Postponed Projects.....Done!

It's been just over a year since we moved to our sweet little farm.   In the first frenzy of activity last year we had way more projects on our list than time would allow for us to complete before winter set in.   And so it was that when our weather finally broke last week and the sun came out over the last 5 days Joel and I hopped on some easy projects that were leftover from last year.  

Here's what we did:

 With the help of a little caffeine to jump start our energy, we cut posts and notched out areas for 2x4" cross bars.    After digging holes for the posts, we set them in cement and let that cure for 2 days.

Those posts became our new washline!   We applied caps to the top of the posts and pretty scroll work to help support the cross bars and ta-da....we have an adorable farm-y clothesline.    I can hardly wait to hang our sheets out there this week.   Nothing smells as good as sheets dried in fresh country air.....I am sooooo looking forward to crawling into bed after making up the bed after laundry day.

Thanks to Pinterest for the idea for the pretty clothesline.  After a couple of coats of crisp white paint Joel and I attached the hardware and line so on washday I can hang out our sheets.   It's been years since I hung clothes on a washline.....probably almost 30 years.   Can't wait to do it once again.

Next on our agenda was to build supports for the thornless blackberry bushes we planted last spring.   They have long canes now and they need to be supported up off the ground.   The bushes are planted in an "L" along one edge of the potager garden and that's where we put the supports.   It feels really good to have these projects completed and the posts from both projects should last us years and years.

Last year I planted so many different types of plants......and only a few of them yielded anything(except, of course, the garden veggies) since most of them take a couple of years to produce fruit.   These irises were one of the few bloomers that were gorgeous and I am excited to see them bloom once again.   To the right are the Rosa Rugosa bushes we ordered special.   Last year they were hardly anything more than sticks in the ground.   But this year they are already tripled in size, they have many more branches, and all the branches have buds on them.  

Rosa Rugosa roses are special in that a mature bush produces large, edible rose hips.....the result of letting roses die on the bush late in fall and those turn into "hips".    Rose hips are very high in vitamin C and can be eaten after the the tiny hairs are removed from one end.   The hips can be put in the dehydrator and dried so you can preserve them for use all winter long.    Not only can they be eaten but they also make a lovely tea.   So many uses besides having lovely flowers.   And for this farm girl who is allergic to the vitamin C from all citrus, the vitamin C from the roses is one way I can get my vitamin C without sneezing.

Many of the plants we put in the ground last year are perennials, which means they come back each year without having to be replanted.   Rhubarb is one of those.   You can see the rhubarb on the right side of this pic is already a foot across.   It's amazing that just a few weeks ago everything on the farm was covered in ice and snow....and now we have green popping up everywhere!

Our asparagus bed yielded several new spears yesterday, and the oregano and thyme are already greening up, too.   The strawberry bed is starting to perk up as well as all the lamb's ears from last year.   The blackberry and blueberry bushes are also starting to show signs of life once again and this year we may even begin to get our first small harvest from those bushes.

Now, all the plants I talked about are in our little potager garden up by the house.   The huge main garden back by the chickens is still asleep.   We have rearranged the movable white poultry fencing to include the main garden and the chickens have been happily scratching their way around in there, eating bugs and pooping on the ground, fertilizing it for me!   Win-win!  In the next few weeks I'll have to chase them out of there when I start to plant but for now they are helping me get the garden ready with all their scratching and bug eating.

Go, girls, go!   Thanks for your help in the garden.

And over by the chicken coop, we have the side lid that flips up to reveal the 5 nests where our "girls" lay their eggs for us.

We check the nests twice a day and find at least 1 or two eggs in each nest.   Pretty, light brown orbs of yummy goodness with the brightest golden yolks I've ever seen.  Thanks, ladies.

Speaking of our ladies....these two hens have gone "broody".   They sit on their nests 24 hours a day....staring off into the distance with a glazed look as they keep the eggs under them warm.   They only get off the nest long enough to get a quick drink and eat a bit and then back on the nest they go, gently shifting the eggs around beneath them so as to turn them from time to time.   We're going to let them continue to brood to see if any of the eggs actually hatch into baby chicks.   Won't that be fun?  I'll let you know when and if that happens.

Meanwhile, our egg production is down from around 11 eggs per day to about 7 or 8 per day.  It really makes a difference having 2 broody hens.  Plus, Joel suspects that when the broody hens get off their nests to drink, another hen goes in there and lays her egg on top of the ones that were meant to hatch.   And we can't tell if that has happened unless we catch the nest empty and can count the number of eggs in the nest.

Last month, Joel had to clean out a nest where a broody hen had been sitting.   She got up so many times that we finally had somewhere around 15 eggs in that nest from all the hens contributing to her egg count.  And there was no way any of them were going to hatch as some of them had gone too long without the heat of the mama hen.  So, we went in there and cleaned that nest out and put down fresh straw and sure enough, another hen is now broody in that nest with her own eggs.  

Giggle.....this is all a learning process for us.   We're not sure if we'll ever have any chicks hatch, but it'll be fun to watch the ladies try their best to bring a new brood of chicks into our coop.  Personally, I'd like to see that happen.   The more food we can produce from what we already have, the better.

Happy it's Spring,
Debbie

It Worked!

I know I tend to get excited about any of our new experiences here on our homestead.   But I am so happy to share our latest adventure with you.   Remember when we were doing this a few weeks ago?

Yes, that's Joel collecting the sap from one of our mature black walnut trees.....in our very exclusive sap buckets(yeah, the milk jugs).    We kept checking the jugs everyday for a few weeks until there was hardly any sap to collect as the "run" was over.   Every day we would pour the contents of each jug into the largest pot I had, my canner that we used for canning our veggies last fall.   And when that pot was full we used whatever vessels we could put our hands on to store the lovely clear stuff in our second refrigerator down in the pavilion.

Our icy, sleety, bitter cold weather seems to have disappeared and we've been blessed with some beautiful Spring-like days for almost a week.   Yesterday Joel and I decided we had a great window of opportunity to cook down all that sap as it was an especially sunny and warm day.   We figured that even if our attempt at making syrup didn't turn out, at least we would have learned something from the whole experience.

First, we set up our trusty camp stove and connected it to a propane tank out under the pavilion roof.  Then we brought out all the sap we had collected and poured about 2" into each of 2 pots.   From all I had read about making syrup, it's simply a matter of boiling off the 90%+ water in the sap and bringing the remaining liquid up to 7 degrees above boiling temp to create syrup.   Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

We each brought out some reading material to help pass the time while we watched and waited and tended to the sap.   When the level of sap would get low I'd add some more from our stash and watch it come up to a boil again.   And so it went for the entire afternoon.  With each hour the liquid in the pots slowly began to change from a clear liquid to a light gold to a darker shade by the end of the afternoon.

In between checking on the boiling sap we both did a few chores and all in all we had a very productive day spent outside.  We even got my smallest garden cleaned up and fully mulched.   Whew!   One down, two to go.   But back to the boiling sap.....

Each time enough water had evaporated from the pot, the whole mixture would boil up furiously and we had to quickly add more sap to the pot.   And so it went until the last drop of sap was finally added to the boiling pots and cooked down to a light amber color.  Now it was time to take the remaining liquid into the house to finish off the syrup.

The book I read said to have a pot of boiling water going on the stove next to the cooking sap.  Altitude and barometric pressure can both change the boiling point of water, and we needed to know what our boiling point of water was so we could add 7 to that number.   Now, why, you ask, did we need to do that?   Well, our boiling point was 206 degrees yesterday.   And when you add 7 to that number you get 213 degrees.   For us, that day, 213 degrees was the temp we were shooting for on our candy thermometer that hung in our syrup.   Once the sap reached that temperature and had very small bubbles instead of large ones, we were done!

And this is what that looked like.   How about that?    It was as simple as that.   I had already prepared some Ball jars and lids by scrubbing them in hot soapy water and poured the syrup thru a fine meshed sieve right into the waiting jars.  

We all did a taste test to see what our newest concoction tasted like and it was a unanimous decision that we three loved it!   The syrup has a rich color, is about the same consistency as high quality syrup I've purchased from Vermont in those adorable tins, and has a slightly nutty flavor.   I think we have a winner.  

Once again I am amazed at how hard our great-grandparents must have worked to provide food for their families, and without all our modern amenities to assist them, too.  Here is the tally of what it took for us to create our syrup:
1. About 2-1/2 weeks of collecting sap daily, sometimes twice a day.
2. We collected about 6 gallons of the clear liquid over that time frame.
3. Approximately 6 hours of cooking was required to boil down that liquid into syrup.
4. We netted a grand total of.........wait for it...........2 cups of liquid gold.  

Yes, 2 cups.   Now imagine how much more sap we would have had to collect and how much longer it would have taken to cook it down to produce enough syrup to be one of the sweeteners folks in the 1800's may have needed.   That's a lot of work for just one product in a list of many that we consume over the course of a year.   No wonder they went to bed as soon as the sun went down!

Still glad we did it,
Debbie
  

Gone to The Birds

Several days ago when we walked down to the chickens I noticed new bird tracks in the snow.   Sometimes it's the simplest things that look the prettiest to me.....like these tiny angular footprints that make a slight impression in the snow, shadowed by the struggling sun. 

I'm not sure what kind of birds made these tracks, but there are definitely 2 different sized birds walking around here, wouldn't you say?  Some of the tracks are much further apart than the others.  Bah-ha-ha-ha....and that's the sum of my tracking knowledge.   Wasn't that enlightening?

We have a neighbor, June, who lives alone down in the hollar behind our chickens.   For some reason she occasionally has her son's 2 beagles hanging around at her house.....and they roam free.   The first couple of times they came up to our farm Joel wasn't too happy about it.    Dogs tend to chase chickens....and then chickens run until they die....or something like that according to Joel.   (Hey, what do I know?)  So you can imagine why we weren't too pleased to see them again.

Well, I told them to go home and we tried to chase them back to where they came from.   Ha!    One of them submissively rolled over onto his back as if to say,"Scratch my belly, pleeeeeease!"   After that we both giggled and decided they were probably pretty harmless.   So they hung out with us as we tended to the chickens.  Eventually they both ran off into the woods, howling and baying as they chased a rabbit thru the thick stand of trees.

Can you see Henny Penny sitting in the middle nest?   And check out our morning cache of eggs in the right box.  Yup, just another productive day at the hen house.  We're still getting anywhere from 8-11 eggs most days.    Thank goodness we have friends who love our eggs as much as we do or we would be overrun with the lovely brown orbs.

One of the dangers of the severe weather we've had lately is the possibility of frostbite on the chicken's red combs at the top of their heads.   Can you see the darkened area at the tips of this poor sweetie?   Chickens are ok outside down to about 19 degrees, but any colder than that and they need to be kept in their coop to protect them from the effects of the cold. 

Well, some days when the weather was severe we've kept them inside where they have a heat lamp to boost the temp inside their coop.  But on the days we let them out, we didn't account for the wind chill and that may have been what caused this little bit of frostbite.   So far the few birds that have blackened tips are doing fine, but we're keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't show any signs of distress or illness.

Here's the last view of the main garden asleep under a blanket of snow and leaves.   Pretty soon it will be time to work the soil again, plant seeds and transplants, and weed the beds.

 The chickens love when we toss leftover lettuce and veggies into their yard.   They scurry around to make certain they get a choice piece or two before the other girls come out of the coop and gobble up the fresh treats.

Whew!  I hope these are the last pics of snow for this winter season.   As much as I enjoy walking our land in the snow, I've had enough for this year, thank you!   While I sit here typing this post it is 51 degrees and drizzly, so the snow and ice are finally all melted.   I even found that the red tulips in our front planter bed are already about 3-4" high.   Yippee!   Spring must be right around the corner here on the Plateau.

It's a good thing, too, that the ice is finally melted.   One day when Joel walked down to the workshop, he had his hand on the door handle and was gingerly walking up the ramp to get inside when, wham!   He took a header and landed on the icy incline on his nose.   Yea.....that hurt.   So he's especially glad we have warmer weather once again.

And this should be the last time this year that you see the studio with snow on its roof.   Hopefully the next time I show you the studio it will have a covered front porch on it and maybe even some flower beds surrounding the porch.   But that's going to take a while, so don't hold your breath.   Ha!

I hope that wherever you are today the weather is pretty and you're gearing up for Spring. 
Debbie

Getting "Sappy"

Bah-ha-ha-ha.....I'll bet you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about now, aren't you?    Well, just like the title above says, we're getting sappy here on the farm.  Whaaaaat?   Yup, I read that Maple trees are not the only trees that you can tap for sap and cook down to syrup.   Guess what other trees can be tapped?  Yes!    Black walnut trees.   And we just so happen to have some of those down in our valley below the huge bluff boulders.

And speaking of the bluff boulders, when we were down there I took this shot of the thick moss and icicles covering the boulders.   So.   Very.   Pretty.

Because the ground has been slippery and sloppy we drove the Polaris down the steep incline to get to the trees we were interested in tapping.

Check out our fancy schmancy sap buckets, A.K.A. empty milk jugs with a small hole cut in the side where they will hang from the tap in the tree.

In order to get sap from the tree we drilled a hole at a slight upward incline.   The time of year to do all of this is late winter leading into early spring when the nights are still below freezing and the days warm up a bit above freezing so the sap will "run".  

Once you clear any debris out of the hole, a sturdy "tap" gets pounded into the tree and wouldn't you know, sap immediately started running out!   Upon closer inspection of our huge trees we noticed that we were not the geniuses we thought we were.  There were scores of old holes from previous years where someone else tapped the very same trees.  Sap was running out of many of the holes, making the bark wet.   Who knew?

While we were working we heard the familiar "honk-honk" of Canadian Geese flying overhead as they headed north.   Over a three day period there were thousands of geese in varying sized flocks winging their way home. 

Sometimes they flew really low over the farm.   Don't ask me why but I love hearing and watching these graceful birds in the air.    I can't seem to resist running outside to look up in the sky whenever I hear their familiar call.

But back to the sap we go.   After we put 2 taps in each of our largest trees, we simply hung a milk jug from each tap and waited to see how much sap we would collect.

By now I'm sure you know about my fascination with our bluff area of the farm.   It's a steep walk to get down there and I'm glad we took the Polaris when we went back much later to check on our stash.

Eureka!   We've got sap running!   Some days we go down to collect the sap first thing in the morning and then again late in the afternoon.   But when the temps don't get above freezing and the sun isn't out, the sap really slows down and we only check the taps once a day.  

The idea is to collect the sap as long as it remains clear.   Right now it simply looks like water, it's that clear.   But when it begins to look cloudy it's time to stop collecting the sap as that type of sap will ruin the batch of syrup we plan on making.    At least that's what I read in my latest book acquisition, "Sugarin' ".  

I tasted the sap straight out of the tree and it is only slightly sweet as the sap itself is over 90% water.   We have been saving our sap in a large stainless steel pot in the refrig down in the pavilion because it has to stay cold until we are ready to cook it down.   When we have gallons and gallons of it we will cook it outside as the evaporation of all that water creates a tremendous amount of steam.  

By the time the sap boils down and begins to thicken we will take the pot in the house where we have better control over the burners on our trusty propane stove in the kitchen.   From there the process is one of monitoring the temperature of the syrup until it reaches a certain stage and color and then we can bottle it!    The syrup from a black walnut tree is supposed to have a slightly nutty flavor and we're really excited to see how the end product tastes.  

I'll let you know when that happens,
Deb

"49" Days and Counting

"49" days and counting until what, you ask.....I'll tell you what!    In 49 more days Jarrad will be done with his last round of chemo!    I have the days marked on my calendar so I know exactly when to celebrate another mile marker with him.   Thank you to all our friends and family who have prayed for Jarrad and Dawn during this difficult time.  And we continue to covet your prayers as they walk thru the rest of this trial.

Now, here's what is going on at the farm today.   Yes, we got another ice event yesterday, but it was not anything like the horrific storm of 2 weeks ago.   This time we got sleet that covered the roads and fields for about 6 hours, making yet another mess which only encouraged me to hunker down at home and sew!   Then last night the temps dropped to 9 degrees.   This morning when I took Molly outside the sun was shining and the sky was blue.   Hallelujah!    What a welcome sight after weeks of dreary grey weather.

Can you see the sparkling crystals on the roof?   I know, the pics don't do it any justice....but it was really pretty, just the same as I walked around our frozen yard this morning.

As the sun was coming up in the east over the mountains, it made the sleet clinging to our trees glisten.    Now come on, you have to admit this is really pretty.

I love the contrast between the dark tree trunks and limbs against the lightening sky and the ice tipped branches reaching upward.   What a beautiful painting God made just for me this morning!

I hope this is the last time I see Old Man Winter for another 10 months.   The remaining vestiges of sleet and snow are going to melt this weekend when our temps are predicted to reach 50.   Woo-hoo!

Ready for Spring now,
Debbie