Dear Curiosity Journal,
It’s a maple syrup Sunday on the farm and we have a lot of boiling to do. While Rufus works the evaporator down in the sugar bush, I’m in the kitchen multitasking canning maple syrup and grant writing. I stand at the kitchen counter and bop back and forth between entering in budget numbers, stirring the pot, skimming the foam, adjusting the temperature, and sterilizing jars. I narrowly avoided destroying our third stove from sap incidents, snatching the pot from the burner as the upsurge of foam overflowed. Chasing that boiling point elevation is a capricious dance, which proved difficult to multitask through. I contemplate this curious snapshot of how intricately intertwined our business and personal lives have become, how black and white budget lines can feel like cumbersome or claustrophobic boxes to consider, yet a definitive distinction is required, so I do my best to slice up my life hours into neat columns, and manage to can 17 quarts of syrup, which is admittedly on the dark side.
~Joy
