To Start a Fire

We are in the early stages of my 75^th year of making maple syrup on the Hanson Farm, here in NW Wisconsin.  We still do it the old fashioned way, a flat pan over a wood fire with sap directly from buckets hung from spiles on 100 + year old sugar maples.

When the sap runs, we often boil day and night, adding sap and finishing batches in about 5-10 gallons each.  Our trees test about 2. 5% sugar meaning that we need 35 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, requiring a great deal of boiling.  We start the fire when we have at least 150 gallons and then keep it going, stopping when we have a lull in the sap run.

During the 6-week season, sap runs maybe a gallon per tap or less most of the days, some days 2 gallons, with each tree giving different amounts based on location – northern hillsides running later in the season then southern exposed trees. 

Most seasons we have at least one what we call a sap run.  That can mean in 24 hours we get 5 gallons of sap per tap – on at least some of the trees.  Most years we have one or two of those, some years none, just a consistent gallon or two per day. 

This spring we tapped 2 weeks ahead of our normal mid-March time.  We had days in the 50s early, and so worried it might be like 2024 when February was the sap season and last year when it began with the start of March.

However, in the first two weeks we got very little sap, and so have been adding what we get to the 50 gallon sap cooking pan, and boiling it occasionally to make sure it doesn’t spoil as we add more sap.

That means many times we have started the fire from cold ashes.  Each time I do that it is a reminder of my own life starting wood fires, from childhood until now my 79^th year where I have already started 6 so far, including the first one in our sugarbush cabin in many years.

My first experience with fires comes from visiting Grandpa and Grandma who lived on the River Road south of Wolf Creek.  They had a wood stove for heating, a wood stove for cooking and kerosene lamps and lanterns, not having electricity.  They moved in 1951 to a new home where they still had a wood heat and cooking, but electric lights

In our own home, electricity came in March of 1948, while Mom was away having my younger brother Everett.  I don’t really remember the wood stove in the kitchen that was replaced with an electric range that same month the electricity came. 

I do remember our basement wood furnace that both heated the house in the winter and heated the water, the furnace having a water jacket connected to a water tank to keep it hot.  When summer came, each time Mom wanted to have a lot of hot water, for example washing clothes, a special wood water heater hooked to the same tank was used.  Early in the morning, Dad started the fire in the small unit and in a few hours the water was hot.  We used that until I was in 8^th grade, 1959. 

The basement wood furnace was replaced with a more modern wood furnace, but until the 1990s, the main source of winter heat was with wood.  Each fall, the basement would be filled with split dry firewood and every few hours more wood went into the furnace.

By the time I was 6 years old, Mom would ask me or my older brother, Marvin, to “throw a few chunks of wood in the furnace.”  That meant opening the stove damper with the knob in the kitchen connected to the furnace in the basement so air would draw through the stove rather than smoke come out when we opened the furnace door. 

We might bring 4 or 5 big split chunks of oak from the ranks behind the furnace and put each in the firebox, ranking them inside and then close the door. If the furnace  was down to coals, we put in smaller split kindling to get it started before adding the large chunks. 

In the worst case, if it was mild weather during the day, the furnace would be allowed to go out, and restarted in the evening.  We weren’t allowed to start the furnace until we were older, maybe about 8 years old. 

It was relatively easy as we put in some of the kindling, and a few smaller chunks, then drenched it all in kerosene and lit it and it roared to life. My experiences while at home, including starting the fires for the maple syrup boiler back in the 1950s and on were the same – kerosene soaked woods.

In 1972, I married Margo.  Margo’s father was big into charcoal grilling and had a unit at both their home near West Bend, WI and at their lake cottage near Weyerhauser, WI (up north).  Merlin not only was big into grilling but pooh poohed the idea of buying special charcoal starting fluid.  I was shocked the first time I watched him light the grill.   He dumped about two cups of gasoline on the coals, sprinkling it liberally and then told me to stand back.  From about 5 feet away, he light a wooden match, got it going well, then tossed it into the grill.  “Whoomph” and a huge flash of flames shot up from the grill before it calmed down and started burning the rest of the gas.  It was dangerous and a real spectacle, but I suppose WWII veterans had seen worse.  I think Margo and I got a charcoal grill too, but used the charcoal lighter fluid that is not at all explosive.

In 1986, Scott joined Boy Scouts.  The scout organization required parent participation and so I volunteered to go along camping.  My camping experiences were few, but included some tenting and Coleman fuel stoves.  We bought a small charcoal grill and the lighter fluid and sometimes used that, and occasionally started a campfire, liberally using the lighter fluid.

To become a full fledged Scout, one of the steps along the way is to start a camp fire using no more than 2 matches that will burn unattended for 5 minutes.  The experienced adult leaders showed the steps from gathering tinder, kindling and fuel (each being a little larger than the preceding).  The boys often had never struck a match, so even that required practice along with the stern warning you don’t play with matches at  home. 

That is where I learned to build a fire without the liquid fuels.  And so when I built the fires the past couple of weeks, I re-practiced the 2 match no artificial ingredient fires.  There are many down old birch trees where the wood has rotted leaving the bark curls that make excellent tinder.  Each wind brings down dead twigs that come next and often large branches that can be easily broken in to short pieces.  We were taught to prop the branch against something to raise one end from the ground and then stomp it to break rather than across one’s leg or knee where we were told we might break  the bone.

We learned to use a hatchet by propping up the stick of wood to be split, then resting the hatched on top of the chunk, then pounding it through with another piece of wood, far more likely to split it than whaling away with the likely hood of losing some toes.

As I relive my past lighting fires, I find that most times I can do a one match fire that would meet Boy Scout tests.  However, this morning, my fingers freezing, the twigs frozen into the ground, using cardboard and newspaper my fire still went out.  I opened up the cabin, found the charcoal lighter and soaked down the wood and lit it.  It roared to life wonderfully.   I wonder if I poured in a few cups of gasoline if I might raise the pan right off of the firebox?

Never Make Maple Syrup in a Pig Kettle

 

When I was five years old, Dad and Mom decided to make maple syrup on our farm. Both had grown up in families from Maple Grove Township in Barron County, Wisconsin, where making maple syrup had been a tradition for several generations.

In 1951 Dad bought a new tractor with big back wheels that could pull a trailer loaded with milk cans full of sap through the rugged hills of the forty-acre cow pasture where scattered maple trees grew. After reminiscing about syruping when they were young, they decided that in the spring of 1952 they too would make syrup—partly to save money and partly to relive those earlier springs when whole families worked together in the sugarbush, and to give their 4 boys an experience they had enjoyed long ago.

It started with Dad cutting sumac stems into three-inch pieces and poking a red-hot wire through the pithy center to make a hole. Then, with his always sharp jackknife, he whittled each piece into what he called a sap spile.

For a week the kitchen was pungent with the smell of burned sumac pith.

He visited his brother Maurice in February.  “Can I borrow Dad’s old cast iron kettle,’ he asked, knowng that the previous year hr had borrowed it to scald a pig.    “Sure,” said Uncle Maurice, “it is in the pig pen, I put it in there for feeding the hogs.”  We went to the pig pen where in the corner was the huge old black kettle settled into the churned up frozen mud filled with corn, food scraps and what was called “pig slop.” You could see that pigs had climbed in and out and had left it filthy. 

Dad brought it home, set up three poles as a tripod and hung a chain from the apex, the kettle about 18 inches off the ground.  Mom had thoroughly scrubbed it out, inside and out, and it looked clean although blackened and pitted from rust.  Dad carried several milk cans of water from the pump house and filled it half full then started a fire under it and let the water boil for a day before dumping that and doing a second cleaning boil.  “I sure hope I got the pig taste and smell out of it,” he commented remembering it filled with pig slop and pig manure.

We scrounged up all of the pails we could find, metal ones in the days before plastic, borrowed more from the neighbors and grandpa promising them a jar of syrup if we were successful. 

That year the snow was quite deep, so we had to wait until April to get into the woods.  Dad hooked on the trailer to the tractor and we drove the ½ mile up the road to the cow pasture.  With a bit brace Marvin and I took turns trying to drill 1 inch holes into the maple trees, tiring very quickly and letting Dad do most of them.  With a hammer, we tapped in the wooden spiles firmly and then a nail below to hang the bucket. 

It was exciting as sap started to drip as soon as the drill was removed from the hole, at about a drip each second.  “At that rate, I will be as old as Grandpa before it fills,” moaned Marvin who expected it to gush like the kitchen faucet. 

“A drip a minute for 8 hours will give a couple of gallons,” replied Dad who said that his older brothers and father had been making syrup before he was born in 1915 and he had helped them when he was our age.

The next day Dad hooked up the trailer filled with 10 empty milk cans, while Marvin and I hooked our sleds behind it and off we went up the ½ mile road and into the woods to collect sap.  I remember the behind-the-trailer sled ride that was easy and fast on the road but treacherous in the woods.  Marvin and I hit a hidden root and the sleds pitched sideways, sending us rolling into the slush while the tractor hummed along, oblivious.

 It was a good day as the 50 buckets each had 2 gallons as Dad has predicted.  We had the milk strainer with a cotton pad to filter the sap as we dumped it into the cans, filling all 10 of them.

Dad had put in a new steel post fence south of the barn, and so had the old wood posts piled in the farm yard near where we hung the kettle as he had planned them for cooking syrup.  He asked us to gather kindling and get last week’s newspaper to start the first fire. 

“Lemmee, Lemmee,” both Marvin and I begged. We weren’t allowed to use matches except if Mom or Dad watched us, but had learned how to strike a match and light the kerosene lamp when the electricity went out, had watched the big boys start the regular Friday garbage burning at the Wolf Creek school and the school furnace, and knew that lighting fires was not only exciting but a sign of being a big boy. We already had the chore of adding chunks of wood to the basement furnace but weren’t allowed to start the fire.

Marvin got to light the match after a liberal dose of kerosene went on the paper, kindling and fence posts.  It roared up quickly and after 4 hours the kettle began to boil and then for the whole week it was kept boiling as the day’s sap collection was added. 

Dad let the fire go out on Saturday when we boys were home from school so we could help.  There were about 10 gallons of dark syrup in the kettle that we tasted and thought very good.  Dad dipped it out into a milk can, filtering it through the strainer with some cheesecloth and brought the can into the house for Mom to take over.

Mom boiled the syrup in the big canner, then canned it in quart jars after it until it “sheeted” off of a cold spoon, the test that it was ready.   Then she poured it through a felt filter into 40 quart jars. Our neighbors each got a jar as did our relatives.   We had started with 400 gallons of sap, which made 10 gallons of syrup, a  40-1 ratio. 

Mom made pancakes for breakfast the next day and we poured on the syrup.  We had tasted it before from some made by relatives or neighbors but never had as much as we wanted.  It was really sweet, maple flavored and very good, we all thought, as did our neighbors, all except Dad.

“It might be just in my head, but I get a taste of pigs with the syrup.  I don’t think I got the kettle clean enough.”   We have continued to make maple syrup since then, doing it now for my 75^th year, but never again in a kettle that came from a pigpen.  

Photo about 1900 Hansons making maple syrup in Maple Grove Township Barron WI.  Dad’s Uncles. 

Russ’ book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Making-Maple-Syrup-since-1650/dp/146819089X

 

75th Year of Making Maple Syrup

 We tapped the maples last week, a little earlier than the normal mid-March time.  We have owned the woods on the east side of Orr Lake since 1963 when Dad and Mom bought it as a second farm.  The woods were cow pasture with huge old maples and mostly open under them with large areas of open pastureland. 

The woods were about 55 acres of 100 acres of the farm.  We had been tapping maples at what we called the North 60, a half mile from the home farm on Evergreen Avenue.  The 50 acres of woods there were also cow pasture with a scattering of large maples, on very rolling hilly lands bordering the east side of Wolf Creek.  

With the new farm, with many large maples, easier to tap and collect sap, we made the switch and eventually even built a sap cooking shed there rather than haul it the 3 miles to the home farm.  

In 1975, Margo and I built a lake cottage - we call The Cabin - on the hillside overlooking Orr Lake.  We used it for our summer home when I was then a teacher, and a weekend escape in later years and as a second home from 2005 on after we retired, ending our stay there in 2013 when we bought the home farm after Mom died. 

I claim to have started to help make maple syrup when I was 4 years old, 75 years ago, although I may have been 5 or 6 - it was in the early 1950s when Dad got the urge to try it like he and his brothers had done growing up.  

This year, so far, we have 80 taps out, probably headed to 100, down from many years when we tapped twice that or more. Our goal is 25 gallons of maple syrup this year, what we can sell, give as gifts and use.  

Dad got Parkinson's disease in this early 70s, gave up his cows and gradually most of his farming, putting his fields into CRP.  By the time he was 85, his balance made it so he mostly watched us make syrup, participating by watching the cooker and enjoying it from in our newly made sap cooking shed.  He died at age 89.  That year he was only able to be at the sap cooker a few times, being unable to walk on uneven ground even with a walker. 

I am 79, and other than a rackety heart, am physically sound and able to still carry pails and walk through the woods OK, although slower than I used to and a little more careful on the slippery hillsides.  

Southern Escape - 2026

 The last time the Hanson's headed south for some of the winter was 2020, the year covid struck.  The next two years were in dealing with covid and so we stayed home and sufffered through a WI winter.  Then Margo's health took a turn for the worse and so 2023,2024 we stayed home.  Margo died February 6, 2025 and so that year was also at home. 

However, Scott and I decided to get the camper out this summer, clean it out after 5 years parked in the garage and found mouse messes and mouse eaten spots in the screens and canvas, so tossed the curtains, cleaned it and decided to try it this year with the idea of patching the holes and seeing if it was reasonable to use again (1990 Jayco popup) 

Last week we loaded up our camping gear, planned to stay in state parks and decided to head out today, Jan 16th for 2-4 weeks somewhere warm,. uncertain if to go to TX or maybe Alabama, but at least 1000 miles south to where it was warm enough for a popup camper 

We took off from the WI farm today about 9:30 and reached our MN house at about noon, did some more packing and evaluated the camper after 120 miles of hauling it behind the 2011 Impala.  It towed well, the car purred along fine and so we will take off tomorrow from MN heading to Witchita KS for the first of three days driving south.  That is about 8 hours and maybe 500 miles. 

We checked the coming week's temps and found that Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama were going to be very cold, below freezing whereas SW Texas was to be much nicer -- Laredo TX in the 60s and 70s.  Margo and I stayed there in 2020, a nice state park and an interesting city to be a tourist.  

In Cushing, WI, the snow is pretty deep, where as in Pine Island MN, more of the land is bare than snow covered, so we already feel like we are going the right direction.  However, the wind is strong, cold weather coming in and so tomorrow morning at dawn we will be on our way.  

The gas price in Cushing, WI was $2.49. Along the way in MN it has been $2.69 or so. We expect it to be lower as we head south.  

      Cushing, Wisconsin - lots of snow and ice 

Pine Island, MN - much less snow and no ice.  120 miles south of Cushing 

 Home Sweet Home February 2011

We were RVing in Northern Louisiana the third week in February, having headed north to get out of the warmer weather and mosquitoes in the south  Some folks were working in the state park cleaning up after an ice storm and swept through the previous week.  They were picking up downed limbs, and cutting brush.   I visited with them and found one to be a park employee, Jim and one the host RV’er, Stan, who got paid for helping out.  

“I came up from Grand Isle.  We plan to stay here until early March and then head back to Wisconsin,” I said to start a conversation while they took a break, “I was looking for oil spill signs, but didn’t see much other than some tar blobs on the beach.”

“I worked down there for a few years, about 15 years ago,” said Jim.  “You know they have had that tar on the beach for a long time.  The big oil tankers come in and unloaded from across the ocean and then went out to international waters 15 miles out or so, and pumped in sea water to flush their cargo holds so they could come back and load coal, wheat or corn to take back.  Had the problem when I was there, so it ain’t any thing new.”  

Stan was from far SW Minnesota, staying at the park for the winter as the campsite host.  “I get paid for 20 hours per week, so when there isn’t much going on, I help out with whatever needs being done.  My wife and I get a free site for keeping the garbage dumped, the bathrooms clean, and helping out.  Makes our winter self supporting without much work.  We will head back in April to the farm.”

I picked up some of the brush around our campsite and burned it in the fire ring at our campsite.  It was nice to have a fire to sit around even if the wind wafted the smoke my way at times.  Margo was cold so didn’t stay out.  

A few days later, I awoke with my face very sore, red and swollen.   My ear lobes, my cheeks and around the eyes and a little on my neck were itchy and quite blistered.  I looked at myself in the mirror; the weeping itching reddened skin looked like poison ivy! I didn’t have any on my hands or elsewhere except just where my cap and beard didn’t cover.  

I had seen signs throughout the park warning of poison ivy with pictures of the leaves.  In the warm south, poison ivy grows much taller and bigger stems than in WI or MN.  This time of year it didn’t have leaves.   

I talked to the park ranger.  “Oh, you must have stood in the smoke of a brush fire.  The ivy gets bigger here and you probably burned some.  We don’t burn our brush piles because of that.  You better see the doctor.”

Having gotten into poison ivy over on the River Road often, I knew what to do.  I bought some antihistamine pills and cream and cortisone cream and started using them.  However, my eyes were almost swelled shut; my face badly reddened and sort of raw looking and even my ear lobes were red, itchy and swollen.  It usually takes about 2 weeks to get over this.  About 4 days into it, I convinced Margo we should head back home in case I needed to go to the doctor (my insurance is good at home; not so good on the road).  I was feeling itchy, scratchy, ugly, looking out through eyes swollen to slits.    We left on Monday a week before the end of February.  

When you drive with older cars, like our 95 Buick, driving on weekdays is best so the towing and repair shops are open.   We left early and drove until 10 am, about half way through Arkansas when we stopped at McDonalds for breakfast and coffee.  

We were pulling the camper trailer, so have to park in the back areas where there is room for a double vehicle.  We came back and the car wouldn’t start—just sort of blubbered at low idle and killed.  I looked under the hood, and everything was there, so didn’t know what to do except call for help.  

Margo took our new GPS and searched for car repair nearby.  Having good luck we found  a place only  blocks away.   We called with our emergency Tracfone and in 15 minutes a roving repair man showed up with his pickup and tools.  He tried starting it.  “Fuel pump probably quit.”  He popped the hood, crawled up on the engine (huge V-8) and turned a little knob behind the fuel injector.  “Turn it over” he told me. “No gas getting up here.”

  

He took a jack, and raised the back wheel off the ground and crawled under the back of the car with a pipe wrench and proceeded to beat on the plastic gas tank.  “Try it again,” he said.  I let it turn over and then he beat on it a little more.  “OK,” he hollered and crawled back out.  

“I can’t hear the gas pump turn on when you turn on the switch.  Sometimes you can bang it and shake the electric pump motor into running again long enough to get you to a garage or even home.  Doesn’t do anything at all.  We’ll need to take it to the shop.  ”

He took out a chain, hooked it under the front of the Buick and towed us to his shop.  Steering and brakes were stiff without power, but worked.  We unhooked the camper and then he towed it through a bay in his drive through repair garage. “I don’t have a tow truck, so I just saved you $75 by dragging it with my chain,” he said with a kind smile. 

He had a Mobil Gas Station and 4 bays of service lifts and three young fellows working on cars.  Brakes, tires and a muffler were being repaired nearby.  Our trunk was full of all our camping gear.   “I’ll call the GM dealer and find out if your car has a trunk opening that lets you get to the fuel pump.  Some cars make it easy to get there with a port hole in the bottom of the trunk.”   “No, it doesn’t,” he said a few minutes later as he raised the car a foot or so on the lift.   

He removed the gas filler tube and stuck the end of a short garden hose into the tank, gave a suck and stuck the other end into a 5 gallon plastic bucket and began siphoning the gas out.  Fifteen gallons later it stopped.  

He removed two metal tank shields, then the tank straps and he and another fellow carefully lowered the tank from over their heads.  I helped hold it as he unconnected two gas lines and an electrical connection letting us drop the tank to the floor.   The younger fellow took over and unbolted the circular port in the top of the tank removing a float connected to a pump mechanism and took the unit over to the table.  

The shop owner’s wife had already ordered and picked up the replacement pump motor.  The plastic complicated looking pump mechanism unsnapped and let the old pump out.  It looked the size of about two C batteries and slipped in a plastic pump housing.  He slipped in the new one, snapped it all together including a new in the tank filter and reassembled the tank.  Then he put a new fuel filter in the fuel line. 

We lifted the tank (still heavy with some gas), and he got the straps in place and secured and everything reconnected; shields on, filler tube reconnected and tested it.  Started and ran great.   He poured the gas back in and we hooked up and were ready to go with a total elapsed time of 3 hours and $305.  

  I had watched very carefully as I haven’t changed one myself before (I used to change them when they were $7 and bolted on the front of the engine with two studs and took 15 minutes).   I decided that if I have to change this one again or in one of my other cars, I will take my Milwaukee reciprocating metal saw and  cut my own porthole in the bottom of the trunk to get at the gas tank.  I suppose the trick will be to saw deep enough to go through the trunk, but not deep enough to saw into the tank and blow it up. 

We made it home fine after that, seeing snow only north of Des Moines Iowa.  Pine Island still had two feet of snow, and more was coming as we got there.  Obviously, we should have stayed about 2 weeks longer. By the time I got home, the poison ivy was in retreat and my face was back to its normal beauty.  However, I still have an annoying poison ivy cough, shallow breath, and itchy lungs—I read that the smoke can irritate and even damage the lungs.  If I climb the stairs to the cabin loft slowly (two steps and rest a minute) I can get along OK—I expect they will either get better or I will get used to breathing a cupful of air each breath. 

Margo is headed for a week with her parents in West Bend.  I opened the cabin March 1st to get ready for tapping maples – probably mid March.  It was nice to see the cabin mouse-free and just as I left it.  I fired up the stove and let it thaw out and moved right in.  The Super C cranked up right away letting me plow the driveway.  Now it is just wait for maple syrup season.  

We plan to put out every tap we have this year.  My leg is tolerable for walking.  I’m not back to pre-break condition, but I find it adequate for most things. (Margo rates me adequate for most things too.).   Margo’s back is adequate to carry a 5 gallon pail of sap and there is a chance that son Scott will finish working at the ski resort in time to help out.  We didn’t get a lot last year and sold it all at the Eureka Farmer’s market.