Syrup Season Begins (with mud)

 In late February, I tapped six trees back in the woods.  We had about a day and a half of good sap running weather, and then it changed to the type of weather where the sap just doesn't really run: rain, wind, temperatures below freezing.  We had rain and strong winds.  We had ice.  We had cold.  We had a bunch of snow.

So I didn't bother going out to check my sap buckets for over a week.  Then we had two decent days in a row with more favorable weather to come and I knew I needed to get to the woods and see how things were going.  However, we'd gotten a whole bunch of snow in the night, so I had to wait for DH to clear the driveway (he needed both the tractor and the 4-wheeler for this) before I could use one of them to potentially transport 5 gallon buckets of sap back to the house.

It ended up being after lunch when we went to the woods.  DH thought it was too muddy to take the tractor (because, you know, got to keep it in 2WD to avoid that front wheel popping off), and I don't particularly like driving through the woods --narrow and twisty--with the wood hauler trailer attached to the 4-wheeler. We'd need that trailer to carry the full sap buckets, so DH did the driving, and I did the riding behind him.

All went well on the first trip to the woods.  I'd underestimated how much sap would be waiting, and had only brought back two empty buckets to swap out, so we had to make a second trip after grabbing more buckets.  The second trip started out okay, although I thought the 4-wheeler exhaust smelled a tad funny.  But in the middle of the field --DH was driving through the field rather than taking the long way around the edges--the 4-wheeler stalled.  And sank a bit in the quickly softening ground under the snow from the night before; the sun had come out full force and was melting things rather rapidly.

The 4-wheeler started again, but stalled without doing more than spinning it's tires in the mud.  And then it wouldn't restart.  Umm, what?  That's not good.  We'd taken the 4-wheeler and trailer in order to avoid potential problems the tractor would have in the 4 inches of snow on top of mud.  Now we'd have to take the tractor into the field in order to tow the dead 4-wheeler out.  

DH walked back to his shop and brought out the tractor.  We hooked it to the 4-wheeler, and DH started to pull.  The tractor tires spun in the mud. So DH put it in 4WD and tried again.  And the right front tire fell off.  You can probably imagine the tremendous mood that put DH in; he was already not too happy about the 4-wheeler's sudden death.

I volunteered to walk back to the shop this time, and retrieved the tools we needed for reattaching that wheel.

It's a bit of a walk from the shop to the point in the field the tractor and 4-wheeler were.

zoomed in from same spot as previous picture

Oh happy happy joy joy.  I gave DH the tools, and he quickly put the tractor wheel back on.  We tried again, this time moving the 4-wheeler a bit.  But then, DH went to turn to avoid an even wetter area in the field, and that darn wheel came off again.  He was so not overjoyed.  I went to help him with the tire, and one of my boots got sucked off in the mud.  Now I'm trying to not step in the snow or the mud with my stocking foot, not fall over, not lose my other boot, and pull my sucked off boot out of the mud so I could put it back on.  If you ever lost a boot in the mud as a kid, you can totally relate.

I did manage to free my boot and put it back on without getting a wet or muddy sock. We managed to get the wheel back on, and actually get the 4-wheeler towed (me sitting on it steering) back to the shop without getting the tractor stuck or having the wheel pop off a third time.

almost there

Once the tractor and 4-wheeler (with trailer still attached) were safely stowed back in the shop, I walked out to the woods with the empty extra buckets.  I felt a tad bit guilty about how that last hour and a half had gone in the mud with the machinery; if I'd brought more than two empty buckets the first time a return trip wouldn't have been necessary.  In the woods, I filled a third bucket with sap from the remaining two unchecked taps, and began trudging through the snowy field back to the house.  

Part of the way there, DH came out to meet me (at which point I had set down the 40-pound bucket of sap and was trying to catch my breath).  He took the bucket and carried it the rest of the way.

I stood in the field for another minute or two, until my heart didn't feel like it was jumping out of my chest anymore, and I could breathe fairly normally.  Man, being 51 sure is different than being 41 was.  Not that fond of this whole getting old thing.

Before setting off through the rest of the field, I looked around at all the lovely snow that hadn't been walked or driven through yet.  And, despite my age, I threw myself down into it.  I might be old, but I could still enjoy a good snow angel!

After all that hassle of bringing in the sap, the processing of it into syrup was easy and uneventful.  It took over 12 hours of boiling to reach the finished product, but what a beautiful batch of syrup it made.

What's the matter with the 4-wheeler?  We're still not sure.  Discussing it over dinner that night, we think it's something to do with either the fuel pump or the relay to the pump.  DH checked all the fuses and tested the relay with his volt meter the next day while I was finishing off the boiling of the sap, and all seemed normal there.  So most likely the fuel pump failed.  And of course the fuel pump is in a very hard to reach location up under the 4-wheeler.  Which means having to remove lots of other components in order to take off and replace the fuel pump.  Which means I won't be hauling sap with the 4-wheeler for a while.  

Hope this mud dries up fast . . 

What A Week!

 Other than having a jury duty summons for this week, it didn't start out too bad.  The weather was warm.  Sap was running. So after work on Monday (no jury duty Monday because it was Presidents Day), I got out my maple tree tapping supplies.

Buckets: Still clean (yay to storing them stacked and upside down!)

Lids: Still clean (also stacked, but right side up)

Spiles: Yep, still clean.

Tubing: Ugh. Some very small critter (insects, I assume) had gotten into every single piece of tubing and made some sort of mud nest.  Note to self: at the end of this season, put all clean dry tubing into a sealable plastic bag for storage before putting into tubing storage box.

bad picture of yucky dirty tubing

All tubing needed to be taken to the house and washed before I could go to the woods to tap trees.  Thank goodness for the extra long super skinny brush we have in our homebrew supplies; it was just the diameter to fit into the tubing, and long enough handle that I could get to the center of the tubing from each end.  Not a fun job, and it took time I hadn't anticipated needing, but I got them cleaned and sanitized.

With buckets and tools (and tubing!) loaded into the tractor bucket, out to the woods I went!  As you can see, there was no snow on the ground anymore, and things were actually a bit muddy.

The tapping of the trees--I decided to tap six this year--was quick and easy.  I took a picture to send to DD2 and let her know my syrup season has officially begun.  And then my phone died.  Weird, because I was sure it had a whole lot of battery a half an hour before, when I left the house.  I didn't think it was cold enough outside to drain it that quickly, but maybe it was.  I'd had trouble back in the Fall if I took pictures after my phone had gotten cold while sitting in the deer stand for a few hours.

Meanwhile, DH had come back to the woods on the four-wheeler. He noticed that one of the trees I'd tapped didn't have direct access from the woods road because of a bunch of dead tree limbs he'd pushed off the road a few years before with no thought to the fact that he was pushing them against a maple tree.  Since I hadn't tapped trees in that area until now, it hadn't been a big deal. Suddenly, now that I was using that part of the woods for sugaring this year, he felt the need to remove the pile.of dead branches.  So he jumped on the tractor, drove it to the brush pile, put the edge of the loader bucket in position to drag those limbs away from the maple tree, and began to move them.  Some of the pile went with him a few feet, then he cranked the tractor around to come at the pile again from a slightly different angle and pulled at the rest.

At which point the right front tire of the tractor fell off. Actually, the whole wheel, rim and everything.

This is a problem he's had before.  Years ago it happened, and he replaced some, but not all, of the parts in the wheel assembly.  Last summer it fell off once or twice.  This winter, it's fallen off so many times (only while he's using it *ahem, maybe not in a way it can handle without replacing those other wheel assembly parts*) that he's gotten the process of reattaching it down to less than 10 minutes.  Ironically, when I set out for the woods with the tractor that day, he'd cautioned me not to put it in 4-wheel drive because that's the mode that the wheel tends to fall off in.  I had left it in two wheel, and had no issues.

Anyway, now we're back in the woods, I'm done tapping trees, and I'm ready to go back to the house to cook dinner and also call the jury hotline (because it's after 5:00 p.m.) to see if I need to report for jury duty the next morning.  BUT the tire fell off the tractor, and DH has taken the 4-wheeler back to the house to get his wheel re-attaching tools and he wants me to stay in the woods to help (and also drive the tractor back once it has four wheels again).   Cue the Final Jeopardy waiting music. . . 

Twenty-five minutes later, I'm back in the house, the tractor (with all four wheels in place) is parked in DH's shop where it lives, dinner is started, and I called to check about jury duty and found that I didn't need to report on Tuesday.  Phew.

Tuesday was a normal day.  Barn work, work at home, call in after five to see about jury duty for Wednesday (a day which I happened to have a dentist appointment that, when consulted about my impending jury duty week, the dentist's office had said let's not reschedule because then I wouldn't be able to get my teeth cleaned until this Fall as they were that far out in their scheduling for cleanings; they said to hope for the best and if I had to miss my appointment to serve jury duty to just call as soon as I knew and leave them a message.  No hard feelings if my cancellation was less than 24 hours notice.)

Thankfully, I didn't have jury duty on Wednesday.  So I got to go to the dentist instead.  Honestly, as dental visits go, it was a really good one.  Maybe it was just the perspective of jury duty versus dental appointment that made it a happy event. After leaving the dentist office, I headed straight to the horse farm to work.  It was sleeting, but not terribly. Our forecast for Wednesday was a winter storm moving in throughout the day, possibly freezing rain, probably sleet, maybe an inch or two of snow by Thursday morning, and definitely some ice.

What we got was more and more and more sleet.  By the time I was done working (around 2:00) and ready to head home, my trusty rusty Suburban had a thin coat of ice all over.  I had to bust the ice on the door handle to even open the driver's door and retrieve the ice scraper so I could set to work clearing the windshield.  On the way home the roads weren't too bad, just starting to get slick in spots.

Oh boy, did it get worse after the sun went down!  At 9:30, our power blinked a few times, then came on in a dim brown-out capacity.  So DH went to the electric panel in the basement and shut off the main (so as to avoid damage to every appliance that was plugged in without being on a surge protector--like fridges, freezers, ovens, water softener... ) and I used my phone to get online and report the issue to our electric company.  Except their website was overloaded and it took another 45 minutes before we actually were able to get through and make an official loss of power report.

Being as the ice storm was still going, and predicted to go through the night, there was no information available from the electric company as to when we might again have electricity.  So DH and I just called it a night and went to bed.

We actually slept well, as it was really dark and quiet, and the house cooled off in the night making the bedroom a good temperature for deep sleep.  But in the morning, when we needed to get up for work (yay, no jury duty on Thursday either!), it was chilly and not appealing to crawl out from under the covers.

DH got the generator out from where it was buried stored in a corner of the garage, hooked it up, gassed it up, and fired it up.  And we had electricity to cool off the fridges and freezers, power the pump that brings the hot water from the outdoor wood boiler into the house for heat (and domestic hot water in the winter months), the well pump for cold water, and modem for the internet--so DH could work from home as he has been for most of the last three years.  A quick check of the electric company website said they basically had no idea when they would get our power issue fixed because they had hundreds of thousands of customers without power due to the storm.  

So we set about normal life with the generator running: using nothing that draws a lot of electricity, especially things that heat up--like the oven, microwave, etc.  Which is why, when we built our house, I chose to have a gas cooktop rather than electric one. I can still cook, just not bake or roast anything. Using the generator also  requires conserving water, as the well pump uses quite a bit of power and we wanted lights, heat, and water (and cold fridges and freezers) without bogging down--and stalling out--the generator.

Outside, everything had a thick coating of ice. Including the chicken door on the coop. They had to stay in until later in the day when the sun had melted things enough for the ice on the door to be thin enough DH could pull the door open.

With no jury duty, and no babysitting of Faline and Buck (as all the schools had a 'snow' day and DD1 didn't have to work) and not being scheduled at the horse farm because Thursdays this year are babysitting days, I had a day off.  Of sorts.  A lot of my fun options were limited due to being on generator power (no ironing of fabric for sewing, actually no sewing of anything all ready ironed, cut, and ready to sew) no unnecessary internet surfing, no baking, no recreational outdoor activities because it was SLICK.  So I read some, knitted some, and then found myself working on household tasks (that didn't need electricity) that I'd been putting off.  

I did take a few pictures though, until my phone turned itself off again.  I'm wondering if there's some sort of glitch related to camera and the phone battery or something. . . 

poor sad pine tree; thankfully it thawed and had no loss of branches

Thursday evening I called about jury duty and heaved a huge sigh of relief when told I didn't need to report on Friday morning.  My week of service had gone by without actually having to appear in person.  Not that I mind serving on a jury; I did in 2008, it's just that every jury summons I've gotten since then has been to the courthouse in the major city nearby (versus the small county courthouse I served at in '08) and the drive to that courthouse in that city (plus maneuvering parking ramps) stresses me out to near panic attack.  The expressway I have to take is notorious for daily accidents, and currently several of it's on/off ramps are closed for construction making safe driving even more difficult.  And then there's multi-lane one-way streets once I'm off that expressway and somewhat close to the courthouse.  And trying to find parking in a parking ramp for my behemoth trusty rusty Suburban. . . Having the possibility of jury duty hanging over my head all week had been really stressful.

Checked the power company website; still no restoration estimate.   Went to bed, same as Wednesday night (with the exception of shutting down generator and stowing in garage so it was safe from coming up missing in the night).  Friday morning chilly inside the house and no update from power company, out came the generator again and DH fueled it and fired it up.

So Friday was a normal work day, like Tuesday.  Except with ice.  Lots of ice.  The roads were all clear and dry.  But the driveways and other paths that had melted to slushy on Thursday had all frozen solid over night and were skating rinks.  I also was in charge of turning out all the horses at that horse farm on Friday morning because the barn owner had gone on vacation Thursday and the person she had arranged to do Friday morning feed couldn't stay until horses were done with their breakfast and ready for turnout.  That person had a regular job they needed to be to by 9:00.

I managed to safely get everyone to their respective turnouts which, themselves, weren't icy.  Neither was the grass of the lawn and driveway edges (which I walked horses on so none of us slipped and broke ourselves and died--sorry not sorry if the lawn got a little punched up with hooves).  The normal walkways were all way too slick to traverse that morning (but much melted and usable by noon).

All the water tanks were iced over (who removed the tank heaters all ready?!?), so I grabbed a pry bar and a maul and set to work on removing the ice so the horses could drink throughout the day.

The pry bar and maul worked really well, and it only took me about five minutes per tank to split and remove the 2-3 inch thick ice from each one. I'm glad I had thought to bring extra gloves, because mine were soaked after the first tank.  The sun was out and bright, but the air temperature was only in the twenties at that point.

The horses seemed grateful for my ice removal endeavors.

Friday passed with no update on our electric status, which we kind of expected.  We aren't exactly in the wilds of Michigan, but we are in the boonies of the more populated cities so are typically low on the priority list when the power gets knocked out.  Which is why we own a generator.  Friday night a run to the village 6 miles away to refill our two 5-gallon gas cans, but other than that a repeat of Thursday night: shut down and stow the generator before bed.

Saturday, I was awakened at 7:30 a.m.by a text from the electric company: they had an update!  They expected to restore our power 'on Sunday'.  DH did the whole morning generator routine.  We're glad to have it, but by now are really tired of hearing it run in the background all day long.

Saturday evening, we babysat Faline and Buck, as previously planned, even though we were on generator power.  They, too, had been out of power since Wednesday night, and had procured a generator on Friday.  DD1 and Honorary Son deserved a little break to go to a trivia fund-raiser event they'd signed up for back in January.  After they picked up the kids and went back home, DH and I repeated our nightly generator ritual.

This morning, Sunday, we awoke with the sun (actually, the alarm clock because DH and a friend were planning to drive a few hours north today and go snowmobiling in the part of Michigan that had gotten a foot of snow and not the 1/2"+ of ice that we'd received) and checked the electric company website.  No change from yesterday.  Still says our power is expected to be restored today, but no estimate of what part of the day.  And it was still off.  So, again, haul out the generator, fuel it up, fire it up.

still going. . . 

As of posting this, we have been without power for over 87 hours.  That's more than three and a half 24-hour days.  I'm craving muffins, coffee cakes, biscuits,  something other than fried eggs and granola for breakfast.  A roast chicken, or pulled pork from a pork shoulder cooked down in the crockpot for dinner; something other than another concoction of venison burger, pasta, tomato sauce, spices (and maybe cheese!) cooked on the gas stovetop.  And we're down to our last two slices of homemade bread; I'll probably break down this afternoon and run to the store for a loaf of store bought bread.I may end up needing to make a gas run anyway.  I'm really glad I did a few loads of laundry on Wednesday before the power went out, otherwise we'd be running low on clean clothes and towels about now. 

It will be good to get electricity back (fingers crossed for sometime today) and be able to run all the things simultaneously that we can't while using the generator--washer, dryer, oven, dishwasher, microwave, coffee maker, iron, sewing machine. . .  A long hot shower instead of a quickie basic soap-down and hair wash. . . 

But it will also mean a few busy days of catching up on chores while also working a normal schedule this week (and probably not actually getting time to use the sewing machine).  Is a relaxing, easy week too much to ask for?

February Doings

February has been a beautiful month, for the most part.  We've had more sunny blue sky days than I can count.  Some of them were below-zero cold, like the morning this picture was taken of the trees shrouded in hoar frost.  The last several, however, have been above the 40-degree mark and still sunny; which is pretty unusual for this time of year.  Warm days in February are typically cloudy ones.

The first Saturday, we had a full house.  DH, DS1, DS2 and Honorary Son made about 45 pounds of sausage--breakfast, chorizo and Italian--while all the grandkids played together.  During the couple hour break while the sausage meat soaked in its seasonings before grinding, the guys got out the snowmobiles and ran them around the field.  The grandkids got to go sledding behind the 4-Wheeler.  Even Faline bundled up and went for her first sled ride, securely held by K3!

My mudroom was full of boots, coats, and cold-weather gear.  Overwhelming, but also a good full-heart feeling.

Some of the Italian sausage was made into links.  About half was packaged in bulk, for using in spaghetti sauce and on pizza.

With all the sunlight, my chickens are cranking out the eggs.  They're averaging 8-9 a day, but I've had as many as 11 in one day this week.  They are keeping the whole family well supplied, and I think I'll even have enough to sell a few dozen a week this Spring and early Summer.

Over several weekends, DH and I pruned all the fruit trees in our little orchard, as well as the trees in the yard (any low-hanging branches that were nuisances while mowing the lawn), the bushes around the house, and a large majority of the wild apples and crabapples along the north fence line and where the field meets the woods.  

I found some grapevine growing in one of the lilac bushes near the house, and pulled it out. As I was winding it to better be able to throw it onto the brush pile, I had the thought to try to make a wreath out of it.  Twisting and turning the length of the vines around the original loop I made was incredibly easier than I'd thought it would be.  And just like that, I have a free grapevine wreath to decorate with!

On Wednesday this week, I went out and tapped some of the maples in our woods.  The extended forecast is for just right temperatures for the sap to begin running.  I hereby declare maple syrup season to be underway!

Next comes Mud Month (March), and you can tell that Mother Nature is getting ready to transition to Spring.  In the last week we've seen many robins and bluebirds, as well as flocks of starlings (DH's nemesis).  We've also, in the last two days, lost the majority of the nice snow that had finally built up to a useful (ie sledding, skiing, snowmobiling) amount.  Our driveway and all the plowed areas around this little place here are down to bare earth; bare muddy earth.  

Time for me to get my tender veggie and flower seeds started indoors!
 

Well, That Was Different

I can honestly say that this has been a March unlike any I have ever known. We started with a quick get-away to Myrtle Beach where the weather was decidedly gloomy.  Came home and made a bunch of sausage with the kids and grandkids, and began syrup making for this year.

And then, life as we know it changed.  DH was ordered to work from home. So, the desk in the study, which has largely been used as a catch-all in the last 4+ years, had to become a work space once more.

Another big change was that my usual shopping method of stocking up on groceries once a month couldn't happen.  My shopping date hit right as people were being told to work from home, or that they weren't going to be working for the next few weeks (teachers, etc), and so when I went to the store the panic buying was beginning, and I couldn't get a month's worth of anything.  Which meant I've had to go to the grocery store weekly (or twice a week sometimes) rather than once a month plus maybe one more time to restock on produce and dairy.

Ironic that since we've had a lockdown, Stay Home order from the governor, I've actually had to go to the store more than I do when we're allowed to roam about freely.

My cooking routine, however, is largely unchanged.  Since we hardly ever eat out and I've cooked from scratch forever, I'm still baking bread, making pizza by hand, and all the other things I do in my kitchen but most Americans don't.

cabbage rolls

making ricotta for lasagna

finished ricotta

The syrup season has been a crappy one, if I may be blunt. The weather has mainly been too cold, too warm, too rainy, or too windy for the sap to run.  As a result, I've only boiled down one more batch of syrup, which yielded 1 qt and 1 pt.  The local wildlife have been checking out my sap buckets in the woods, as evidenced by the muddy paw prints left behind.

This looks to be our last stretch of days below 50 degrees, so I plan to go out and pull taps tomorrow.  Will either boil sap tomorrow evening or on Thursday after work, depending on how much is actually in the buckets and how long it will take to finish into syrup.

raccoon print

finishing off in the kitchen

I had started my pepper and tomato seedlings indoors in late February, and they have grown enough that last weekend I transplanted most of them into larger containers.  They will continue to live indoors in these containers for another 6-8 weeks before going out to the garden.

Since I work on a farm, I am considered an essential worker and get to leave home to go to work everyday like normal.  Which means I still get to see my horse even though I'm not working with him much currently.

Because I'm still driving 5 days each week, the Suburban continues to roll closer to my 300,000 mile goal on the odometer.  We hit 263,000 this month.

I have been doing more sewing than usual.  I made two quilt blocks for a forum quilt I'm involved in each year.

I also made some hot pads as part of Surprise's upcoming birthday present.  I was tipped off that she likes cows, and there is a really cute cow block pattern in Farm Girl Vintage 2.  So. . . 

in process

finished

There has also been knitting going on, but those pictures are waiting for April's Yarn Along post.

Outdoors, I managed to get DH to do some adjusting of my clothesline setup.  The posts have been leaning inward for years, needing to be pushed back upright with the tractor when the ground is soft.  It's soft now, and I can easily go without using the clothesline for several more weeks since April is usually rainy month.  The timing was perfect to get those posts fixed and let them sit a good while to firm up before needing my clothesline. While we were at it, I decided that I might as well take off the old cotton lines and just put new ones up when I'm ready to hang clothes.

I also decided to actually have DH pull the post on the far end, and move it about six feet closer to the other post.  With only 2-3 of us home, I really don't fill the entire clothesline with laundry like when I was raising four kids and doing 1-2 loads of laundry every single day.  A shorter span would work just fine, plus it would be less unsupported weight to put strain on the posts.  Hopefully they will stay straight longer.  Plus, there is a spruce tree near the far post that had grown big enough that in a few more years it's branches would be able to be touched by laundry hanging (and blowing) on the line.  Now that the post is moved, that tree probably won't interfere with my laundry for a decade at least.

post pulled

both posts in the ground and straightened

That about wraps up what's been happening at this little place here since I last posted.  We'll see what April has in store for us; currently the news reports are that Michigan will remain on Stay Home until April 30th, if not longer.

Sausages and Syrup

DH and I returned from our mini-vacation on Thursday evening last week.  On Friday (he had also taken as a vacation day), DH purchased 60 pounds of boneless pork butt, and that evening both of our sons came over to make sausage.  K3 and Toad came along too, and spent the night (DS1 went home and came back the next morning to finish the sausage project.)  DD1 and Honorary Son also came over on Saturday to assist with the sausage.  That's been our rule since we started making sausage in 2016:  if you want homemade sausage, you  must come help create it.

I typically don't assist in the sausage making endeavors, mainly because I eat very little sausage (for some reason my digestive system is not fond of pork sausage) and also because there are always many other tasks on my to-do list.  That weekend, my main task--other than catching up on laundry after being away from home--was to boil down the 15 gallons of sap that flowed that week.  I had set taps the prior weekend, in anticipation of the warm up that was forecasted to occur while I was out of town.

After breakfast on Saturday, the guys ground the 60 pounds of meat they had diced and seasoned the night before, and the grandkids and I checked sap buckets out in the woods to see if any more had run overnight. It hadn't, but the grandkids wanted to go look, so we did.  Any excuse to go for a tractor ride or to the woods will do.

It was rather muddy in the woods, and K3 mostly wanted to just walk/balance on every fallen tree she could find.

Toad, on the other hand, is drawn to puddles and mud like a magnet.  As a bonus, it had been cold enough overnight to form a thin layer of ice on most of the wet spots in the woods.  He of course had to walk on them to see if the ice was thick enough to hold him.

It wasn't.  But that was okay, because both kids were wearing boots.  We always request that they bring boots when they are coming over to stay with us.  Because kids need to explore outside no matter what the weather or ground conditions.

Back in the house, they washed up and then helped with stuffing Italian sausage into casings, as well as packaging all three kinds of sausage: Italian, chorizo, and breakfast.  They also helped me keep an eye on the sap as it boiled down.  

Unfortunately, they had to go home before it was finished syrup, but I did dip a little out shortly before they left and let it cool so that they could taste the progress from slightly sweet water (the beginning sap) to light golden brown almost-syrup that was kind of like an uncarbonated maple flavored soft drink.

A few hours later, the syrup was completed, a lovely amber color with a delicious flavor.  That fifteen gallons of sap yielded 2 pints, 6 ounces.  The pints are sealed and in storage until needed.  The 6 ounces, being not enough to fill even a half-pint container, went into the fridge for use first.  A couple spoonfuls went on top of vanilla ice cream for DH and my dessert that night.

This post tells in more detail about how we make sausage.

Tapped Out

Maple syrup season has come to an end at this little place here.  Last weekend we actually hit 70 degrees.  Which really sent the maple trees into growing leaves mode.  The buds swelled to bursting, and I pulled my taps.

maple buds showing red

The taps had been in place roughly five weeks, the typical length of a sap run is about six.  Depends on the weather, of course.  The sap won't run if the days are below freezing, but the spring run is done when the days are very warm and the nights are consistently above freezing.  

tap removed, sap clearly not running

The taps popped out of their holes easily, and the tree will fill in the hole with new growth, just like how over several weeks a hole in your own skin heals with just a small scar to show where the puncture was.

After pulling taps, I loaded up all my buckets, taps, and hosing into the tractor loader bucket for easy transport up to the house, where everything will get washed and thoroughly dried before being put away for the next 10.5 months or so.

ready to haul in for clean up and storage

Once the final batch of sap was boiled down into syrup, I took a picture of all this year's batches to show how the color of the syrup changes as the season progresses.  It starts out very light and golden colored, becomes amber, and finally near the end of the season, becomes the brown color that is typically thought of when one says 'syrup'.

color progression

My yield for this season tallied up to be 14 pints, which is 1.75 gallons.  Not counting the small amounts that didn't fit into jars with each batch.  Those got eaten up on stacks of pancakes and waffles each weekend.