Flaming Chickens, Hayseeds, Smart Collies and Rising Sap

Busy weekend; cranked out another half-gallon or so of maple syrup. Hauled trash to the dump, mailed syrup to family, cleaned house, bought bulk at the co-op. Took John to school Sunday morning at 6a to catch a van for a field trip to New York.

Headed out aroudn 8p Monday to pick John up from school and smelled something ... strange. Strange and gross. Wandered around the basement door, trying to figure out what the hell. It most likely wasn't the car (at least, shouldn't have been, since (a) the car hadn't been used all day, and (b) I put an un-Godly amount of money into fixing it). It wasn't anything inside the house, since the smell didn't get really bad until I stepped outside.

And I could see a little bit of smoke, even though it was dark.

I called Lisa, and she sniffed around before pointing at the small coop, where smoke was clearly coming out. I ran to get a big bucket of water. Very bad images of burnt chicken, etc. Got lucky, though -- a red heat lamp had fallen directly into the feeder, and the nasty smell was burning poultry feed.

Kicked snow all over the feeder and hauled it out of the coop. Ran to pick up John from the school, apologized for being late. I'm guessing a lot of my urban acquaintances wouldn't have teachers who understood perfectly that a chicken coop fire could be an issue.

I spoke with John:

"How was New York?"
"It was a good opportunity to get the hay out of my hair."
"With your hair, who could tell?"
"I'm speaking metaphorically."

Ran three miles this morning, and it's getting hot. Supposed to get up to 61 today. So after my run, I put on mud boots and sloshed down to the maples. Had 17 gallons of sap, which means we'll easily make another gallon. Yikes.

The collies will miss the snow. Their favorite game (besides the ever-popular "Chase the Duck") is to leap into the air and snap at kicked snow. We played it for a bit yesterday while I was walking to the faucet to get water for the chickens. I stopped to fill up the water bucket. Stink and Pepper just stood there, quivering. After a minute, Stink got impatient. He put his nose into the snow, flicked it into the air, and jumped up. He looked at me for a minute, then did it again, a couple more times.

I kicked snow up, and they jumped. You could see the thought bubble in Stink's head:

"What a clever human!"

Lots and lots to do with the day job.