Expectant

This time of year is always so expectant.

Expectant of the spring to come.

Expectant of the life rising up from the earth again.

Expectant of the lives that will come from lives already here.

Expectant.

Even though we are snowed IN,

The stream is between the tree on your right and the first tree on your left.  Nope, you can't see it, I know.

having received another triple-headed snowstorm on top of the one we already had,

spring is coming.  There are plants growing under lights in the dining room, and plans for the year are being made.

So, no doubt about it.

On top of that, two of my girls are expectant as well.  Thanks to these two gentlemen,

Max on the left, Stu on the right.  I don't know which is "daddy"

Dulcinea now looks like this:

(No, she's probably not thankful.  Understandably so).

When I look at last year's pic, when I thought she might have been pregnant,

 

Last year's pic of an unpregnant Dulci.

but she was not, I am happy to say that Dulcinea is expectant too.  Due date?  April 7th.  We'll see if she sticks with it.

Lilly is also expectant, I believe.  She's not due until late May, but she's kinda-sorta showing.  She's drying up like gangbusters, which is not great, and dances on the milking stand like it's going out of style.  I taking that to mean she's also expectant, but I'm waiting until she pops to be sure.  If so, Lilly can expect this to be just about the last time she has to be expectant, since she's one of my CAE girls, and I'd prefer not to risk her, when there are 4 others who are clean to take her place.  At the very least, she will earn a break.  

On the other fronts?  I expect to get outside in the next two days to tap trees, as I am very, very late because of snowstorms.  I also expect to be seeding about 100 broccoli and 100 cauliflower plants this week, as it's that time already.  I also expect, honestly, to run out of room to put all these things because 200 seedlings on top of what's already growing is A LOT of seedlings in a limited space.  I expect to worry about this, since I already am worrying.  Might as well avoid the rush.

Also, at the end of the month, I expect to order the first batch of meatbirds to arrive next month, as well as a number of Delawares which I expect to be our sustainable meatbird of choice.  At least, I hope that's how it's going to work out.  I can't tell at all if it will, as I've only dealt with the Cornish Cross, but I am hoping that the Delawares will live up to their feed conversion ratios and become some good looking birds meaty birds who will be able to reproduce themselves and therefore keep us in chicken ad infinitum.

We'll see.

I also expect to figure out what to do about the turkey situation, as that would really be a nice addition to our stores, but NO WAY am I doing that whole turkey thing like I did back in 2012.  What a mess that was.  I expect this time, now that I've had experience, to turn out better.

So yep, expectant.  That's this time of year in a nutshell.  Is it the same for you??

Sappy

So I never did tell you how maple sugaring turned out.

In a nutshell, it went well.  I pulled the taps last week and sugared off one final time, and wound up with 6 quarts and 1 pint of maple syrup, plus some uncounted amount that we used up.

Not bad from 29 taps, starting too late, and doing the sugaring on an outdoor turkey cooker.  Next year, things may be different, but I won't let on about that yet, until I know for sure.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a few pictures of the 6 week old "babies" in the house.

Collette at the feeder, which is where she likes to be, Pickle and Roy laying behind her

Roy is sleepy!



Collette, being interrupted in her meal

They are still getting a very little milk, but that's just about done.  I think the last time they'll get it will be Saturday, and then no more.  They eat the pellets and drink the water without a problem, and today I saw them eating hay.  They do love the milk, though, but they have less patience for it now.  They are raring to go, and don't want to stand still too long, even to drink milk.

They're not allowed to roam the house, but they are occasionally let out in the bathroom to run, because it's easy to clean.  I think Pickle would make an excellent house bunny, but I still have to convince my husband of that.  Either way, Pickle and Collette will be staying with us.  Roy, I'm afraid, will be sold when he's old enough.  I just don't have enough room to keep them all, much to my son's chagrin.  I can justify 1 black bunny, but two is a stretch.  Also joining Roy on the "sale block" will probably be Timothy, which is one of the bunnies from Bella's last litter.  He's a wonderful boy, also black, but he's no fiber bunny.  Despite the fact that he's half English Angora and half Jersey Woolie, he's got no usable hair to speak of.  Unfortunately, I can afford to feed only who can produce, and it's not him.  I am thankful, though, that my daughter is keeping Alexander as a pet, who is another from Bella's litter.  At least we'll have a little someone from that wonderful experience.

These decisions are hard, and not my favorite, but what can you do?  It's a part of the lifestyle.  I know that I'm going to have a much harder time selling the goat kids when it's time, but it'll still have to be done.

Sigh. 

I think I'll go snuggle a bunny or two.

Be well!

It Goes and It Goes

Well, the Dulci question is still out there.  Her heat is about over, but he refused her the entire time.  I can't figure it out.  She looks bred to me, so maybe it's wacky hormones.  Maybe it was because the weather was nice.  Very strange either way.

I am trying to come out of "hibernation mode" right now.  I resisted it a long time this winter.  I painted the kitchen cabinets, I painted trim, I brought new goats home, but it happened anyway.  It was grey and snowy so long last month that I just did my chores and then curled up with a good book.  UGH.  As much as I love to relax, I hate coming out of it.  And it's time, baby, it's time.

First, it's this time again:

Does that look familiar?  How about now? 

Oh yeah, it's tappin' time!  I was late this year.  I kept thinking it should be the second week of February, then it snowed, and I didn't get out there to tap until the 11th.  I should have started on the 1st, so I was pretty late.  Ah, we make due, right?

No matter, because I upped the "tappage" this year from 16 spiles (I keep wanting to call them splines) to 29 spiles.  In the last three days, I have gotten 37 gallons of sap.  37.  Last year it took me a week to get 10 gallons.  This year, I got 10 gallons the first day (and 15 the next, but who's counting?).  I honestly believe that though the number of spiles helps, it's the colder weather that's making the sap run better.  Last year was not cold enough.  This year absolutely has been.

We are using the turkey fryer method again, this time the one my brother bought us last year.  The dang thing is rocket powered and is cooking like a champ.  I am very pleased with it, but I would still like to switch to wood.  The propane is expensive, and the wood is not.  That will be on my list for the next time, I think.  For now, I'm super duper happy to have this working well.

I met my neighbor who lives behind me when I was tying up the taps the other day.  He's the one I copied last year when I had no idea when to start.  He's a very nice man, and was pleased as punch to see that someone else tapped their trees, too.  He's been doing it for 26 years, so you know, a minute or two.  We talked shop a little, and I've made a new friend.  So nice!!

Let's see....what else?  It snowed.  There's a shocker.

It's a real pretty snow, the kind that brings all the trees closer to you, somehow.  The pictures cannot capture the feeling no matter how I take them.  It makes me glad to live in the woods.  Though, I'm always glad to live in the woods, so it's really just a bonus.

And I'm building again.  Oh, I love building.  We've moved the red coopette to the "front yard", and I'm building a screened run for the fancy chickens.  The three little silkies are loving the garage, but they need to move out.  I am expecting chicks next month (supposedly), and I don't want them in with the chicks, eating all the food.  So the little coopette is cleaned, and the run is being built.  And I'm loving every minute of it, don't you know.  :)

On the rabbit front?  I thought you would ask!  It looks like Camille has been bred (to Buckley, which was planned), as she's digging to nowheresville in her house and making a hell of a mess.  All my girls seem to make a hell of a mess before they get "nesty".  I don't know why.  Unfortunately, it looks like Bella may have been bred, too.  Freaking PJB.  He hopped the fence one day when she was in the next run outside on the only non-snowy day we had in January.  I found her hiding in the corner, away from him, but he may have gotten to her.  She's digging to China, too, and that's a pretty good indicator on her part.  Grrr.... we'll have to see.  All of those bunnies will go up for adoption, though, even if I have to donate them to Agway.  Not a one of the last litter is making a good fiber rabbit, sweet as they are.  I just don't have the space.

I saved the best for last,you know.  The little abandoned bunny boos?  Well, they are doing just fine, thank you for asking.

We call her "big Bertha".  She is huge, compared to the little black ones.

This is feeding position.  She has just finished scarfing down 13 ccs of milk.

Growing like weeds, just like they should.  In fact, they outgrew their little nest box and have been jumping/falling over the sides, so they've been moved to classier digs.

Yep, that's an old (and clean) litter box.  We are purely class here. 

They have more space and plenty of hay to nibble, if they're so inclined, which they have been.  I also put feed, but they don't understand it yet.  They will.  Mom will come in to feed only at night now, and very reluctantly.  I think she may be drying up, because the littles go under and grunt and complain and when Daphne hops out, their tummies are still small.  So we're back on the milk and syrup routine, but I'm going to have to get some probiotics in them soon so they can start to digest other things.  We're not out of the woods yet, but their eyes are open, and they are inquisitive and growing, so things are good.

Thor doesn't care how clean that box is.  He knows it's a litter box.  He doesn't understand why I won't let him use it.  Bad laydee!!

Ok, well, I think things are good.  Thor has another opinion.  Honestly, I can't wait to see what happens when there are goat kids in the house.  He thinks this is stressful, just wait!

Let's Try This Again...

I'm not one to give up easily.  There, it's been said.  I am super stubborn (just ask my husband), and if I think I can find a way to do something, I will try again and again until I figure it out.  That's probably a good quality for a homesteader, no?  Half the things we try work, and the other half doesn't.  If we gave up right away, we'd never accomplish anything.  So, no, I'm not a quitter.

The sap's been building up in the basement for days since my last debacle with the fire boil-down.  On Monday, I boiled down in a big pot on the stove--only three gallons--and made more syrup in an attempt to keep on top of the gallons and gallons I get every day.  It worked fine, but I did have to crack open the window and the door to keep the steam to a minimum.  I'm glad I have no wallpaper in this kitchen, because I can see how it would take it right down.  This boil-down was just fine, and I got nice syrup from it, but it was so silly.  The sap sat for hours on the stove, which is a ridiculous use of electricity, and I don't think it was as fast as it could have been.

So another solution was to be found.  I said "turkey fryer", and many of you said yes!!  Several people had said that a turkey fryer would work (thank you!), and that confirmed what I thought.  A direct jet of heat at the bottom of the pot has to do good things, no?  Oh yes, my friends, oh yes.  As I do not have a turkey fryer, my husband borrowed one from a friend at work (thank you!!) and I hooked it up today.

I know the pot says "soap".  Don't worry about that, read on. I'll explain in a minute.

Does it work??

Is Rome in Italy?

Oh baby, it works!!!!!

Though my pot only holds a gallon and a half at a time, it got it up to the rolling boil in 1/2 an hour.  And not just a boil, but a BOIL!  I've not gotten that type of action any time I've tried this before.  Wow!  So today, I will do my chores outside, tending to the pot as needed to be refilled, and loving the fact that this might just work.  If it does, I'll need to get a turkey fryer for myself, and it will make this whole process just SO much easier.  Yippee!

Stay tuned, and we'll see how this goes. 

Oh, and about the pot--it says "soap".  Originally, I bought it at a discount shop to make soap in.  But when I got it home and looked at the recipes I was making, the amount of soap would have been lost in that big pot, so it was impractical.  Then I thought about it some more, and I think that the pot is made of aluminum, which is a big no-no when dealing with lye.  So it's never had soap in it.  Just sap.  And for that it works just fine.

I Do Not Like This, Sam I Am

Today was S-day.  Sap-o-rama.  And it was a trial, plain and simple.  The total in the basement from the last 5 days of collection was 13 1/2 gallons of sap.  I was out of space to put all of it.  I had even press-ganged the honey bucket (with the honey gate) into holding sap, as I ran out of gallon jugs long ago.  That meant it was time to process, and today was the day.

I started out with such high hopes.  Images of Little House in the Big Woods filled my head.  Did you ever read that book?  I've read it hundreds of times, I think.  I find it comforting.  The part with Grandpa Ingalls and the big kettle in the woods, boiling maple syrup played in my head.  I went out figuring, if Grandpa could do this over a big ol' fire, then hey, I can do it over a big ol' fire.

Not having two big trees to hang a kettle from (nor a kettle), I resorted to a modern remedy--old rebar.  There was an old, crooked piece in the woods, left by someone at sometime.  I'd tripped over it many a time, so I knew where it was.  I dragged it out, and my husband cut it into two long lengths.  The plan was to put these lengths over the fire pit we'd dug in the fall, prop it on the rocks that surrounded it, and put the pans I'd bought for the occasion over the fire on them.  In this case, the pans were two heavy-duty foil roasters.  I figured with all that surface area, the sap would evaporate quickly and syrup would  be quick to follow.

This is what it looked like:

The two pans were there for a reason.  One was to boil down into syrup, and the other was to heat the sap, so when the first pan started to evaporate and there was less in it, I could take warm sap from the other pan and not stop the boil.  But it never boiled, because it was too far away from the fire.  However, it was evaporating all right, and then my son tripped over the rebar on the side of the pit and knocked all the sap into the fire.  Yeay.  So I took the rebar out, my husband straightened it, and we tried again.  Now it looked like this:

Much closer to the fire this time, and actually, it did boil.

But not for long.  It had taken 3 hours to get the sap to boil at all, and it would only hold for 5 minutes at a time and go back to a nice simmer.  I quickly discovered that getting the sap to boil consistently was nearly impossible.  The fire would not cooperate--the wind would blow the flames every which way, and the boil would stop.  The wood was being burnt at a rapid pace, and when it got too little, the boil would stop.  Being as though the pan was so close to the fire, I couldn't really put heaps of wood on it, so I was feeding it little bits at a time constantly.  This was extremely labor intensive.  I started the process at 9 in the morning, and it was 1 o'clock.  I had made no progress other than getting the last batch of sap to turn the lightest of yellows.  My son had tripped and spilled the sap, and I had knocked it all into the fire twice while adding wood.  This was not working.  Grandpa Ingalls was obviously magical.

I had had it.  I couldn't keep the boil, the smoke kept getting in my eyes no matter where I went around the pit, I was cold, I was damp from the ground, I was filthy and stinky and I had burnt most of my fingers.  I know when I'm licked.  But I didn't want to work all this time without anything to show for it.  Besides, I had ALL that sap in the basement, just waiting for me.  So I went another route; the barbeque.  This worked slightly better.  The boil was faster, but it wasn't constant enough.



Again, I used the two pan setup.  The frying pan was for the "hard" boil, and the roaster on the other side was for the warming up of the sap that would be added.  The wood you see was to stop that lovely wind from blowing the flame about, which it did anyway. 

Again, boiling constantly eluded me.  I'd get a nice simmer, and sometimes a bit of a boil, but it wasn't going to do it.  To get any progress, it would have to boil, hard and constantly, and it was just not happening.  I spent an hour fiddling with it, and gave up.  I took the sap inside.

At two o'clock, after fighting playing with the sap for 5 hours, I poured it in a pot, put it on the stove, and cranked it up.  And it boiled.  And boiled and boiled.  The sap had to be filtered many times before I did this, as the wind blew ash and dirt and bugs into the sap all day long as I fiddled with it.  Very genuine and out-of-doorsy, but not so good to eat.  So filter it I did (through coffee filters--many coffee filters) and then onto the stove it went to boil.  Three and a half hours later, there was syrup.

This is 1 1/2 cups of syrup from what I believe is 4 1/2 gallons of sap.  We used a total of 6 1/2 gallons today, and spilled a lot of it, so this is the left over from that.  I have 7 gallons left in the basement.  I've heard that 10 gallons of sap makes one quart of syrup, so I think that is about right.  I'll be honest, though, I lost track after it spilled the second time.  By the time it spilled the third time, I was just pouring the sap in willy nilly, not even paying any attention to which gallon I was up to.  So it is what it is.  A cup and a half of syrup.

Was it worth it? Yeah-ish?  Is that an answer?  It is unbelievably good, that's for sure.  It's thick (I probably went a little too far with the boil, but oh well), it's rich, and it tastes like sweet, sweet trees.  It's complex and wonderful.  On the other hand, it took me 8 and a half hours to get 1 1/2 cups of syrup.  That's just ridiculous. 

There has GOT to be an easier way.  While the smoke was blowing in my face for the umpteenth time this morning, I kept thinking turkey fryer, turkey fryer.  I think that might work.  Will it be faster?   I don't think so.  This doesn't seem to be a quick process.  Will it be less frustrating?  I hope so. 

So stay tuned.  I again have 10 gallons of sap, because today I collected 3 more, so I've got a lot more boiling to do.  I think for now it'll be done in the house a little at a time, with the windows wide open and the vent fan on.  If you've ever done this yourself and can give me pointers on the boiling, please feel free.  I am open to suggestion. 

Tappety Tap Tap!

The saga continues....

Yesterday morning, I put up the last 12 taps, making 16 in total.  Some of the trees were super eager to please and dripped immediately. 

Some had to think about it, but then dripped willingly a little later.  It seems I have one tree that's not doing much of anything.  I drilled it's tap a little deeper this morning to give it another chance.  If it doesn't do much again today, I'll pull it and find myself a juicier tree that's more willing to oblige.

On the other hand, two of my big beauties were more than willing to "give it up".

Hello!  Three quarters of a gallon from each!  That's production!

Don't you love my cheap-o method of collecting sap?  I bought the spiles off of ebay--they were very inexpensive--but I couldn't afford any more of the nice sap buckets.  So I collected milk gallons for months and a water gallon from who knows what and that's what I'm working with.   I don't love it, though.  Despite the fact that Mr. Mann from Backyard Sugarin' says that they'll just "stay on the spile", they don't.  I have to jury-rig them like this:

Classy!  They stay, though.  That's all that counts.  They are a real pain to remove, however.

Oh well.  Today's take?  Thought you'd never ask!

Bum da da da DUM!!!

5 gallons!  Or really, 4 and 3/4, because yesterday's 1/4 gallon is in there somewhere too.  I have 6 gallons total, which is almost a quart of syrup.  Not bad.

Of course, yesterday, as I was checking my taps, I saw the man in the woods behind us lugging two full five gallon buckets away from his taps, but who am I to complain???  Right? Right? 

So it's going well.  But of course, this is the fun part.  The hard part is boiling all this down.  That's going to be some hard work.

Stay tuned!

Tap Dancin'

Ok, there's really no dancing involved.  I just couldn't think of a clever title.

It seems to be that time of year.  I had no idea, of course, having never done this before. I only know it's that time of year because the man who taps trees in the woods behind me was tapping trees yesterday afternoon, and hey, I can take a hint.  So out I went to tap the trees.  I got four taps done, as I started at 3:00. 

This morning, I went out to see what was wrought.  And here it is:

Holy moly.  A gallon and a quarter.  And I spilled a bunch, so I think it would have been a gallon and a half.  From 4 taps.  Put in at 3:00 in the afternoon, not even in the morning.  I have 12 more taps to put in. 

I was unprepared for the quantity.  I was thinking I'd get a little dribble right away and have to wait for the run that I was assuming was later in the month.  But no, it's running away already. In fact, when I was putting the taps in, the trees were so moist, the sap was just flinging itself at me.

So here we go.  Since I've never done this before, it promises to be an exciting experience filled with many mistakes.  But in the end, I hope to get syrup... of some sort....at least useable syrup...that'd be nice.

Stay tuned, this'll be an interesting ride!