Your own maple sugar shack’s priceless payback calculation by Jeff Tribe

 Your own maple sugar shack’s priceless payback calculation

 https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/accountant-with-benefits?srsltid=AfmBOopSYMwyfZTzTzHuZvMaqAumgLez8Op5uAkx3qg5xT9OBUidKi_i

 I was raised on my father’s tales of maple syrup making, the old-school way.

Gathering tanks mounted on stone boats, pulled by horses who would stop and wait as their humans filled pails from handheld brace-and-bit bored taps, hard-boiling eggs for lunch in the roiling sap, making taffy on the snow with darker, late-season syrup.

I’m not sure what he would have made of today’s vacuum pump systems, plastic lines carrying sap leading through reverse osmosis removing a good percentage of water before heading to boiling. I know at least one traditionalist who figures it alters the flavour, and I can see dad lining up with that train of thought.

He learned the craft as a young man with the Topham family outside of Burgessville, taking pride in what they considered the lightest early syrup from venerable hard maples on a high, sandy knoll.

My earliest memories were of repurposed honey pails hanging on trees at the end of our laneway, boiling on our second electric stove in what we called our utility room. It smelled delicious, but I can only imagine mom’s struggles while cleaning sweet sticky residue off the room’s walls.

Quite probably with her encouragement, we took operations outside, dad knocking together a temporary shelter out of plywood and two-by-fours over our barbecue pit. I seem to recall we did the preliminary boiling in a large steel square pan. Multi-purpose in that it also served, either concurrently or subsequently, as a container for cement when we mixed concrete. Dad would boil the raw sap until it showed ‘colour’, beginning to form in what I think of as ‘the large soap bubble’ stage before coming up in the final magic of tiny, caramel-coloured bubbles indicating syrup is just around the corner.

There are thermometers, the Internet telling me syrup arrives at 219 degrees Fahrenheit, but dad simply waited until it ‘flaked’ off his scoop, droplets coalescing after the final transition from thick sap to the real deal.

Our little operation went the way of the dodo as my uncle began syrup making on a larger scale a mile down the road. I made a comeback years after he had retired, a nostalgic return via propane powered turkey deep fryer. It was a break-even prospect at best, fuel costing as much as going to Jakeman’s, however my parents’ joy in eating the first draw of fresh maple flavour, still warm from the fire - two bites of syrup, one of bread-and-butter in the old farmers’ way - made it worthwhile.

The tradition passed with them, making yet another comeback with the arrival of grandchildren. Reluctant to lose a significant aspect of our cultural heritage, I picked up a barrel stove, stainless steel boiling pan - no cement allowed - and converted some used steel roofing, playground equipment and plywood into my own little sugar shack. The fact I’m tapping maples my dad brought along from saplings with selective forest management doesn’t hurt. I keep costs down, chain-sawing limb wood into stove-friendly lengths and reserving the deep-fryer for the final stage when temperature control is crucial. And did my best to hasten the payback period with a freelance article or two and magazine pictorial.

I have a habit of filling a taste-testing bowl directly beneath the strainer bag. My wife likes it on top of ice cream, a Canadian salty caramel version in particular, but I kick it old school, without the bread.

Definitely at the peak of its flavour potential.

In reality, it’s a loonie, maybe toonie-per-hour payback at the best of times. But of course, that doesn’t take into account the quiet knocks of grandchildren - and their father - happening to stop in for a ‘taste of the last batch.’ Or the ones on a European tour lining up a feed of Grandma Tribe pancakes and gampie syrup on their return.

It may not make full sense to the accountant in the family.

But it’s hard to put a price on that.

Are My Psycho Kitties From Another Planet? by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/the-criminal-streak

https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/betrayed

On the evening of June 24^th, 2025, I arrived home in Edmonton, Alberta, from a dragon boat festival in Vancouver, B.C, just in time to celebrate my husband’s and my anniversary on August 25^th. I found a message from my son about two ten-year-old cats whose owner had died unexpectedly. No one in the family wanted them and they were going to be euthanized if no one else took them. My husband and I had put our eighteen-year-old cat to sleep a month before and had decided we wouldn’t be getting any more pets because it is so hard to say goodbye to them. However, it didn’t seem right that these sisters should die through no fault of their own. So hubby and I decided our anniversary gift would be to adopt them and I called the number. It was arranged that we would pick them up on August 26^th.

For our anniversary we decided to go out for dinner but he had to go help our daughter and didn’t make it back in time so we went to pick up KFC. While we waited for our order I tried to fill up our drinks but the Pepsi syrup ran out and I only got carbonated water. I waited while the tanks were changed. Carbonated water came out for the first bit and I kept dumping it out while waiting for the syrup. Then the power went out. Luckily, we did get our chicken order but our drinks were kind of anaemic.

When we got home, we found our power was out also, so we had a romantic meal by twilight. The power came on about an hour later and we had to reset our clocks. My husband couldn’t get the one on our gas stove to work and somehow he locked the oven door while trying.

We picked up our cats on the 26th. One, renamed Lovey, snooped around and settled in. The other, renamed Trixie, went and hid under the bed. Over the next few weeks, Lovely adopted me and Trixie adopted hubby. After spending their lives in an apartment, it took them a while to venture out into our back yard. But once they were comfortable, they wanted to go out every morning and we had to leave the door open all day so they could come and go as they pleased. They weren't impressed when the cold and snow came.

Lovely likes to sit with me on my chair and she purrs loudly and sleeps soundly. She follows me around the house and waits at the top of the stairs when I go down to the basement. Sometimes she goes down with me. At night she sleeps against my legs or face to face and she licks my arms and purrs. Trixie likes to purr on hubby's lap in the evening and rubs his face with hers. She goes out to the garage with him and sleeps on the chair. At night she sleeps with her head against his.

We naturally thought, that being sisters, they would get along. But no. They growl and hiss at each other when they walk by, they swipe at each other if one gets too close, they tease by blocking the door so the other one can’t leave or come back in the house. They hiss at each other from across the room.

And we are not safe. As I said, Lovely likes to sit on my knee when I am in my chair. However, if I want to move her so I can stand up, she hisses and growls at me then walks across the living room hissing and growling at anything she sees. Trixie will let hubby pet her for a while and then swats his hand or claws him when she has had enough. If we walk too fast past them, they growl, grab at our legs, and even chase us while yowling.

So, the questions are: have they been taken over by aliens from another planet? has some evil entity taken possession of them? or are they just psycho? After all, we only have the word of a person we met for half an hour, while picking them up, that their owner had died, that they were ten-year-old sisters, and that they'd lived in an apartment all their lives. We really know nothing about their previous life. And they aren't telling us anything. Lol 

Why Have Animals As Characters? by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

I love all animals. Even little critters, like frogs. They give me the creeps, but I find them fascinating. By far my favourite animals are horses and dogs, and more recently, cats. Animals have long had their place in literature.

Think Bolingbroke’s horse Barbary from Shakespeare’s King Richard II or grey Capilet in Twelfth Night. There is, of course, the ubiquitous Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, Don Quixote’s Rocinante, and Marguerite Henry’s Sham from her book King of the Wind. Zane Grey named many of the horses in his western novels, as did Louis L’Amour. Smoky, Ginger, Merrylegs, Artax, The Black, Joey are names that I have known and love from the stories in which they appeared.

Who can forget Buck from Call of the Wild, or Bulls Eye, Bill Sikes’ dog from Oliver Twist, and didn’t we all love Perdita and Pongo, the Dalmatians from 101 Dalmatians? Stephen King’s Cujo might have given some of us nightmares, as did The Hound of the Baskervilles, but I don’t mind betting cute little Peg from Lady and the Tramp had you smiling again. Cats, albeit to a lesser degree, also have their place in literature, such as Crookshanks from the Harry Potter tales, Tab from Watership Down and all those marvellous cat characters from T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Old Deuteronomy, Rumpleteazer, Rum Tum Tugger all appeared in the musical Cats.

Lennard

I write historical and contemporary western romance novels, so it's almost impossible for me not to include animal characters. In my cozy mystery series, my amateur sleuth, Winnie Hatherall, has a lovable big mixed-breed dog named Lennard. How did my Regency Lord get from his London residence to his country estate? He either drove his team himself or was driven by his coachman. A team of four horses, plus a couple of park hacks in town and hunters in the country, added up to a minimum of a stable of eight horses. The better those horses were kept, the longer they were of service, so would all have been named and known as individuals.

What I try to bring to my pages when I write horses into my novels is how that particular animal impacts my hero or heroine. They usually have a part to play in showing off my characters’ skills, as they do for Emmaline in His Dark Enchantress. In Shell Shocked, set at the end of World War 1, the dog, Bella, helps her master recuperate from his experiences at the front. In my contemporary western romances, what cowboy does not have a horse, and often a dog, both for work and company?

Animals, real or imagined, help ground us humans with their sense of immediacy, of being in the here and now. Animals add so much to my life, and I want that for my characters, too.

Victoria Chatham

AT BWL PUBLISHING INC

 ON FACEBOOK

 MY WEBSITE

 

Did a cop write this story? by Dean Hovey

By now, I hope everyone knows D.L. Dixen's resumé includes experience in the criminal justice system bringing added depth to my nerdy science background. She suggested the book's title and many of the scenes and characters are seasoned by her life experiences. She shared a recent discussion she'd had with a law enforcement officer who heard the book's title and asked, "Did a cop write this?" The title sounds like something one officer would say to another when discussing a death scene with no obvious cause of death.That's exactly where this book starts. Our Pine County investigators are called to "The Dusty Muskie Bar and Event Center" where one of the previous Night's customers decided he was too intoxicated to drive home so he slept on a cot in the back room. When the owner tried to wake him the next morning, he was unresponsive. When CJ, Pam. and Floyd arrive they determine that "sleeping beauty" woke up dead. The Medical Examiner's initial assessment shows no foul play. As Pam and CJ dig deeper, they become suspicious of that determination.The story twists on from there as we throw in check washing, a bank robbery, a drug deal gone wrong, and a suspicious dysfunctional family with two sons on probation. CJ and Pam's personal lives intrude on the investigation when Pam's husband wins the (equine) grand prize in a 4-H raffle. There are a few laughs, a bit of cursing, a few tears, and a few tense moments as the investigation takes unexpected turns.Check it out on Amazon, of join us for one of our summer book events in Askov, Milaca, Moose Lake, Cambridge, White Bear Lake, Sandstone and more! https://www.amazon.com/dp/0228640520 Print https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dean-L.-Hovey/author/B00J78JMLY

The Mystery of Old Economy Village, by Diane Scott Lewis

 

A young adult haunted house story. Five stars from Long and Short Reviews! They were thrilled by the novella.

To purchase, click HERE

Today's post is about a visit I took with my husband and best friend to Old Economy Village, an historic site near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I hope you find it interesting.

The village was founded by German Lutheran separates in the 19th century. A sect that formed to create a utopian society, waiting for the second coming of the Messiah. 

Visitors can explore several historic buildings, original artifacts, and learn about their culture.

George Rapp led the group. He began preaching in his native Germany. When he split from the Lutheran Church he was banned from preaching. He called himself a prophet and defied the church. His subsequent persecution forced him to flee to the United States with his followers in 1803.

He preached celibacy to keep the group pure as they waited for the Messiah. They didn't believe in procreation, and that was their downfall. Pretty soon they died out.

Rapp died in the village in 1847

Here is my husband talking to our guide

The society was self-sufficient. A sawmill, tannery, distillery. We even took part in rope making. I can't find the picture I took of that.

They nurtured beautiful gardens and grew their own food.

Harmonist church-another society in Harmony, PA, founded by Rapp

They were nonviolent pacifists who refused to serve in the military. Following the literal teachings of the New Testament, as interpreted by Rapp, they believed Jesus would come again and a thousand years of peace would ensue. Their experiment failed.

Rapp was sometimes called a tyrant and was sued by former members for compensation, so not everything was peaceful.

The village is mostly intact and welcomes visitors. A fascinating excursion.

A recent storm sent a tree onto one of the buildings, crushing it. Sorry to hear that.

Find out more about me and my books

                                         

Diane lives in western Pennsylvania with one naughty Dachshund