Adirondack Maple Sugaring...a slippery slope

“In contemplating the present opening prospects in human affairs, I am led to expect that a material part of the general happiness which heaven seems to have prepared for mankind, will be derived from the manufacture and general use of Maple Sugar.”

Letter to Thomas Jefferson by Benjamin Rush, August 19, 1791

The temperature outside today is 33’ with winds gusting up to 27mph. Snow is coming down at times in light, swirly dances and then other times I cannot see the house from my “over the shop” studio window, as snow falls in a thick, blizzard-like storm. It’s April 5, 2014, in the Adirondacks. A hot cup of tea is nice to warm the hands, but on a day like today nothing warms me more than a big mug of hot chocolate. I am not talking about a packet of cocoa mix stirred into piping hot water. Mine is from scratch. I take a small sauce pan and set it on top of our well-stoked Glenwood C wood cookstove, which we cook on from September until May. Into the pan I add a quarter cup of 60-100% dark chocolate pieces, an eighth of a cup organic milk, sprinkle 1tsp of Vietnamese cinnamon, a whisper-tiny pinch of cayenne pepper and an eighth of a cup of dark maple syrup. Stir with a whisk until the maple-milk-chocolate mix is melted into a creamy sauce and then add another 2 cups of milk, whisking as you add to get a perfect foam. Keep an eye on the pot, whisking each time to keep that foam, until you see the cocoa begin to boil. Quickly remove from the heat and pour into a large mug, which has been warming on the edge of the cookstove while you cook…or you can share it with a good friend in two smaller mugs. Either way will warm you the same amount. The key to this cocoa, besides really good dark chocolate is the robust flavor of pure maple syrup.

Our Masonry Heater Oven, winter Glenwood C wood cookstove and our smaller summer propane Glenwood

Until recently, we bought or were given our annual supply of maple syrup. So in 2013, we discussed producing our own. My husband Nik and I didn’t enter into this venture lightly. We first travelled in March of the same year, over to Vermont to visit all of our “kids”. Our Son Cori and his fiancé’ Emily, live in a beautiful valley in an old Vermont farmhouse. All around the farmhouse were Sugar Maple trees. Each tappable maple had either a bucket or tubing connected to it. When we walked the back roads, you could hear the “ping, ping” of sap dripping into the buckets hanging on the trees, and the whooshing sound as sap flowed through the vacuum tubes on its way to the large collection tanks. Everywhere you looked was a small sugarhouse with smoke rising from the chimney and steam rising out of the cupola windows and vents. All of this was inspiring but we didn’t like the unnatural look of the tubing lines running through the woods and the large scale production seemed daunting. 

Next we moved on to visit two more of our Vt. “sons”.  Arborist/logger, Ben Rubinfeld and nearby Forester/Logger Dylan Kidder were two of our former mentored PSC students. After a hearty lunch we headed off to unload Ben’s 175 sap buckets on his and neighboring properties. Ben had constructed a trailer that with a large 250 gallon collection tank and front seat resembled a small covered buckboard wagon. Our group, along with Dylan’s young son Cyrus, spent about 1- 1/2 hours emptying each of the sap buckets into 5 gallon pails and then pouring the sap from the pails into the larger trailer tank Ben would later truck over to a friends sugarhouse to collectively boil. It was great fun to get actively involved in the process. 

Ben, Dylan and Cyrus returning from collecting sap

We left Ben’s feeling inspired, yet I must admit that I was hesitant about Maple sugaring season.  It wasn’t the work I dreaded but rather the fact that Sugaring season is the best time to travel away from home.  Besides the fact that you don’t have to worry about the pipes freezing in your house, it’s also mud season. While I was interested in the sugaring season, I still like to leave my travel options open. So a smaller operation held greater appeal. 

While still in Vermont, driving north on Rt 89, we took out the cell phone and called Greg Rossel, a boatbuilder friend living in Maine who teaches at the Wooden Boat School. We knew he and his wife Norma produced syrup for personal consumption and not for resale. This appealed to us. They laughingly told us over the phone that they tap only 6 trees and produce just what they need, about 1-1/2 gallons of syrup each year. They boil right on their little antique three burner gas stove and Norma declared that if she could she would have the tubing run right into the house to the stove to save the time and energy collecting from outside. 

As we were passing through Burlington Vt., we were feeling extremely confident that we, too could set up 6 taps and buckets. By the time we were crossing Lake Champlain by ferry, our discussion had expanded to 10 buckets. At the end of our journey, heading up our driveway we  were up to 15 taps and buckets. This maple sugaring slope was getting slick. 

Nik and I had no sooner arrived home than our neighbors the Browns, three brothers who tapped about 400 trees for family and “fun” called to say they were swimming in sap and would we like to have some to boil. I answered sure and headed over with two five gallon pails and returned with 35 gallons of sap in my pails…and a few borrowed ones as well.  With no sugarhouse, formal or otherwise, we built a fire on the edge of our frozen, muddy dirt driveway over a protruding stump we wanted gone. We gave up an older large pot for the cause, boiled late into the night while a strong and gusty spring wind whipped the smoke and steam around us and at times right into the pot. We visually determined the readiness of the syrup by alternately dripping a ladle full of roiling sap back into the cooking pot to gauge the thickness and just taking sips to deem our first batch “ready”.  We took the pots of syrup into the house and canned the sap in quart mason jars. We produced 3 quarts of unfiltered, woodsmoke-maple syrup. It was the best we had ever tasted. 

We knew we wanted to produce about 5 gallons of syrup. The general rule is that one tap produces about a quart of syrup. Keeping in mind it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup from a sugar maple, we would need about 20 trees and taps to meet our goal. We don’t have any tappable sugar maples on our 41 acres, however, just red maple trees. Of the trees we did have few were large. We determined twenty-five taps would meet our goal. 

Dave tying flies

At this time, three of our recent PSC students we were mentoring, Evan, Dan and Matt, were graduating. Each year these students become part of our family while at college and lifetime members when they leave. College coursework, family, vehicle breakdowns, housing, prospective job and all the myriad of issues one might experience while in college become the focus of our Burrito Night dinner discussions. We tell great stories, laugh a lot and some problems get worked out while we eat or during Thursday night fly tying sessions . At the end of their college stay, we let them host their graduation cookout for their family at our home. It was at this latest graduation that Evan gifted us with 25 maple buckets and lids for our time together.

One of the rules of our PSC mentoring is that current students have to find us replacement students. Enter Dakin and Reilly, who were studying Forestry, and Dave a Fisheries and Wildlife Science student. During the May and June trimester, while Dave headed off to Belize to assist in a Jaguar research project, Dakin and Reilly came over often and helped us cut and mill enough white pine lumber to construct and side the sugarhouse. The rest of the summer Nik and I read all we could on the subject of sugaring.

Dakin fells a tree

I had begun to look at “Craigs List” for a small evaporator. In August I found one near Fair Haven, Vermont at a pastoral Black Angus cattle farm. It was a wood fired 1.5’ X 3’ Lapierre evaporator and hearth, clean and well cared for and at $650 was a great price. The current owners were incredibly gracious and informative and handily loaded our evaporator and stove into the back of Nik’s 82’ Chevy pick-up with a forklift. With a parting gift of a quart of Maple Syrup to fuel our imagination, we were on our way.

Dave, Dakin and Nik Frame up the sugarhouse

The return of our students in September saw us begin our project in earnest. We had created three unpaid internship positions to lend a more professional recognition of their volunteer efforts. The goal of these internship positions was to assist in rewriting our 20 year old Land Management Plan, incorporate a sugarbush, sugarhouse and the maple sugaring production. With plan in hand we set about constructing the sugarhouse.

The sugarhouse would be attached to the opposite end of the chicken barn, an 8’ X 9’ foot structure our sons, as a homeschooling project, had designed and built nearly twenty years before. The plan was to have the sugarhouse measure 8’ X 16’ with a breezeway for firewood storage connecting the two buildings.

By December, we had moved the evaporator and hearth and an 8’ long stainless steel restaurant counter and framed up the sugarhouse around them. We put on the roof, installed a pre-painted window, split and stacked three cords of poplar for the wood fired evaporator and shoveled 2 cubic yards of gravel to create a level floor. For Christmas our friend Rob Carr, the Tupper Lake Wild Center's Exhibits and Interpretive Programs Manager gifted us with a series of Maple Sugaring interpretive posters to put on the walls of the sugarhouse. January saw the cupola, with two pre painted-hinged windows, stovepipe and a set of sliding doors installed.  

Nik and Dakin cutting the roof for the cupola during the first winter snowfall

Nik, new canvass and decorative paint complete,
adding the combing and hardware to the "Peekaboo" Idem sailboat

Nik has a wooden boat restoration business and we were in search of just the right token to give the Upper St. Regis Lake boat owners in appreciation for supporting his local business. A small bottle of pure Adirondack Maple Syrup seemed the perfect gift. We decided to bottle enough syrup as a “marketing gift” from “Nik Santagate and Sons”. 

We had the 25 buckets and lids Evan had given us. It occurred to us that all the volunteer time Dakin, Dave and Reilly gave had to be worth a half gallon of maple syrup for each of them. Suddenly it looked like we were either going to give all our syrup away or else we needed to increase the trees tapped. So along with the 25 buckets from Evan, we acquired through friends an additional 28 buckets and lids to ensure we had enough for our use with extra to share. 

Reilly and Dakin spray paint the buckets

Nik carries the buckets out to the Sugarhouse

I set about making a stencil for the buckets. With Nik, Dakin, Dave and Reilly, we spent a cold and windy Saturday afternoon and spray painted a band of “bamboo/lime” color around each bucket. Next we taped the stencil on the bucket front and went back through and sprayed each with a darker green for the stencil lettering. It was pushing their masculinity “beautifying” all the buckets we had accumulated, but I assured them the effect would be well worth the effort. They were skeptical but willing to humor me. 

We spent the next few weekends doing the last of the sugaring set up. Randy Moody, our mechanic, fit a thermometer in the base of the evaporator. Next we built a platform for our 65 gallon storage tank to allow for a gravity feed to the evaporator pan. We set up a 3/4” water pipe feed line from the storage tank running right into the sugarhouse and reduced the pipe to a 1/4” copper pipe with shut off valve about 2 feet from the stove pipe. From there the copper coiled around the stovepipe, with the intent to preheat the sap before it enters the upper pan.  The upper pan had a shut off valve as well and combined, the idea was to boil, adding more sap at a rate equal to the amount evaporated, adjusting the valves to maintain a steady flow. We fired up the evaporator with water to get the hang of the system, and while the wood burned and the water steamed we cleaned the inside of the building, wiped down the counters, set up chairs and hung up our posters on the wall. 

The Sugarhouse

Nik has an array of old vehicles he manages to “find” like some people pick up stray cats. One favorite is a 72’ Cushman Trackster, a tracked vehicle with a comfy padded bench seat, that nimbly scoots over the snow. He traded it for two truck loads of balsam boughs for use as bedding in an Adirondack Lean-to at a nearby Great Camp.He had the trackster serviced, set a small 12volt water pump on the front with tubing, a winch on the back, a 35 gallon collection tank on the side and a few 5 gallon pails in the storage section. We were ready for tapping and collection time. 

Nik loads up the Cushman Trackster with buckets and gear...ready for tapping

Our sugarbush over story consisted almost entirely of Red maple, with a few Poplar, Paper birch, Black Cherry and White pine.  Assessing the vitality and health of the trees within our “sugarbush” was integral to our Land Management Plan. Collecting data on those tappable trees would provide a baseline for Nik and I as landowners. Our criteria for selecting the trees was simple:
1. Tapped Maple trees must be close to the access trail. 

2. Tap Maples that had some damage and were slated for removal.
3. Tap Maple trees that were visibly healthy and had full crowns.

Reilly our Forester discusses the merits of tapping this Maple with Nik

Dakin measures the DBH

Early Sunday, March 9, we began by slicing maple sapling “cookies”, drilling a hole in the top and numbered the cookies. We headed out to the sugarbush with the trackster loaded with buckets, drill and bits, wooden mallet, spiles, string to hang the numbered cookies, DBH tape, and data sheet in hand. Reilly and Dakin, our student foresters, had gone out with Nik weeks earlier and put bright orange flagging on roughly 60 maples that fit our criteria and they deemed tappable. We set off into our sugarbush to begin tapping from those selected trees. 

We rotated the jobs that morning so each would be proficient in any role. One job was to tie the numbered “cookie” to the tree and gauge the health of the tree regarding crown size and damage. Crowding of the tree or by the tree was additional information.  What form of treatment the tree should receive whether it should be cut, the trees around it should be cut, pruned or just left alone were all factors to be recorded.

Another person measured the DBH (Diameter at Breast Height) at 4-1/2 feet above the ground. Calibrated to measure the diameter of the tree, the “D-tape” measurement gave us a good baseline for the trees we were to keep…information we would be able to remeasure as we later managed the sugarbush. 

Dave hangs the bucket

Drilling the hole for the tap and hanging the bucket with lid was a two man job. We used a battery drill, a far cry from the days of the hand crank or gas powered “rocket man jet pack”. With a 5/16 twisted drill bit, a hole 1-1/2” deep was drilled at an uphill angle to aid the sap flow, the spile inserted and “tapped” into place with the mallet. We had purchased taps with hooks for hanging a bucket, and thus the partner hung buckets and attached the lids.  My job was to document all the data being shouted out…cookie number, health, treatment of tree and the DBH. 
By lunchtime we had marked 53 three trees, somehow losing several cookies so our tree numbers went from 1-57. As we sat and ate a hot chili lunch, we could see the lime colored buckets from the dining room window and all agreed it was a sight to behold. 

Reilly tapping a maple

We sent out invitations for the Maple Producers Tour for Saturday, March 29. The intent was to encourage boat customers and friends to come see the sugaring process. The days had begun to warm and the evenings were below freezing and the sap had just barely begun to flow but there wasn’t much to show for all of our effort. The weather was one factor we couldn’t control, but we had a decent attendance of visitors. 

Sugarhouse invitiation

The following weekend we had a full collection tank ready to boil.  We had been asked to host a private tour with a large family from a nearby Adirondack Great Camp. I baked Paleo Maple Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies and Maple Blueberry-Strawberry Nut muffins. We carbonated and bottled maple sap and warmed fresh maple syrup.  Dave, Nik and I planned our tour strategy over a quick boiled meal of corned beef and cabbage. After lunch we filled the evaporator pan and started the fire in the hearth. 

Nik describing the boiling process

  Once lit, it didn’t take long for the fire to catch and the sap to begin to boil. Syrup is produced 7 degrees above the boiling temperature of water, so we noted the level on the thermometer and counted from that point.  It seems simple enough, but the process of boiling off the water in the evaporator, adding more sap to keep the level high enough that the pan doesn’t burn, drawing off the finished maple syrup, periodically checking the sugar content with the hydrometer, referring to the thermometer and loading more wood into the evaporator every 5-10 minutes didn’t allow much sitting around time. 

The 17 guests arrived late afternoon. A large genial family, both genuinely interested and interesting, gathered for a brief introduction of our homestead. After “post holing” through the deep snow in light footwear, collecting a few buckets of sap, recording data and answering questions, we bundled all 17 guests into the tiny sugar house and slid the doors shut, like we were playing a game of Sardines. It was interesting to view our production from their professional vantage. There were a few movie directors and producers within the group, one of whom commented that with the smoke rising from the chimney, the large pot sitting on a propane stove atop the shiny stainless steel counter and the steam filled room, it looked like a “set from the TV series Breaking Bad”. The wind blustered outside but once the doors had shut we were engulfed in the sweet steamy warmth, sharing heated maple syrup, cold bubbly sap, cookies and muffins. It was one of those brief bonding experiences where cold weather, opportunity for warmth and food creates fast friends for the moment. We produced three quarters of a gallon of syrup that day. 

Refining the process through taste testing and temperature 

We boiled again for a total of 4 times. No matter how cold outside, the sugarhouse was filled with lots of good humor, warm and at times steamy hot. Dakin found that wearing pants with grommets was not a good idea, but it provided us with comic relief as he danced around when the metal became super heated. Eric laughingly commented that after boiling in the sugar house for hours, “Nik’s face looked like a tomato in the summer sun”. Of the sap collected from our 53 trees, we produced 5.5 gallons of maple syrup. 

Dakin testing and drawing off the syrup from the pan

The filtering process when done by hand is a sticky and repetitive process. We tried many filtering techniques, but found that by direct filtering straight from the evaporator pan as a first stage was most effective. We set up altogether six layers of pre dampened felt and cotton filters, positioned them directly under the draw-off spigot on the evaporator and the syrup sped quickly through the filters and into the stainless steel pail. After the syrup had passed through, we removed the top layers of filters and cleaned them thoroughly in warm water, squeezing out any excess water once cleaned to be used again. Next we poured the hot syrup from the pail, through the layered filters and into the canning pot. 

Once filtered, we again brought the temperature back up above 180 degrees, and with sterilized bottles of all sizes and shapes and sealable caps in the ready, oven mitts on, we opened the pot valve and filled our waiting bottles nearly to the top with the hot syrup and quickly put the cap on tight. All the filled bottles we set on their sides or upside down to seal the bottles and also to kill off any bacteria that may have been on the cap. We left them that way until the syrup had cooled and then gently washed the sticky sides of the bottles. 

Late Spring snow hangs on sap bucket of tree # 53

Part of this project was about marketing Nik’s wooden boat shop and yet I couldn’t seem to come up with a label for the bottles and finally settled with hanging a descriptive card around the neck. The cover was a photo of Maple tree number 53 and stenciled sap bucket under an 8” layer of newly fallen snow. Inside was another photo, project description and the encouraging words: “But remember: You can’t possibly hope to get more syrup next year if you don't return the bottle…and perhaps a boat or two.” 

Eric measures volume of sap in each bucket
and calls out the number to Nik...

The winter snow hung on through April, but the temperature never quite allowed for an extended season so by April 23 we had removed all the buckets, pulled all the spiles out, cleaned up the sugarhouse, and washed all the equipment and collection tanks. The sugarhouse was not only ready for the next maple sugaring season, the space was also ready for summer herb drying, which was just around the corner. 

...Nik recording data

Within our designated sugarbush, we tapped 53 trees in total, and of those trees we removed three. Looking back at the whole process we know that our red maple trees were small, the sugarbush a bit overcrowded, and the “glacial outwash” sandy soil quality was poor at best. Our overall production of 5.5 gallons of maple syrup was a success by our standards. We collected a total of 202.37 gallons of sap. Each tree produced an average of 3.82 gallons and it was fascinating when collecting, to see the range was anywhere from an empty bucket to 2 gallons of sap per tree. 

Storytelling went on for hours, all day...

The one-time, sugaring investment expenses of equipment like the evaporator, books, building construction materials, and posters totaled $3360. In addition our interns were unpaid but the total man hours for the sugarhouse construction and prep were 149 and if paid at $12/hr would have been $1788 and boiling of sap and sugarbush management took 104 man hours which would have cost $1248.

...and on into late evening.

This year has provided us with a baseline for the proceeding years. With better overall knowledge, healthier trees and streamlined process we hope to produce the same or realize an increase of syrup with less cost and effort. The gift giving of syrup to customers of Nik Santagate and Sons will continue next year. We feel that we have a better idea of what we are doing and will have no problem getting the costs down further…if we wanted to. The good humor, camaraderie, visits with dear friends, discovery, excuse to get outdoors and final sweet reward render the cost irrelevant. 

A sampling of the bounty of forest and our labors

An Adirondack "Jean Pain" Woody Compost

“Reafforestation will be the mark and work of the authentic civilization”

Jean Pain. (1928-1981)

     I love taking hot showers. I have been known to set off my share of heat detecters and alarms by merely opening the bathroom door after one of my “therapeutic" sessions. Short of living adjacent to a hot spring, generating hot water for showers and other domestic use, without fossil fuels, has been a long term goal. Recently, I bathed in our outdoor shower for the first time with water heated by a 60 cubic yard Jean Pain woody compost mound we constructed. The shower is situated on the outside of the greenhouse and for now has a collection of wooden “trees” we constructed as well as balsam, white pine and maple saplings loosely braced around the concrete platform and a planted northern high bush blueberry for privacy. We added a wall mounted flag post to insert an Albanian flag as a signal of “occupied” to others who may walk nearby. There is a bit of “hippy” atmosphere as my 1972 yellow Volkswagen Square Back Type lll is parked between the shower and the 10 foot high mound, yet it does offer a nice dry place to toss my clean clothes. I turned the water on full and braced myself, mildly disappointed as I stepped into the cool spray. In moments though, the spray turned to a comfortable warm and then suddenly I was turning the cold faucet on to mix with the now uncomfortably hot water. In the time it would take a conventional on-demand electric water heater to bring the  temperature up to hot, our mixed hardwood chip compost heap, with 900 feet of 1" flexible pipe filled with147 gallons of water coiled throughout the mass proved equal to the task. 

Nik enjoying a shower. 

Compost thermometer

According to the multiple thermometer gauges we inserted throughout the mass, the mound in its fourth month, has averaged 125 degrees in temperature, a by-product of the fermentation of aerobic (oxygen present) and anaerobic (oxygen lacking) process of the woody material.  We measured the water temperature from the well at 50 degrees while the outgoing water from the shower head measured 120 degrees. There was a 70 degree increase from well to thermal mass of the mound and a roughly 5 degree temperature drop from mound to shower head.  The hot water has a slight pine scent and the only drawback is the pure bliss and philosophical atmosphere that makes it difficult to take a short shower.  But I am at least not setting off alarms. While we anticipate new uses will arise, our immediate goal of our Jean Pain mound is to generate summer and spring hot water use for showers, winter in-floor heating for the greenhouse and utilize the humus created to amend our gardens, fruit trees and meadow. This adventure of “composting” comes at end of a long journey from land clearing and years of amending sandy soil.

Cosmos in our sandy soil

Our 40 acres is all mixed hard and softwood growing in pure glacial outwash. When we first bought the land in 1983 our goals were simple. We wanted to have a healthy source of water, enough White pine trees for log home building, plenty of firewood for heat, garden space when we cleared and no neighbor in sight. Four years after we purchased our land we had marked and cut all the White pine and hardwood trees in a 2 1/2 acre area, tallied most of the logs we would need for our home,created an open space for the cabin and split the hardwood for cooking and heating fuel. The soil in the open space was sand and gravel, 50 feet deep to bedrock. Establishing a garden, fruit trees and “meadow-lawn” would require an herculean effort to amend the soil.  

We pulled stumps and hauled all the brush from the area and raked and removed all surface rocks by tractor and by hand. I then spent the next 12 years, bucket and shovel stowed away in the back of the car, making quick “pull-overs” while traveling to soccer games and swimming excursions with our two young boys. The edge of roadways were my hunting grounds for grass, moss and wildflower seeds and transplants that “expressed” a willingness and ability to grow in pure sand without the aid of a sprinkler. I also interspersed a variety of herbs and medicinal plants for a healthy diverse mix to build the soil while at the same time created a foragers paradise for herbs, teas and tinctures. 

Early in the “meadow-lawn succession”  process, when our boys, Cori and Levi, were young, they had a trampoline. During the summer months, it became an effective “shade tree” for the new plants and I would have the boys lift it and move it around the yard every few days for uniform plant coverage. The chickens and Guinea hens were free range and their favorite hangout from sun and hawks while fertilizing the soil at the same time was under the trampoline. Spring and summer I approached mowing like a sortie…I was on a mission. To the untrained eye, my insane swerving appeared to lack a sense of pattern or direction while I strategically avoided the small young fruit trees, foxgloves, hawkweed, mints, comfrey, mallow and myriad of other plants cutting them down only when it came time to disperse their seeds. In the fall I would mow the “meadow”, blowing all of the mulch and seeds onto bare spots that had yet to fill in with plants. It was a long process and took lots of patience to wait for all the plants to take hold, but the results have been worthwhile. 

I grew up in New England and loved the naturalized gardens on old homesteads. I had a vision of creating a healthy “edge”, a field to forest meadow,  and worked tirelessly toward that goal. But we were still building, the kids were young and I would no sooner have a small area planted only to look out the window to see Nik, happily waving to me, oblivious, as he skidded 16’ logs across the “yard” behind his 59 Ford 9N, leaving welts like long claw marks across the yard. The boys were equally rough on the landscape as they went about their day, my informal fledgling meadow was their adventure empire. Despite their efforts at destruction, my choice in vegetation took root. 

Our neighbors, the Myatts have a wonderful farm where they care for and raise horses, alpaca and llamas. Each spring they have graciously taken time out of their day to fill ours and the beds of our other neighbors trucks with the rich manure, saving hours of hand labor by using their loader. I would periodically spread the manure and transplant plants from other areas of the yard to the open spaces not yet filled with vegetation. I am eternally thankful for their generosity over the years. With recent awareness of the impact of plant sources for human and livestock feed base from GE (Genetically Engineered) seeds, however,  I found myself contemplating compost with no possible trace of GE for our vegetable garden and fruit trees. I began to look to the woods for inspiration and contemplation for alternative options. 

During this past winter I stumbled across an internet PDF copy of the 1980 self published book by Jean Pain, from Villicroze, France. Simply summarized, his goal was to imitate naturally occurring decomposition of woody materials by hilling and packing chipped leaves, needles and branches, providing appropriate moisture and air and then harnessing the energy (heat and methane gas) produced through the fermentation process.  The mound produces heat as it ferments acting as a thermal mass which when coiled water-pipe is added throughout the pile, creates hot water for domestic use. When completed he would utilize the resulting humus for reapplication to the nearby forest floor.  The humus would create a thick carpet, reducing moisture loss from the soil and thus an added bonus of prevention of forest fire. He would also apply the rich humus for a fertile weed-free garden. This model of soil building was an agreeable method to me. Jean Pain built his mound in the arid southeast of France at the foothills of the Alps. I found references of successful replica mounds throughout the northeastern states. Waiting for the deep snow to melt to build our own “experimental” mound was alleviated only by the bustle of maple sugaring.

My main concern was locating enough wood chip material. In June our available time had been stretched to the limit with spring chores, Nik's full time boat restoration and Adirondack great camp caretaking business. We were managing our forest, cleaning up from a previous year microburst that had felled about 100 trees. We processed the logs for firewood and sawlogs but producing 70 cubic yards of material from the tops would require more than a week of our efforts…time we didn't possess and the effort would still not yield enough for our project. I called around to local highway departments and small arborists who might be willing to contribute chips for our pile. As foresters ourselves, while we tend to lean toward the small-scale logging operations, we were unable to obtain the material we were looking for. We then pursued a large logging operation underway on nearby private land. We found we could achieve an economy of scale by sourcing from one larger supplier rather than piecing together what we needed through many small operations. 

Seaway Timber chipping wood debris into Trudeau's truck

Tim Curran, one of the owners of Seaway Timber Harvesting was intrigued with our experimental Jean Pain Mound. After allowing us a close up view of the huge debris pile from their chipping operation and viewing our proposed site he offered to front one truckload in support of the project.  Mark Trudeau, from Trudeau Sand and Gravel, in the spirit of the project, provided our trucking and gave us one transportation run toward the project as well. We took roughly 50 cubic yards from the logging site in three truckloads and had them dumped adjacent to the location of our mound.  We spent an additional two days chipping brush from our recent sugarbush thinning for an additional 10 cubic yards. 

Nik anticipating the taste of good food once this pile of chips breaks down and is added to the garden

Hulberts is our local plumbing and supply store and we purchased 1000' of 1" black water pipe, insulation for the pipe, 100' each of perforated and unperforated footing drain tile, elbow fittings, shut off valves and miscellaneous fittings. From garden suppliers I purchased 36" and  72" compost thermometers. 

We sent out invitations and on May 24 gathered all tools necessary for the days work. Shovels, garden rakes, large cinder blocks, hand saw and propane torch for water pipe fittings, garden hose and sprinkler, neighbors with bucket tractor, one stellar college student and managed to wrangle the perfect, if a bit hot, day. As with most Adirondack mid-May to mid-June projects, the black flies wanted full participation in the event and we were extremely creative in our defense utilizing all manner of headgear and dousing ourselves with Nik’s homemade Adirondack Caretakers’ Bug Dope. 

Nik prepping for the air intake perforated and unperforated drainage tile

     Early in June, John Duprey, another area caretaker, had brought his backhoe over for a few days to take care of our long list of tasks. Along with pulling stumps from the driveway, digging holes for garden areas and cutting the bank back behind Nik’s boat shop for better movement and a root cellar, he also prepped the Jean Pain Mound site by digging into the bank and roughly leveling a twenty foot diameter area adjacent to the greenhouse. We hand dug a 2’ deep trench along the outer edge of the mound site to run 50’ of the unperforated footing drain tile. We then laid down 100’ of the perforated drainage tile, for the air intake, by coiling it flat on the base of the mound and kept within two feet from the outer edge and connected the two pipes together. The intent was that during the winter months running the intake air beneath the surface would  warm the air to ground temperature before it arrived at the underside of the mound. Once the pipe was laid down, the trenches were re-filled and Pete scooped up the first of many bucket loads of chips to create an 8” covering over the footing drain tile on the bottom of the mound. 

Digging for the water pipe to the greenhouse

     Additional prep work was done by hand digging a three foot trench from the mound to the greenhouse and laying the water pipe so that two ends were against the building. One line of the pipe was for hot water. This pipe travelled from the greenhouse to the center of the mound. We attached a 90 degree elbow fitting to connect enough pipe that would go straight up, ending two feet below the intended top of the mound. This end would attach to the final end of the coiled pipe with another 90 degree angle fitting.  At the same time the second pipe was inserted for the cold water intake. It traveled from the greenhouse to the mound to form the first of several rows of coils. Once the pipes were in place and the insulation wrapped around and on top of them, we filled in the hand dug trenches. 

Nik and Dave laying down the air intake pipe

We started coiling the pipe, careful not to crimp the line, from the center outward on a flat plane. Each coil round was about 6” apart from the next and the whole level section was roughly two feet from the edge of the mound. To keep the pipe flat, we stood on it as well as layered the cinder blocks on top. Once in place, Pete would again scoop multiple bucket loads of chips to provide an eight inch layer over the water pipe. 

Pete putting down the first load on the pile, while Nik rakes it out evenly.

We have several friends who own local restaurants in Saranac and Lake Placid and they were more than agreeable to gather their organic vegetable prep scraps for a two week period. On our annual anniversary dinner night at the end of May, we travelled to the Downhill Grill, Eat and Meat, Blue Moon Cafe, and Lisa G’s where we loaded up my car with buckets and bags of compost material from greens to coffee grounds.  It was a token amount of green compost material but we felt it would sweeten the pile and help kickstart the decomposition process.  

Shannon, Nik and Pete stomp, rake and hose down the pile.

We continued adding layers until the mound measured 10' high and about 18' in diameter at the base and about 3’ diameter on the top. Wood chips absorb a lot of water so we left the sprinkler on top of the mound for the rest of the day to provide thorough moisture and eventually turned it off altogether as we were fortunate to have a few rainy days which kept the pile moist. 

We raked the chips out level, spent several minutes dancing and stomping to compress the pile, spread out a thin layer of vegetable compost and sprayed the whole pile with copious amounts of water. The cinder blocks were removed and we started the whole process again, bringing the long pipe up from the first row to continue its coiled path onto the next row. We kept the coil inside the edge of the pile for insulation and lay down block to hold the pipe while we covered it with chips. We stomped, spread green compost and watered the next layer. And when we ran out of pipe, we connected another coil to continue the path.

Watering the completed pile

Nik hooking up the greenhouse in floor heat

Nik connected the plumbing to the greenhouse water line with shut off valves in place to allow for a complete turnoff of the system if there was a leak and also to allow the shower water to be drained in September, transferring the hot water to the heat coils in the floor of the greenhouse for winter heating use.  We have begun to cover the pile with rolled hay and will have it complete for fall. 

Erica, my Greenhouse and Garden Intern 2013

I enjoyed my shower completely but the real test of the hot water system had yet to begin. My niece Erica had lived in our guest room in the greenhouse the previous spring and summer and when she wasn't working at her wilderness therapy job she was my Garden and Greenhouse Intern. Together we would be prepping and planting the vegetable and flower gardens, collecting, drying and concocting herbal mixes, picking blueberries and strawberries, saving garden and wildflower seeds, brewing up Kombucha tea and canning Dill pickles with Nik, making our own vanilla for baking and putting up preserves in the kitchen. What we lacked in finesse during the process we more than made up for in enthusiasm in our variety of ideas and products. I was having a wonderful summer and was energized for next year. I had begun to dust off my old medicinal, herbal and gardening books while Erica signed up for a six month long herbalism course with the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine slated for the following spring and summer season. 

Erica and I communicated throughout the spring and summer. During a field trip to the Adirondacks the class of twenty students, led by the schools Director and Instructor 7Song, camped in our greenhouse guest room, lean-to, living room and yard for two days. While at our home they located, identified herbal and medicinal plants as well as discussed site, collection, plant properties, uses and wildcrafting techniques. It was a fun and scholarly weekend and I cannot say which was the greatest part of their visit. While I thoroughly enjoyed the lessons in herbalism and botanical medicine I was thrilled to see the unlimited hot water produced by the mound while the group indulged in the shower.

7Song and his class from the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine identifying plants and their  properties in my garden

My wish is to take my last shower in the first snow storm before the heat is transferred to the greenhouse. But the heat will be transferred come late September, snowstorm or no. Until then, we will add the coils for the floor heat, and insulate the building where needed. We will continue to monitor the temperature of the mound throughout our Adirondack fall and winter and  tweak the system when needed. We will also test the humus, once the decomposition has run its course, to determine the quality of the soil. For now, though I will continue my daily trek to the greenhouse shower with my cat Dove’ in my shadow and enjoy the bounty of this wood chip produced hot water…the only alarms I will hear are the blue jays who seem more concerned with the cat than the temperature of my shower. 

Dove' (Doe-vay) keeping watch