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awakenings under my nose

By on March 16, 2016 in Farm and Garden, Uncategorized

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You would think that being outside for a few days, feeding a fire, cutting wood, transfering almost finished sap to be boiled down to syrup that I would have caught all that I have been waiting for since winter.  Somehow I didn’t notice all the green things that have been pushing their way up through our soil.  It took Livie to come in to the kitchen with talk of little purple flowers.  Indeed there are little purple flowers and daffodils coming up.   It is coming.  All the awakenings are starting and I couldn’t be more excited for it.  Yesterday all of a sudden, every turn I took coming down the road to our homestead, it was as if those daffodils were jumping up from their hillsides to say “hey, look at us”.

How have I missed all of these little plants coming up?  I guess I’ve been running around here and there so fast that taking time to look around did not happen.  It is time to slow down a little and take it all in.  Cherry and plum trees are starting to bud out.  The chickens and ducky are loving our little running creeks and soon we will start prepping the garden.  Its getting so close.  I really need to put my plan on paper.  Planning the garden makes me so excited and at the same time it makes me feel like the rabbit in Alice and Wonderland, I’m late, I’m late!

I can’t wait for the redbuds to come out, violets and dandelions,  the feeling of crisp cool air on sunny spring mornings.  Walking around the garden in bare feet with a watering can.   The spring flush of growth, this is what makes me happy.  The days are coming where I will get to spend my days outside with my babies.  It is such a blessing to me and one that I cherish and never want to take for granted because having a daughter with children and two guys here who are on the cusp of being adults, I know that they won’t always be here with me in our garden.

My to do list is so long that I have to look at it and take it little by little and know that everything will get done when it needs to be.  My heart says to play with seeds and seed starting trays, my brain says that soccer practice, cleaning out the hen house and laundry must happen first but somehow I hope to fit everything in at some point.

It is so hard to keep inside and the kids have been doing their school work in the breezeway since the ground is still cold, soggy and quite muddy in many places.  Snow is expected on Sunday.  Hard to believe with all this warm sunshine everywhere but I remind myself that this is life in the Ohio Valley.  We will play this winter, spring dance all the way until the end of April.

 

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of sap and syrup

By on March 12, 2016 in Farm and Garden, Free wild food, Preserving the Harvest

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How to share with you the feeling of walking into the woods these mornings to discover so much goodness around us?  Walking from tree to tree and checking taps is so much fun.  Before moving here from Florida, our biggest experience in maple syrup and how it comes to be was largely from the Little House books and reenactment events.  The idea of tapping trees just out in our woods and coming out with a sweet sugar source is so exciting and mysterious.

Last year I decided not to tap our trees and just take the year to learn, observe and learn some more.  Back in the fall, on a very cool day, the kids and I headed out to our woods with bright neon pink plastic ribbon tape (the kind that is used to rope off areas of traffic I suppose) and identified the trees.  Then came the long wait through winter where every few days, John Paul or Chris would come to me and ask me how many more days till we tap.  It was very reminiscent of kids on a long trip in the back seat.  A few more weeks I would say and they were off to another activity until the thought and excitement would come back and the question would come up again.

I was lucky enough to find some old taps and buckets, which I love because I imagine how many years these taps were part of creating this magical syrup that we love so much.  Even with all the planning, I tapped a bit late according to most people but even late we have gotten quite a bit of maple sap to process.  Just like every other learning adventure, the words “next year will be even better” are commonly spoken and we are already planning next years maple season and I too am saying that next year will be even better.

Next year we will already know which trees were great and which may not be worth retapping.  We have decided that we love the metal taps better than the plastic taps and tubing and though I like the metal buckets, I LOVE the mason jars I rigged up with twine.  Indeed, next year will be better and this year we will enjoy the fruits of our labors.  Sweet labor.  That is my kind of reward and I will be posting the entire process once we are finally finished and have our syrup bottled up.

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