Kevin walked toward me on the gravel driveway as I stepped out of the workshop. It was a hot August morning. There was still a little dew on the grass. A horse fly quickly found the arial track around my head and started its pestering routine. Grass was poking up through parts of the driveway looking for a way to survive the periodic car and milk truck traveling over their heads. “Good morning, Kevin.” “Good morning, Larry." I responded in a quizzical tone, “What brings you over?” “My father would like to borrow your tap and die set.” “Okay, let me find it." I stepped back into the shop area and looked on the far end of the cluttered oil-stained wooden workbench. The tap and die set wasn’t used that often so its place was out of the way. The space it occupied was mostly empty, but with a couple of small screws. As I stepped back out of the shop area, my father was walking from the barn to the farmhouse. “Dad, any idea where the tap and die set is?”. “I think I had used it this spring in the sugarhouse," my father responded.
I headed to the sugarhouse and Kevin followed. The path to the sugarhouse was flat and made of dirt and small rocks.
We walked over a dry, cracked area where a mud puddle once existed. The sugarhouse was located about 50 yards from the main barn area on a slab of cement that was once the floor to a bunk silo. At one point, in the farm’s history, green chopped grass would be stacked, and packed on this cement slab and covered with plastic and old tires. The plastic created enough of a seal for the chopped green grass to heat and “cure” to then become feed for the cattle over the winter.
This sugarhouse was the third, almost the fourth sugarhouse I had witnessed on this farm so far in my early life. The first was the old sugarhouse in the remote location where Charla and I are going to build the new one. The second sugarhouse was when my father and grandfather took over one of the bays in a three-stall, late-1800s farm equipment storage area.
A third sugarhouse was almost built in a very remote area of the farm about a half mile from the area we stood. I had taken old boards, tin and other used material to the remote located in anticipation of building the remote sugarhouse. In the end, the third sugarhouse was built on this cement slab. The maple trees that fed the annual maple syrup production were about 200 strong behind the barn up on a hill. When the snow melted enough and we could get to them, we used buckets and sap bags to catch the sap until were able to use a sap pail to move it from the bucket or bag on the tree to a special sap gathering tank.
Kevin and I covered the short distance quickly. As we approached the door, I pushed aside some four-foot high thorny thistles with purple flowers that had grown up through the cracks in the cement.
These thistles had grown up on each side of the door to the sugarhouse. My shit-kicker boots were handy to stomp on the thorns to stop the thorns from grabbing at my pants as I tried to open the door. The door normally opened inward to the sugarhouse but objected this time at my request to gain access. I tried a shoulder shove up high, then a toe kick low. It appeared that whatever was putting up the resistance was at the bottom of the door. I found a small piece of wood with a tapered end that was sitting on top of a 55-gallon steel barrel pushed up against one of the walls of the sugarhouse near the door. The piece of wood resembled a small crowbar. I wedged the wood between the bottom of the door and the door jam. Whatever was causing the door to stay closed was stronger than the piece of wood as it broke. The remnants of the wood flew aggressively up the hill, behind the sugarhouse, as I expressed my frustration. "I think we need a crowbar, Kevin." “Okay," and Kevin headed to the shop.
While Kevin was fetching our more modern tool, I continued the shoulder shove and toe kick. I had my hand on the doorknob ready to push again when a hornet landed on the back of my hand. Since my mother reads these posts, I won’t repeat what I said. I will let the reader fill in the blanks. Kevin approached with the crowbar and heard my swearing and asked what had gotten me in a bad mood so quickly. I explained the hornet encounter. Kevin laughed, but started flapping at something buzzing around his head at the same time as the crowbar and I had broken the door’s will to stay closed. I opened the door at the same time as Kevin pushed past me into the sugarhouse.
I noticed a couple hornets crawling on the back of his neck and ear. I reached to brush the hornets off the back of his neck when I tripped and fell as Kevin slammed the door behind us. “Where the heck did those things come from?” as he continued slapping at the back of his head and shirt. As I got up and tried adjusting to the dim light inside the sugarhouse. I felt a pinch on the back of my neck and then one on my other hand. There was a window about four feet way from us and as I looked, my first thought was the window was very dirty. As I took a step closer I realized the window was covered with hornets. Evidently my shoulder shoves, toe kicks and door slams had agitated this group to a hostel pitch. I followed the trail of hornets to the wood above the window and then to a large nest sitting on the roof support beam above the window. “$%^&, THE HORNETS ARE IN HERE!” Kevin grabbed for the door with my hand pushing him. The door had its strength back and mustered its counter-attack as it held firm. Kevin yelled, “WHERE IS THE CROWBAR?” “IT IS OUTSIDE THE DOOR ON THE BARREL," I screamed back as I looked for an escape route.
I heard a buzz at the same time as it felt like a whip found its mark on the back of my arm. The hornets stung like bullets and hot embers. I pushed Kevin behind the back of the evaporator to the other side as we found our way around syrup barrels and stacks of sap buckets. A hornet’s disdain found my left ear.
I heard Kevin’s response to a couple of hot hits as my pants caught on corner of the arch and produced a large rip. Apparently, there were a couple of hornets waiting for this opportunity. I grabbed my leg as we reached the far corner of the sugarhouse. There used to be a door at this location. I made the decision that we needed this door once again. We couldn’t go back to the main door, and the hornets that had found their mark had seemingly communicated back to the swarm that they had found the intruders. In a state of panic, I put my shoulder down, held my breath and broke through the plywood. Kevin quickly followed, with nasty biters on the back of his shirt. Apparently we had made enough noise that my father was on his way to see
what the “screaming” was about. I had my shirt off, and one leg of my pants off and was spitting on a hand full of dried dirt and rubbing it on my leg, my arms, my neck and ears. Kevin followed suit. There hadn’t been a lot I had learned in my short life, but how to treat a bee sting was one. It took a while for the cortisol to run its course and I was able to speak in full sentences. My dad looked at the hole in the sugarhouse wall and said, “You will need to fix that when you get a chance.” I looked at Kevin and said, “We didn’t get the tap and die set." He said, “I don’t think I need it today."
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