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

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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!

First Syrup of the Season

Sap flow hasn't started in earnest yet, but last week there was enough of a warm up to get the sap to fill a tank and do a day's worth of boiling.  It was a good trial run for the sap to come.

First a fire had to be roaring in the evaporator.

Then the sap was allowed to boil it's way along the pan, getting some over zealous foam scooped off when necessary.

When measurements show the sugar content is high enough, the syrup is 'drawn off' and put through a filter.

It took most of the afternoon and into the evening to get the job done.

Gearing up for Sugaring

March is upon us and that means the sap will be flowing soon and it will be time to make our maple syrup.  But before that can happen, there's lots to prep.

The dead mice had to be cleaned out of the pump house.

The snow had to be cleared away so the tank could be installed

The sap storage tank had to be hauled down to the pump house

And now the pump house is up and ready

There are over 300 trees to be tapped

and there are many many feet of line to repair, and still there are more chores to be done.  Stay tuned.

A Death in the Farm Family

This past week, one of our turkey hens died after a brief illness.  There aren't any vets in town that take turkeys for patients, so we were helpless to provide appropriate treatment.  We're very sad.  She was such a curious and friendly creature and provided hours of company and entertainment.  She leaves her sister, who I know will miss her.  Turkeys are flock animals and are always happiest hanging around with fellow turkeys, or chickens or people if that's whose around.  It remains to be seen if we find a replacement turkey. 

Fifteen to One

One cord of wood, burning hot in the maple sugar evaporator  will make fifteen gallons of maple syrup.  That means lots of chopping, stacking and storing of wood.  Don has been busy these past few weekends and evenings making wood cribs and chopping wood in preparation for the fast approaching sugaring season.  Lucky for him his good friend Pat Reed has been willing to lend a hand in the wood chopping. 

 

Frost Bite

It's gotten bitterly cold this month and keeping the chickens warm enough has been a challenge.  This poor rooster is low guy in the hen pecking order, so often he is left out in the cold, literally, unless I lock them all up in the coop.  On the extremely cold days, I don't let them out, but otherwise, I let them roam about in their yard.   Apparently the cold caused some frost bite on his wattle.  I had read the warnings in the 'chicken literature' about the possibility of this happening, but I didn't take the necessary precaution of putting vaseline on the crops and wattles.  I will be more cautious from now on.  You can see the cold damage on the edges of the rooster's wattle.  He doesn't seem to pleased with his situation, does he?

Turning Syrup to Sugar

Making maple sugar is easy....just heat and stir!  Well, maybe not that easy.  You have to heat your maple syrup to a very specific temperature, then stir and stir and stir and stir and stir and stir and stir and stir.  But you end up with golden granules that put white sugar to shame.

From Our Coop to Yours, Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

The Beeze Won't Freeze

You never know when winter is going to hit, so you have to prepare, usually sooner than you think you do.  This year we have gotten some colder than normal weather, earlier than normal.  The list of what didn't get done in time is too long to share, but one important item did get accomplished...winterizing the bees.
Honey bees are cold blooded and reflect the ambient air temperature.  If they freeze, they would die, so, to live through a long cold winter they need a source of heat. One big benefit is the fact that bees are furry. That fur provides a dead air space that insulates them. And when two bees get close together they have more dead air space and if  5000 bees cluster together they can all stay a bit warmer for even longer, using all that fuzz as an insulator to keep warm air in. So, for starters the bees all cluster together in the middle of the hive.  But that only works until there's no more warm air to hold. When there is no more warm air to hold in, the bees have to start making their own heat.  The bees on the inside of that cluster vibrate their wing muscles and  they warm up. And that warmth is moved up, down and sideways throughout the  cluster and keeps all the bees warm. To help keep that warmth in the hive, Don did a little energy efficiency and installed some insulation and a wind-proof wrap to their hives.  So now they are all tucked in, left to eat their honey, vibrate their wings, and hopefully keep warm and healthy.