Sugaring #1

This morning my brother-in-law came over to teach me how to tap maple trees. He had 8 taps, so that was how many trees we targeted. Most of the trees that we tapped were sugar maples, but a few were red maples. I learned that it is best to tap trees over 10 inches, drill at a 30 degree angle upwards and drill in 3-5 inches depending on the size of the tree. You don't want to drill into the heart wood, but you want to drill in far enough to create a pocket for the sap. I found all of this very interesting. We have a huge sugar maple right next to the road, but we didn't want to tap it seeing it is so close and up here you never know who is going to screw around with it.

Greg said in this area we won't get a huge flow because of the sand, but we had a wet fall, so the roots are well hydrated so we'll see. Things aren't flowing yet, the trees are still pretty frozen, but in the next few days as things warm up and we tapped trees on the south slope, they should start flowing soon. From Greg and Darlene's experience a ratio of 14-1 is what they go by when boiling it down, but he said to just go by taste, cause it can get way sweet way fast. We plan on cutting it with some Karo syrup to thicken it up some and help with the "sweet" factor and then try and can it. We could freeze it, but around here with our venison we run out of freezer space and we have a huge root cellar that we can store canned things in.

Here are a couple of pictures from this morning. The kids really got into helping Uncle Greg. Adin already has the taps figured out exactly how they get put in. He is a fast learner.



Tomorrow morning before work, I'll take a hike and see if there is anything of promise in those buckets or anything we need to discard in those buckets. It is nature and you never know what might find it's way into a sap bucket. Maybe if this process all goes well and we all like the product, we'll invest in some more taps and such.

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.

Sunroom Garden - Day 25

Back on the 9th of February, the kids and I planted cilantro, sugar snap peas and green beans in beautifully decorated pots just to see what would happen. The seed came from our garden last summer and I wanted to see if they would grow and we were all desperate for spring.

Well, now it is Day 25 and things are coming along nicely. They seem to like my south facing window in the sunroom. I have hung string from the top frame of the window for the peas to climb and the cilantro is now finally showing it's real leaves. Each day the little plants get loving kisses from my kids and are gently watered when needed. Freya has yet to find them which is good news.

This winter we have found ourselves using nature's refrigeration system a lot. First with ground venison and today with rice for chicken fried rice tonight for supper. Why use electricity when the outside cold will work. I should have taken a picture of our venison lined up on the rail of our deck covered in snow, but it got used up before I thought of it. Hopefully it won't be much longer until we won't be able to use this system. The sun is shining beautifully today, but alas it is snowing and in the 20's. Don't get me wrong, the 20's are much better than what we had last week.

Dreaming BIG!

So as summer work project season draws closer....who am I kidding, it is still many months away. I am at least going to start planning and dreaming about the summer work project season. Much better. Hubby and I have started to toss around the possibility of building that green house and chicken coop this summer/fall.

Chicken coop: We are for sure going to have layers as we go through tons of eggs and we LOVE fresh eggs. We are also tossing around the idea of adding fryers or as combo meat-eggs breed to the mix, obviously keeping the two separate for different feeding needs. Scott sees that as a good reason to get a plucker "for the chickens" that will also work on ducks and other game birds. For any of you out there who may be reading this and who have or are raising chickens, I would love to hear suggestions for coop ideas and breed ideas. We are in Zone 3 so we need hardy hens.

Green House: Just dreaming big on this one as I have no idea what is possible or even in the budget as of yet, but if I could have anything, these are some of the things I would want.
* Raised growing tables where I could grow some fresh veggies year round (provided we have this hooked up to our wood boiler.)
* lots of work space for potting and starting seeds.
* Soil bins that tip out like my Grandmother's flour bin. One for soil and one for completed compost.
* A lighting and watering system.
* A system to collect & store rain water.
I would love to hear other's dream green house components, things that are must-haves and can't live with outs.

I figure I might as well dream big and then pair it down from there to reality.