LIVING OFF GRID

This blog is about our travels in our solar powered "Airstream" and living off grid, in our passive solar home, near Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

If you have any questions send us a comment; we love to hear from our readers.
Click on pictures for larger view

Thursday 27 March 2014

MAPLE SYRUP FIREPIT

Yesterday we built the fire-pit for our maple syrup production. As this is our first year at this I'm sure we will make changes for next year as we discover better and easier ways to set up the operation.



After looking at many possible locations we selected the spot where the bobcat is sitting in the pictures above. It is close to the trees we are tapping, close to the house where we will do the final boil off and next to the shed where the equipment is stored.



We used left over building blocks and bought re-bar from Timber Mart to support the pots. You can also see one of our cribs of firewood we are glad to have close to the fire.




Leanne, Sherri and Owen are coming up next week to help Mary with the whole process. It will be fun to have a few extra hands especially since this is our first attempt.




I was glad to have the bobcat back working as we used it to clear snow and move the blocks for the fire-pit.


Gerry and Jackie came over after lunch and had several good suggestions for improving our fire-pit. We will use some old steel siding to control the heat and add a chimney to direct the smoke away from the area. 

Tomorrow we will have pictures of the taps and our buckets ready for the first major sap flow.

Hopefully by Saturday we are boiling sap.

Thanks for stopping by.


No comments:

Post a Comment