Stump Moving

Today after work, Scott and I put the 4-Wheeler to work moving stumps.  As Scott has been clearing out the east end of the barn, he has had to dig up a ton of stumps and not all of them are little.  Some of them have had to be winched out and some rolled one flop at a time with the wheeler.  Tonight we put the wheeler to the test and drug them all out into the woods and out of site.  I was impressed that the wheeler was finally able to pull them all.  The big ones have dried out a bit so I think that helped.  I have also discovered a new way to plow up the soil - just hook up a root ball of a big oak and drag.  It turns up the soil nicely.  I really don't think that I'll be using that method though.  At least we have have them out of site.  :)

Absence

So far this month I have been pretty absent from my blog.  This absence has not been by choice, but controlled by time, sickness, Internet/computer problems and life in general.  I hope that I am able to be back at it now that school will be starting 2 weeks from today and the weather/heat is beginning to be manageable.  Lots of things have been happening here on our little corner of the world.  The most recent is that Adin has now lost his first tooth.  Pretty exciting.  I have found him in the bathroom looking into the mirror smiling and sticking his tongue through the hole where his tooth once was.  He is such a goof. 

I have been trying to do a lot of canning (beans, strawberry and blackberry jams, pickles and chicken broth) but more needs to be happening in the next few days.  I was hoping by now that I would have a batch or two of spaghetti sauce done, but the heat has done a number on my tomato plants.  We have some, but the plants look awful and the tomatoes are just now starting to blush.  I have a long way to go. 

Scott has been doing a lot of wood cutting on public land with his dead and down permit.  With what he harvested on our land this spring and the down wood elsewhere we have enough for this year.  Now he just wants to get ahead.  From the storms on July 1, we have enough trees down on our 20 for a full year also, but that is still green and we won't harvest that until next spring.  I do have to say that I miss the "hot" water from the boiler.  Having the hot water heater plugged in again is just not efficient and it takes forever to get hot water to the tap.  When the boiler is running, it is HOT right away, no waiting or wasting water.  I like that.  All in good time. 

Some sad news to report, our Lionhead bunny Amy passed away a couple of weeks ago.  Not sure what happened, but Adin took it pretty hard. 

On a fun note, our feathered friends are getting pretty big and much more curious when they are out free ranging (which is everyday while we are home).  Their new favorite place to hang out is the kid's playset/sandbox/swings/climber.  They are always over there climbing around on stuff and scratching in the sandbox.  Bumblebee (our Red Star Rooster) has taken a liking to Adin's tonka dump truck.  He likes to sit in the back.  I am still trying to get pictures, but I don't have a zoom on my phone and I don't have a good camera other than that.  Maybe one of these days I'll be able to sneak up on them.  :)  It really is funny and the kids love it when they come to play with them in the sandbox. 

Well the day is getting late and work is early tomorrow so I bid you all a happy night.

Saturday Secrets & Successes

Well, moment of truth... I lost 2 lbs this week.  It isn't much, but seeing as how I have been sick I haven't worked too hard at it.  Now that I have meds and I'm feeling better, I'll be able to work at it.  I have been working at it today.  Between my running back and forth to the boiling sap, I have been helping Scott clear out some more trees behind our house on the south end of the garden.  We are going to be making the yard bigger and also terracing that part of the yard, as it is on a slope and we'll be planting pumpkins and potatoes back there.  I am not too worried about the deer.  Most of our pumpkins last summer grew right out of the fence and down that hill anyway and they were fine. 

So I have been hauling brush to the burn pile and keeping the fire going.  The day has been beautiful.  I was out in my blue short sleeved shirt (to honor World Autism Awareness Day, my nephew Devyn who is Autistic and who's 7th Birthday is today) jean and my muck boots.  On that hillside the snow is still 1 1/2 to 2 feet deep still.  Crazy but good for burning. Now that the end of the day is here and I am finally done boiling syrup for today/this weekend, I have 5 pints ready to can tomorrow and maybe a 6th when it is done being filtered through a coffee filter to remove any impurities and floaties.  This will take all night.  This last weekend's batch has been a beautiful light to medium amber color will no sediment settling to the bottom.  I do think that our sap is starting to slow as the nights are not as cold anymore.  We'll see what happens.  Now off to bed for me.

Logging

Today as the sun shone and the temp was a beautiful 35 degrees, Scott and I both had the day off as well as tomorrow. Yeah! That doesn't happen much. We started clearing out some trees to make room off of the south east end of our shed "barn" for the chicken coop and the greenhouse. It was so nice to be back out cutting in nice weather. Most of this was green wood so we won't burn it until next year. The kids were out playing in the snow and the play set and also doing some sledding until the snow got too wet and sticky.

On one of trips through the woods with the 4-wheeler the kids and I noticed a spot where an owl came down to try and grab something. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. The last time I saw a print like that was about 10 years or so ago when we were raising Guinea Hens at camp and an owl came down and swiped one of those. I actually saw that in progress.

Yesterday I started thinking about tapping maple trees. It was about this time last year that we were talking with Greg, Scott's brother about it and we were a bit late (spring came much earlier last year). I think we are right about on time to start getting this processed prepped and ready to go. I have never done this and neither has Scott, but Greg has, so I gave him a call this afternoon and he is coming over tomorrow to check things out. He also said he was looking for something to do, he's retired now. :)

I also am the proud new owner of a turkey fryer which we are planning on using to boil down the sap to syrup. It is brand new (to us and actually never used but is about 8 years old now) and I am ready to try out this new adventure. Not a bad score for a few hours of computer work for a friend. I have heard that a good tap can produce 5-8 gallons of sap a day, I'll be interested to see how much ours will produce. We have a ton of nice maples in the bottoms out behind our house. If it take 30-40 gallons of sap to make about 1 gallon of syrup, I'm glad that we have a lot of trees. It would be cool to get enough to make enough syrup for us and Greg. Now I just have to do some research on the best way to go about long term storage of the maple syrup.