Most Photogenic

More sap comes in through tubes and pumps than through drops and buckets.  But the drops and buckets make for prettier pictures.

pictures.

A Recipe

....if you like homemade bread, here's a simple recipe using maple syrup.  It makes an ever so slightly sweet bread that's perfect for toast or sandwiches.
Mix 1 cup warm water with 1/3 cup maple syrup.  Sprinkle with 1 TBSP of yeast and let it 'proof'. Add 1 cup whole oats, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tsp. salt, 6 TBSP oil.  Stir together and gradually add as much bread flour as you need to make a stiff bread dough that you can turn out onto a board and knead until smooth and elastic.  Put it into a oiled bowl, cover with a towel, and put it into a warm place to rise until doubled.  When done rising to this point, punch down and shape into a loaf  and put into a greased loaf pan.  Cover and let rise again until doubled. Meanwhile heat your oven to 375 F.  Once doubled in size, bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until it sounds hollow went tapped on the bottom of the pan and the top is brown and crusty.  Remove from oven, allow to cool for about 10 minutes, then turn out of the pan. 

It's especially good if you toast it, spread it with lots of chunky peanut butter and then drizzle it with honey!

The Temps are Up and the Taps are In

Let the sap flow!

It Fits!

Don did his usual,super strong construction, and installed the tanks.  And, thanks to all those careful calculations, they fit!  Next in.....the reverse osmosis machine. 

Of course, it would help if the weather warmed up a tad  so we could actually get some sap.

This picture was taken March 1st!.....just  to let you know in case you were mistaking it for January. That's the chicken coop and chicken yard buried under all that snow.

Making it Fit

There's a new Reverse Osmosis (RO) machine,  a tank for the sap, a new tank for the concentrate and a tank for the permeate, all which needs to be fit into the sugar house.  That's not to mention the fact that the RO needs to be insulated and heated! 

 Don has been scratching his head and sharpening his pencil a lot to figure out how it's all going to fit.

Time Lapse of a Barn Raising

The night shift prepares for the slab pouring

Concrete floor

Installing the sill

The building begins

Roof rafters

Siding is put on

Putting on the roof

The Boys building the BArn

Calculating angles for the barn door

The barn door is hung

A New Breed of Chicken

Add caption

Pancakes and Syrup

Even the chickens like pancakes with maple syrup!

Laid Bare for the Barn

Wood has been cut, cleared, stacked or chipped to clear the spot for what now is being called "Sue's Barn"!!! 

The Timber Frame parts have been moved from Don's Barn and lay in wait by the building site.

It will be like building with big Lincoln Logs, or 'build by numbers'.

SUMMING UP SUMMER

Summer came and went like a mayfly, short lived but productive. Hours  were spent in the gardens.....planing, planting, harvesting, and weeding.   The syrup made in spring was bottled and labeled and put in inventory....ready for sale and for shipping.  The bees grew their hives and filled the combs with nectar and beat their wings over it to make honey.   And we have  stolen it from them to put into jars to sell, and  to drizzle onto toast and into tea. 

 

Flowers planted and bloomed for Tigri Flowers

 Syrup for a wedding

Harvesting Honey

Barn Raising

In the spring of 2013 Don bought the skeleton of a post and beam barn from a dismantled one in southern Vermont.  Those wooden bones have been sitting under the shed roof for over a year now. 

 

Clearing the spot to  raise it back up on our land is underway.  The trees that were cut from the area are being sawed and chipped. 

 

Progress pictures to follow!

Baby Announcement

 We are proud to announce the arrival of a baby turkey for our mama turkey!  After a failed attempt to hatch out a  borrowed egg from the chickens, I decided we needed to go the adoption route.  So, off to Guys Farm and Yard I went to see if they had any unclaimed/orphaned baby turkeys from their recent 'chick days'.  Sure enough there was a little bronze turkey baby, needing a home.  So I laid down my $6.25, boxed up the baby and brought it home to our patient brooding mama.  All I had to do is put the little chick in front of mama, and off the chick went, under the wing Mama loving lifted at the sight of it.  Since then the two have been a happy little pair.  She took to mothering right away, and the little chick has been peeping contentedly ever since.

Surrogate Sitter

Our one remaining turkey hen decided, about a month ago, that she was going to 'go broody' as they say.  Which means she wants to make a nest, lay eggs, and incubate them.  Well, the poor girl couldn't lay an egg, but she took to sitting on those two wooden turkey sized eggs in her nest box day after day.  Those wooden eggs had been put there to keep her from going into the wilds to lay her eggs. In an attempt to make her patient and quiet struggle fruitful, I put three fertile chicken  eggs in with the two wooden ones.  A turkey weighs at least 4 times more than a chicken, and a chicken egg is not designed to bear the weight of a turkey, so almost immediately two of the three eggs were crushed.  But, now, 18 days later, the 3rd and last egg is still intact.  If there is a live chick inside....... only time will tell.  She won't let me near the egg long enough to 'candle' it to see.  But, if there is, I would expect a baby chicken in about 4 or 5 days. 

Mama gets all puffed up when I come near.  But I did get a peek at the eggs beneath.

You can see the difference in size

Look at the 'nest' she has made in her next box.

From Tree to Sugar House

The sap in the buckets hanging on the trees take quite a trip to get to the holding tank in the sugar house.  First they have to be dumped into a collecting bucket.

Those buckets are then emptied into a 50 gallon tank strapped to the fork lift of the tractor.

It's then transported up the hill to the back of the barn

T

where the tank of sap is attached to a hose and its contents  gravity fed into the holding tank in the sugar house.

And in that one large 50 gallon tank of sap....sits just a little over 1 gallon of maple syrup!

We've Got Sap!

The buckets are full and the vacuum pump can hardly keep up with the sap flow!