Building my own Sukkah from stuff in the woods

Last week I spent three days building my sukkah, the little booth that Jews erect for the Festival Sukkot.   The sukkah has many meanings.  First of all, it reminds us of the days of wandering in the wilderness with Moses.  It also teaches us that this life is a journey through a world that is not permanent.  And it is a celebration of the harvest, the time when we have gathered in our crops and can enjoy the fruits of our labors.

White pine for shchach --
courtesy of road maintenance!

The basic requirements for building a sukkah are simple:  It must have 3 walls, and the shchach (roof covering) must be made of natural materials cut from the earth.  The sides can be made from anything handy, including the wall of an existing building if you build it against the house or other structure.  However, the location must be open to the sky, not under a tree or other obstruction.

Nowadays you can buy prefab sukkah kits made out of plywood or various other materials in a variety of designs.  However, these are rather pricey and way beyond our tight budget.  Besides, my wife and I are getting a bit old to be hauling heavy plywood panels in and out of the shed each year.  So, I called upon my old Boy Scout skills to lash together a framework of saplings that I cut from the woods on my own land. 

I use nylon twine instead of the old sisal kind, because, although it is harder to tie permanent knots with, it does not rot or stretch, although some kinds will degrade in a couple years from exposure to sunlight.  But for a sukkah it's fine.  Through trial and error, I found that tying it off with a square knot, followed by three overhand knots up tight against the first knot, pretty much keeps the ends from untying.

This creates a rather permanent frame that I leave up after the holiday, making repairs each year as needed.  However, last winter the snow was so unusually heavy, it collapsed the whole thing (read that story), so I had to start over from scratch.  But I can't really complain, because the old sukkah frame had lasted over 10 years.  Still, it is a lot of work to drag all those new poles in from the woods.  Not to mention finding appropriate trees in the first place.

Andy Cat, one of my "helpful"
construction workers who loves string!

Luckily, I had a bit of help from a road maintenance crew.  About two  weeks before I began my sukkah-building project, they came through and cut down a bunch of trees and brush along our road for fire control.  This gave me a set of nice straight maple poles -- all the verticals in the new sukkah frame are made from this free material.  I also got a good supply of white pine branches from trees they trimmed that were overhanging the road.  That, plus prunings from my own white pine that had bent down too low to mow under, gave me enough shchach to cover the sukkah.  Not only was this economical, it was also ecological, because I used materials that would otherwise have gone to waste.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Here is what the sukkah looked like after I got the basic framework up.  Four cinder blocks help to anchor it in place.   It still needs some more diagonal braces, which I installed after this picture was taken.  (I used a flash at early dawn,  to show up the frame better against the trees in the background.)

Covering the sukkah was a challenge this year, because most of the old sheets and bedspreads I used before were either torn or moldy.  My wife is very allergic to mold, so I had to throw most of it out and start over.   Because Rosh HaShanah had come back-to-back with the Sabbath, and Yom Kippur was on the Sabbath itself this year, I could not take advantage of all those Friday garage sales to find more used cloth.   Not to worry --  I did have a lot of feed sacks and some clear plastic on hand, so I used those instead.  To keep the wind from tearing these rather fragile materials off the frame, I put a strip of corrugated cardboard over the plastic where I was stapling to the wood.   That reinforced it very well.  The cardboard, of course, came from old boxes I got at the grocery.

Here is how the sukkah turned out.  The outside table has a bucket of water for the ritual handwashing, and there is room for more chairs around the card table if needed.  The side table is very handy for setting dishes aside.  Both of the low gray tables, by the way, are ones we already had for flea market sales,  A fourth wall could be added in front, perhaps by hanging a blanket, but that would have prevented me photographing the inside for this blog post.  Besides, we enjoy looking out at the scenery.

Definitely primitive, but functional.  And much closer to what Moses actually used.  He certainly didn't have any plywood on hand.  Then again, he didn't have any plastic, either.  (He probably used animal skins.)   But still, this sukkah did well to evoke the story of wandering in the wilderness.  Spiritually, what I got from this whole project is that we are to bloom where we are planted, and that God will provide for us, be we must also be creative in using what is available.  "Who is rich?  He who is satisfied with his portion!" (Talmud, Pirkei Avot.)  And by the way:  The whole thing only cost me about $15 out of pocket, for the nylon twine and some staples.  Thoreau would have been so proud!

(UPDATE 2012:  This year, the sukkah got an upgrade:  I was able to find enough old sheets at the thrift store to cover it with cloth instead of old feed sacks.  Since we took "salvage" quality rejects, we got enough for the whole sukkah for $5. The schach this year is tall grass and goldrenrod stalks.  My wife added the "woman's touch" with some fall-themed decorations.  It was also her idea to use the flowered sheet for the front -- making it nice and homey-looking.   And BTW, although the frame now leans a bit where it has settled in since last year, it is still good and sturdy, although I did add a few more diagonal braces.)

The sukkah upgraded in 2012

Here's a picture from 2019.  When we put in a ramp a couple years ago, we had to move the sukkah.  The only place near the house not shaded by a tree was farther away, so we set up a row of solar garden lights leading to it, and a solar spotlight inside. Also got a better folding table.

Revised version with solar lights

Wild Turkeys -- hard freeze tonight -- picking green tomatoes

This has to be the most cruelty-free wild turkey feather ever -- it was dropped on our dirt road by a passing flock of turkeys about a week ago.   I frequently see turkeys around here, sometimes as many as 20 or more.   I wish I knew where they are roosting -- then I could find lots of feathers!

This morning our dogs were raising a ruckus from inside the house, and when I looked outside, there was a crow walking down the road.  I thought it was odd to see a crow taking a stroll there, but thought maybe he was looking for gravel or grains.  Then I saw the turkeys following behind.  At least, that's how it looked.  I grabbed my camera but of course, as soon as I went outside, the crow let out a warning call and the turkeys all ran into the bush.   I did get a good enough look to see that there were 5 adults and 2 older juveniles. 

Was the crow actually serving as a lookout for the turkeys?  It sure looked like it.  And he did fly off in the same direction that they went.

On another topic, we are due for a hard frost tonight -- going down to 26F, which is probably going to break some records around here. This is really early for a killing frost. Way too cold for tomatoes to survive, even if they are covered.  So I'm taking a break right now from picking and storing them all in the shed.   Some will ripen, and for the rest, I've got lots of recipes using green tomatoes -- fried, pickled, in sauces and relishes.   (BTW, naturally-ripening tomatoes do so from the inside out.  Any tomato showing some whitish or reddish on the skin is already ripening inside and will eventually turn red.) 

I've already pickled all my cukes, picked all my beans, onions, leeks and hot peppers, made sauerkraut and kimchi from the cabbages, jelly from the grapes.   All in all, it was a pretty good year for the garden.  Tonight we are making apple butter and applesauce, using fruit from our trees.  All of this certainly helps with the winter food budget.



Scarlet Sumac leaves against the sky
Pine County, Minnesota



Warm days, cold nights -- maple syrup time!

It has been two years since I've been able to make maple syrup -- 2009 we were in a drought and I did not want to stress my trees.  Spring 2010 there was no snow left  (believe it or not) and a burning ban was in effect.   But this year should be perfect!  We had a wet summer in 2010,  plenty of snow cover, and now the sap is running!

This is always one of the most pleasant times for me to be outside.  The weather is mild, and the birds are starting to claim their territories.  On Monday, when I was putting the spiles (taps) in my trees, I heard chickadees and blue jays calling, woodpeckers drumming, and a flock of crows having an argument out in the woods.    No grouse drumming or turkeys gobbling yet, but it won't be long.

Commercial syrup producers would probably die laughing at my primitive backyard setup.   But it gives us enough syrup for our own use, and saves a lot of money.  When I checked in the grocery store recently, pure maple syrup was $7.99 for an 8-ounce bottle -- and that was for a local product.  (The Audubon Center of the North Woods, only a couple miles from my home, makes it every year as a fundraiser.)  I imagine if commercial shipping were also involved, the price would be even higher.  We usually get a gallon or more of syrup a year, which I can in pint Mason jars.  Add that up, and it's a pretty valuable crop!


These are some pictures I took in 2008, which show the process. For "buckets" I use gallon milk jugs, which are free.  For spiles I have the old-fashioned metal kind I got years ago.   I cut the top off the jug to make it more like a bucket, then add a wire loop for a handle.  This works well, and at the end of the season I just remove the wire, wash the jug and recycle it. The spiles I save for next year.

By the way, you don 't have to use sugar maple trees. ALL maples have sugary sap, and many make great syrup.  Mine are boxelders (also known as "split-leaf maple"), which many people consider "trash trees" but I see as a valuable resource. The syrup I get from these trees is excellent.   Plus, the leaves are the food plant for Cecropia moth caterpillars.

My boiling apparatus is simplicity itself: two rows of cinder blocks with some old refrigerator grates on top.  Then I build a trench-style fire between the blocks.  For pans, I use disposable aluminum baking pans.  (The best kind have wire handles, although the ones in the pix don't -- I can't always find them here.)   I suppose this isn't as ecological as using  heavier  kitchen pans and washing them, but if you have ever tried to clean a pan that was used over an open fire, you will know why I prefer this for cleanup.  (Yes, I know about soaping the bottoms of campfire pans, but again, it's a horrible mess to bring into the house.  And don't worry about that dead grass you see near the fire -- it's actually wet straw I stomped into the mud to avoid slipping on the layer of melting mud that forms over the still-frozen soil.  Believe me, it was way too soggy to be a fire hazard.)

 As you can see, syrup in the early boiling stages doesn't look very golden.  There is a sort of whitish stuff that precipitates out -- this has to be filtered out later or the syrup will be bitter.  I use a piece of ordinary felt inside a kitchen strainer.  Timing is very important: If you strain too soon, the white stuff slips though, but if you wait too long, the syrup is too thick  to go through the felt.  Some people use a hygrometer and measure the specific gravity, or a candy thermometer to measure the temperature.  I just go "seat of the pants," having learned from years of doing this.   If it's still too thin after straining, I just boil some more.

It takes a lot of sap to make syrup -- about 30 gallons for one gallon of product, so you have to keep adding sap all day.  During this time, I do a lot of yard cleanup.  The firewood comes from stuff I saved up last year, plus any dead wood that the wind might have brought down, etc.  You need a continuous hot fire for this, so smaller stuff such as lower dead branches work great.     In this next pic, you can see that the pan on the left (pan A) has a higher sugar content than the one on the right (pan B).  That's because  as the sap boils down, I ladle it from   B to A, then fill pan B with more sap.  I also pre-heat the cold sap in big tomato juice cans before adding it to pan A.  This keeps thing boiling constantly.

To keep the syrup from boiling over as the sugar content rises, you need to add some sort of oil to break the tension on the surface.  Native peoples used various animal fats, and the pioneers used to hang a strip of bacon over the pan and let is slowly drip in.  Nowadays a lot of people use butter or margarine (which is why Mrs. Butterworth's syrup advertised itself as being made with real butter - an innovation in its day.)    This is why, if you keep kosher, maple syrup is off-limits unless it has kosher certification.   I use 100% vegetable oil so I can gift the syrup to both my kosher and vegan friends.   So, if you buy syrup and are concerned about animal products in your food, then it is a good idea to ask what kind of oil or grease they are using.  Especially at flea markets and roadside stands!

This pan is just about ready to take inside for finishing.  At this point, I ladle it through a tea strainer to get as much ash out as possible (with a wood fire, that's inevitable) into a stainless steel deep kitchen pot (one with a heavy copper bottom, less likely to scorch).  I then douse the fire and carry the syrup into the kitchen, where I finish boiling and straining it.  I let it sit overnight so any leftover impurities settle to the bottom.   

In the morning it's easy to pour off the clear syrup, leaving any sludge behind.   (I add the sludge to the chicken mash -- they like a sweet treat, too!)  I then sterilize my canning jars and can it the same as for jelly.  Done right, it keeps for years -- but once you open a jar, refrigerate it or it will get moldy.

So there you have it -- the first crop of the year on my land.  But enough blather -- time to go out and collect that sap!