chick season

It’s chick season again, and the girls were eager, but Andy and I weren’t sure we really wanted to add many more to our already healthy flock.  So the girls got lucky with a spectacular business proposition from some friends (raising these little chicks and ducks until they are ready to leave our place and head to a new coop).  Yes, of course, we are keeping a few, how could we not?

So money was carefully counted and readied for the feed store pick up.  A budget was made (this project is a homeschooling parent’s dream) and the days were counted until the chicks arrived.

Finally the flock is here!  These little mama hens are taking their new job very seriously.  For the last couple of (early) mornings Andy and I have heard them whispering in their beds.  “Iris are you awake?  C’mon let’s go check the chicks”.  Then feet pad down the hall and the utility room door creaks open and the daily chick vigil begins.  Iris seems to be the official chick/duck food and water replenisher and pen cleaner, given her cautious nature that leads her to be just a bit timid about handling those wiggly little guys and her hardwired desire for things to be tidy (ahem).  Mae is still the official chicken catcher, because she’s rocked at that since she was two and duck poop doesn’t scare her.  They make a great team.

We rounded out the weekend with some great sap boiling and tasting, a cookout at Grampy’s, and time running barefoot in the mud and sand with friends.  April we are happy you are here!

spring!

With the long awaited sap-sipping and a bit of kid-made kite flying, Iris declared the official start to spring!

beginning

right now we are:

~getting ready for sweet sap season

~moving in the fine spring furniture.  Um, that would be the seed table which will take up residence in our living room for the next three months.  It will hold new seed sprouts as well as anything else the girls can squeeze onto it.

~digging out the last of the currents from somewhere deep in the freezer to make seven precious jars of our favorite jam that will hopefully last til the currents come ripe in July!

~winding up the swimming lesson season with a brave head-dunk-under-the-water-chop-chop-timber-jump-off-the-side-of-the-pool grande finale.  Go Iris!

~watching these girls take their practice ever so seriously, even the little one who isn’t taking lessons yet, but really is- in that way the littlest one is always learning right along side us.

hope your March is starting off right too

summer in march

Spring has sprung, alarmingly early this year. Last year at this time we had just started harvesting maple sap, in plenty of snow! This weekend it hit 80 degrees here in Wisconsin, the sap is long done flowing, the maples are budding out and the girls played in the sandbox barefoot. Weird I say. A friend of mine posted this today about the weather: “I can’t help an ominous feeling; maybe like the curious folk who walked out into the retreating sea in Indonesia minutes before the Tsunami washed away the life they knew.” I get it.

But despite all that, we basked in it. How could we not? A few lovely things from right now:
Pussywillow bouquets on the table.
Dinner on the patio with fresh spinach from our coldframes.
3 gallons of syrup, canned and in the root cellar.
Little House on the Prairie obsession. Books and dresses (good thing my mom saved mine!), and egg collecting just like the good old days.

Happy Monday all.

bottles of gold

Sugarin’ continues around here, though the sap is flowing slowly. Warm one day, freezing the next…where are we anyway? But nature’s mood swings are working out o.k because she’s given us some time for a major re-working of the system. Observe above, system number one. Good in theory: evaporating pan fits nicely on wood cookstove top (one can even warm up new sap in a pot on the corner–or as we later learned in the oven! Adding cold sap to your already boiling sap slows the whole process down, so you want to warm the new sap before adding it to what’s in the pan).

Despite it’s fabulous looks, this system has flaws. The cookstove is nicely insulated and does what it’s supposed to do, cooks things at a fairly slow and steady temp. But we wanted to boil the sap hard and for several hours. In order to do that, we had to get that thing raging- seriously the oven thermometer read almost 500 degrees! Yikes. Afraid of warping the stove at temps this high, for that long, we finished that batch and came up with plan B.



Meet the rustic, kickapoogian sap-cooker. Much better. What were we thinking getting all fancy like that? What ya need is a good hot fire right under the pan to get that sap rolling and evaporating in no time. Course you have to be careful you don’t burn it, what with the fire so close and hot. But with Andy looking for any excuse he can find to head on down to the sap-cooker (i’m sure he’s got a cooler of beer down there somewhere) we had no burning on this batch!

Evaporation in action! I kind of giggled at the stove-pipe on the “open” fire pit system. But it works! Definitely smokier than the wood cookstove set-up, but maybe that’s what gives all that good kickapoo gold it’s hearty flavor anyway!

The girls have caught the fever too and we are living, breathing and reading about sugaring around here.

This week the first of the gold hit our pancakes. Iris was so proud and was sure it tasted better than any syrup she’d ever had. I must say, from tree to table with our own hands, she sure is right!

warm up

This week the sap started running. My, it is early. But we jumped to it and started getting ready. At the end of the season last year we decided we were ready to cook down our own sap (an Amish neighbor has been cooking for us up until now). We ordered a custom-made pan for evaporating the sap and hauled the wood cookstove out of the barn. Andy also hooked up some stove pipe and tarped off the area so it’s quite a nice little cooking corner under the shelter of our barn overhang.


He equiped an old sled with handles so it can be pushed through the snow with heavy sap buckets (much easier than pulling).

After all the getting ready we played in the sunshine, listened to the sap drip-drip in the buckets and waited for them to fill. In the end it was only 20 gallons of sap we collected (just over a quart of syrup when it cooks down) so there is much more collecting and cooking to do. But now this fickle weather has gone and turned cold on us again. Wind howling tonight and snow in the forecast. Spring is coming though, ready or not. I’m hoping we’ll be ready.

the angry mile

Today began with tears and ended with tears, with plenty in between. The tears weren’t mine but they could have been. This time of year is always hard for me. The change from winter to spring never happens gracefully. I should know this. I should be ready for what comes after the layers of clean white melt away. I should know that there will be mud, someone’s old sock, a towel left by the sandbox and muddy tennis balls all over the yard. It’s just that I had forgotten all that in the perfect cleanliness of winter.

We’ve had one sort of sickness or another for the last month. Nothing terrible, nothing unusual, just something. Enough things. Our noses are raw, our throats still a bit sore and our emotions fragile. And today, with Madison and earthquakes and tsunamis and powerlines on my mind there seemed to be a sadness (maybe an anger) that I couldn’t shake.

Iris and I battled over things that I should have been grown-up enough to leave alone. Finally by late afternoon I ungracefully left the house for the “anger mile”. (That’s where I huff and puff up and down the road until I feel better- it usually works).

Yes, change is hard. It doesn’t always go our way. Life is big and scary. But spring is on its way, for better or worse. The sap is flowing, the spinach is growing. The gate is open, I better get ready for the ride.

Here’s to a week of moving forward with acceptance and poise.

signs

Today we stomped in puddles, tapped some trees, planted some spinach and herbs. I must say, it felt just a little like spring.

Wishing you a wonderful week.

spring sap: a random review

Cold nights and warm days do make that sweet sap run. Andy rigged up a little milk can wagon for transporting his gallons of sap down from the top of the hill where we tapped a new stand of maples this year. Iris looks forward to “checking the buckets” each day after work. She might even be as obsessed as her Papa!

Andy received some pretty special american chestnuts from a friend of his. He carefully planted the little nuts earlier this winter and they recently pushed through the soil to grow eagerly toward the light. As you may already know, the american chestnut is threatened with extinction due to a chestnut blight that has ravaged the country. There are now very few american chestnuts that are large enough to produce nuts. The American Chestnut Foundation and a few other dedicated organizations are working to restore the population. We hope to help!

More baby gifts. These from my crafty mom. A new outfit for Nora (the doll I made for Iris’ 2nd birthday- it was a fun project, you can order the doll kits from Magic Cabin) and a beautiful hand-knit sweater for the wee one on the way.

We love this warm weather. Hope it’s found its way to you!