maple sugarin'

5 weeks since my last post?! I'm so sorry. Believe me when I say it hasn't been from lack of desire, but from the lack of time and purposeful prioritizing that happens when you have needy wee ones in the house. One day it will not be so, and I'll long for their little days back, I'm sure.

So many posts have rolled around in my head these past 5 weeks, it's been hard to narrow down which one should come first. Until we did our maple sugaring. Correction: if you're going to tap your maples for syrup, you gotta say "maple sugarin'." Just how it is.

It's been so exciting to plan the sugarin', learn about it (we attended a free park program for Backyard Maple Sugaring that was invaluable), prep the supplies, then follow through to receive...syrup! Real, 100%, all organic, maple syrup from our own maples on our own land. Ahhh....

The pictures in this case truly are worth 1000 words, so I'll let them (mostly) speak for themselves.

For weeks, I've been working on crafting some spiles from our elderberry limbs. You can purchase commercial spiles to use for tapping, but I wanted our first sugarin' attempt to give us free food, not stress us with a big upfront cost that we didn't know if we'd get back. As it turned out, crafting the spiles from elderberry was very fulfilling for me. Our friend Lauren came over one day and we sat at the kitchen table with Sydney (yep, Sydney! Sassy as she may be), all three of us carving out the soft pith from inside the elderberry limbs. It was such a nice handiwork activity to have while we talked about babies and homebirth and summer gardens.



I tied the leftover elderberry limbs that were too small to use as spiles into a bunch and stuck them in a large jar of water. I was so pleased when their little buds began to sprout! We will plant them in our orchard area this Spring.



Jeff took care of tapping all the trees. First, he drilled a hole at a slightly upward angle, about 2 1/2 inches in.



Then it was time to tap in the spile. He covered the hammer with a heavy cloth so it wouldn't split the elderberry.



Some of our trees began dripping sap right away!



It was Jeff's idea to use the little clamps on each spile to hold the catchment containers. We used empty water gallon jugs since they were inexpensive and easy to obtain.



Jeff then tied each jug to the tree as an added precaution.



Our first day was a sunny one with perfect sugarin' temperatures, so we got a full half-gallon of sap, which we then strained before boiling.



We boiled it down to the "maple tea" stage, which is about halfway to the syrup stage. Then, we could no longer resist the urge to taste it.





Yes, we are camera dorks, as if you did not already know!

It finally seems that Spring is around the corner here in our little part of the world. There hasn't yet been a day quite nice enough to leave us with the fresh, renewed vigor of being Alive Again. But there's been enough promise to make me break out The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun, one of my traditional Winter-to-Spring rites of passage. Premature? Probably. But little darlin, it has truly been a long cold lonely winter at times, more so than I can ever remember.

Sydney and I started our first round of seedlings over the weekend. We started all the frost-tolerant plants in our seed cabinet.





Next week, I plan another round of frost-tolerant plants, and then we'll move on to the frost-intolerant plants by the end of March.

And for tonight, that is all. I've just popped a big bowl of local popcorn to which I added chopped honey glazed walnuts I made last night. I'm off to watch one of my guilty pleasures on Hulu while the children are finally sleeping.