be my own doing – miscount, tension, or a hundred other mistakes that I don’t know about yet.  This is quite the adventure.

My New Year’s Resolution

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

Passionflower

 

I try to keep this blog upbeat  and centered around FPF but last night, being a little bored while waiting for my dinner to cook I was searching the internet.  I google peoples names that I was once close to trying to find out where they are now.  Not necessarily on FB because most of the people I’m looking for wouldn’t be on FB.

I should know better.

Last time I did this I was looking for a dear friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time.  She would always, always call me on my birthday.  Her husband had been a teacher of mine many years ago and we always stayed in touch.  I would always send her a Christmas card with pictures of the kids and she would joke about being the world’s worst correspondent.  I told her I didn’t mind, I knew it and we would always connect along the way.  The last time I talked to her was a painful conversation because she told me that her husband had died.

It was agonizing.

They were such a loving couple, a true team, the kind of yin and yang relationship that is so rare.  I was heartbroken – missing him but more for her pain.  He had died rather suddenly four months earlier and I had never heard her sound so broken.  We talked for a very long time and when I hung up I had to deal with my own grief over the news.

A year goes by, I sent my Christmas card but didn’t hear from her.  I figure she’s too busy to call and don’t think much about it for another year (yes, another year).  This time my Christmas card is returned.

I emailed a mutual friend then Googled her name and her obituary came up.  Sigh . . .

It would have been better to hear it from a friend I think.  I reeled for a few weeks at her loss (and she really had been gone for some time).  I swore I would never do that again.

Fast forward to 1/2/2013.   The above mentioned couple had introduced me to a friend of theirs – a Catholic priest who was maybe a few years older than I am.  (This was a different life mind you, about 30 years ago).  My religious phase – a subject for another time.  This man was truly wonderful.  He was the most gentle soul I have ever met.  He was in a parish in eastern Mass. at the time.  We had many, many conversations about the church, theology, life.  I kept in touch with him for many years through letters mostly and I would see him every once in a while.  He was the only priest I had ever met that was a regular guy.

Last night I Googled his name and the first thing that popped up was an article about him leaving the church due to his scandalous affairs with a couple of women.  Nooooooooo . . .

What this really got me to thinking about was how our whole reality has changed with all of this information.  Ten years ago I may have wondered , “Hmmmm, I wonder where so and so is?”, but the effort to find them would have been pretty intense and I would have just continued to wonder and they would have remained in stasis.  I would have found out about peoples deaths from mutual friends (maybe).  I would never have known about people I care about and respect being involved in and characterized as demons by the press.  I would just be living my life remembering how wonderful all of these relationships were and in my mind remained that way.

My resolution for 2013 and beyond is to never Google another person again because I don’t want to know.  I would rather live my life in ignorant bliss.

Dogs and Snow

/ handmadebyjo / Leave a comment

IMG_0333

 

Sophie loves snow more than anything.  You’d think she’d hate the cold, or the snow balls that stick to her fur, or the fact that the snow is too deep to walk in.  Her favorite game is Bill throwing snow with the shovel into the air and she leaps into it.  In the first photo she knows what’s coming.  She wants to make sure she’s there before Chester (who is clueless about this game).

 

IMG_0337

 

Success!  A few more shovels full and she’d had enough.  Went into the house and stood in front of a fire to melt the snow.