Where there's smoke, there's fire

This will put a skip into your heart -- the day that you have a new gas stove installed in your kitchen: You find the fire department at your house when you come home from work.
That's exactly what happened last week. We had just finished installation of our new commercial stove -- a beauty (or monstrosity depending on how you look at it) with 12 burners and two ovens. (More about the commercial kitchen coming later ... that's great news!) It required six men to move it inside and a special gas line just to operate it. 350,000 BTUs -- that's a lot of fire!
After the installation, Chris went to work and Sherry started to acclimate herself to the gas fumes from 14 pilot lights (it has two ovens!). It had been about 25 years since Sherry had cooked on gas and she has a slight fear of it, imagining explosions and fires. Of course that's also because Chris bought the cheapest gas stove possible when we were first married, which hardly compares to the industrial strength restaurant model we have now.
Sherry was trying out the oven for the first time making a pizza. One of the recruits that we persuaded to help move the stove was coming over for some wine tasting. She happened to glance out the kitchen window to see Chris's 72-year-old parents dashing across the lawn trying to drag garden hoses. Upon looking again Sherry saw the large wood pile beside our outdoor wood-burning furnace was an inferno. Flames were lapping at the nearby chicken coop. She dropped everything to run out and help. (The oven had not been turned on yet.)
Sherry turned on our garden hose from the house and the folks ran a hose from the barn. Dad sprayed the fire with one hose while Sherry and Mom formed an emergency bucket brigade, as the other hose was a little short. After 10 minutes of battling the fire, which was fanned by gusty winds, Dad finally came to the conclusion that professional help was required.
"Will someone please call the fire department!"
Sherry ran into the house to dial 9-1-1. She got a three-toned beep and the message. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please try again." A second try to 9-1-1 went through. The Melrose Fire Department arrived within 15 minutes and other trucks followed.
The firefighters knocked the fire down with water and chemicals while Dad continued the trickle operation from the garden hose. The winds and the fire had devoured the stack of wood but fortunately roast chicken was not on the menu. The difficulty in fighting the fire was getting to the coals underneath the pile. Dad got a tractor with a loader and leveled the pile, spreading it out so the coals could be doused.
About the time things starting winding down, Chris came around the corner at the beginning of our road about one mile from home and saw a sign "Emergency vehicles ahead."
"Don't tell me it's the stove," Chris thought, immediately putting his foot into the accelerator. "Is our house gone?"
Chris came around the final corner to see four fire trucks and a bunch of smoke -- but our house was still standing. Our neighbor arrived soon after for our appointed wine tasting.
Apparently a spark from the firebox of the furnace had blown into the wood pile. The gusty winds fanned the spark and created a vortex of flames as the pile was stacked in a pyramid fashion.
Other than causing severe damage to next winter's wood supply, no harm was done. We were lucky the fire didn't spread to the chicken house or the barn.
By the way, the new stove works fine!

Maple syrup season a sour one

The maple syrup season has ended and will go down as one of the worst in recent memory.
That's the word I'm receiving from maple syrup producers around the state who know a lot more about the seasonal crop than I do.
This was the first year that my wife Sherry and I collected sap and made syrup. Our total for the year was about a dozen or so pints, so we've got enough for our own use and to serve to our bed and breakfast guests, but the sap collection was very slow.
Blame that on the weather. The unusually warm March was wonderful to put winter behind us, but the warm nights was not conducive to sap flow.
That's just the opposite of last year, which was one of the best seasons ever for Wisconsin syrup.
Gretchen Grape, the executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association, told me the people who used tubing did better as they suck the sap out of the trees. Those who use collection containers -- like us -- didn't do as well.
However the syrup we did get -- the result of hours of cooking on an old wood-burning stove in a temporary sugar shack that I set up outside -- tasted wonderful. Sherry finished the sap off on the kitchen stove and it had a rich, butterscotch taste.
I can hardly wait to sit down to a plate of sourdough pancakes and enjoy the fruits of our labor.