That said, you make what you can make and thank the Lord for what you did collect.  It also proves a point;  “Make hay while the sun shines.”  You never know about Mother Nature!  Take advantage of the time she gives you because you never know when her fickle attitude will  kick in and she’ll take what she’s given!  I made sure to be ready when the weather dictated it was tapping time but I noticed a neighbor didn’t tap until almost a full week later than I did.  Although I worried I had tapped too early, I came to realize that my early efforts would pay off because the weather wasn’t looking great for a long season.  If the conditions are right for sugarin’ or planting or harvesting, you must take advantage of that time.

Anyways, the earliest sap to run is usually highest in sugar and boils down to a delicately colored and tasting syrup.  As the season progresses, the sugar content drops and the syrup gets darker and more intensely flavored.  Many people prefer the Grade B over the Grade A because of the flavor.  I love it all!!!

Here is a beautiful picture of the three grades I produced this year:

So, another season comes to an end and another now begins.  Today I’ll begin working more intensely in the garden area.  I’ll update you another day on my goals for the garden this year.

The woodpile under the tarp is but a small part of my pile.  The remainder is to the left, just out of the picture.  The wood stove helps to  minimize the wind and I’m not burning nearly as much wood as last year’s open pit design.

Here is a close up of my wood stove:

The pan on the back is a buy from the UCONN surplus store.  It’s my main boiling pan.  The smaller pan in the front is to warm my sap prior to pouring it off into the big reduction pan.  You don’t want to lose your boil by adding cold sap to hot.

You can see the bulk of the wood supply in this pic and Ben, my eleven year old.  He and I share many a good conversation while we sit on our logs.   I know some people think that the boiling sap all day is a waste of time but the time spent with your children is priceless.

On the subject of just sitting around all day boiling.  I don’t.  LOL.    Last year I build two new stone raised beds while I boiled sap.  This year, I’ve repaired beds, cleaned up leaves and pulled old stems out.  I had to clean up the glass from my broken cold frame door, too.  I’ll be planting some of my cold weather crops in the cold frames this weekend, too.  So, as you see, it’s not “lost time” while I’m out there.  I multitask.

The patches of grass showing.

The longer days.

The feeling that it was above freezing yet the nights were still below freezing.

The feeling that Mother Nature might (MIGHT) be losing her wintery grasp.

We pulled out the maple sugaring equipment that I had begun to prepare.  Went to my favorite, most productive maple of last year and set the drill bit to bark.  Aiming slightly upward, I powered up the drill and the 5/16″ bit began to bite in.   2″ in and when I pulled out the bit, the signs were clear;  sweet sap began dripping out quickly!

THE SAP IS RUNNING!!!!  WOO HOOOOOOOO

The boys and I set 11 taps in  9 trees today.  I sterilized the hose I use on some of my “older” style plastic taps (older in that they’re a 7/16″ vs 5/16″ sized tap but I can’t go entirely new this year-it will be a two year plan).  Tomorrow I’ll set some more taps.

I’m also getting ‘fancy’ with my boiling set up this year!  My mom and dad had an old style parlor stove.  Nothing big-tall and narrow and it was designed to heat a small room. It’s a 1930’s style with white enamel exterior over a heavy as sin cast-iron interior.  They’re clearing out stuff and dad mentioned it might be perfect with it’s flat top for boiling down sap!  He’s right of course!  It IS perfect!

I split my wood in the early fall with the express thought of having it fit into this woodstove.  I admit I AM struggling to find the proper sized oval-to-round adapter for the flue but the local woodstove place is great.  I plan on having that baby cranking out the syrup by the weekend!

I’m also going to have a small, open pit type fire to preheat my sap so I can then put it into my already boiling sap.  Last year, I made the mistake of putting cold sap into my boiling sap and dropping my boil.  Took me longer than forever to boil stuff down this way.  Oops, beginner mistake.  I’m learning.

This book is an invaluable source of knowledge if you want to begin a backyard sugarin’ rig.  He shows basic to ‘fancy’ set-ups and the basics of sugaring.  A MUST HAVE!

Off to dream of the smell of smoke and maple steam.  Sigh…

To dream of hours of sitting by the fire chatting with my boys (reminds me of our summer camping trips, too ).

Maple syrup on pancakes.  Oh, maple syrup in butternut soup!  Maple syrup in muffins.  Oh the possibilities!

That said, we never intended this home to be our final home.  It was meant to be a starter home.  We had always realized some limitations to this home as far as available room to grow BUT with the birth of our third son (our surprise) we began to realize that this might be the forever home.

The biggest issue to this home has been the fact that it’s a raised ranch (split-level to some  of you) and the basement is half garage and half finished family room.  We are extremely limited in storage space.  On one hand, it forces you to buy wisely and avoid clutter.  On the other hand, we’ve had to get creative with our storage needs.

Quite a few years ago, we had a new deck put on.  The builder understood our storage needs and recommended going into the attic.  He put in a pull down built in stair unit.  We were able to lay down pressboard and then have access to storage room up in  the attic.  We store bins with off-season clothing up there, Christmas decorations and bins of clothing for future use (hand-me-downs and thrift store finds).

Another big thing I desperately needed was pantry space.  Years and years ago (we’ve been here 16 years now), my husband put in shelves into the furnace room.  It serves as my pantry. As our needs have grown, I added some small shelves to the space, too.  The shelves were NOT the best use of that space, though.  I’ve been pressuring my husband to add onto the shelves and help me maximize this space.  Oh, in the cheapest way possible, too!

So this past weekend, he finally took on this project.  He already had two pieces of pressboard leftover from the attic project.  All he had to buy were the shelf angles to add two full length, deep shelves to the pantry for me!  The bottom two shelves filled with my home-canned goodies are the newest shelves.  They’re four canning jars deep (big quart jars) whereas the old shelving unit was barely 2 jars deep.  All for the same space!

We were also careful not to put the lowest shelf too low so I could still slide my bulk storage buckets under the bottom shelf.

THEN came a stroke of sheer genius on  my husband’s part.   Here is a picture of the space between the studs in the furnace/pantry room:

(ignore the ski boots collecting dust from their 12 years of non-use…)

Well, my husband took scraps of two by fours we had from other projects and cut them to fit in between the studs and made shelves to hold my supply of nearly -free -after- sale -and -coupon shampoos, deodorants, hair conditioners, liquid dishwashing stuff and whatever else fit there.  He made similar shelves in the space on the other side of the door and they hold herb and spices now!

The total cost for making do with what we have was about $16!  It took my husband about 3 hours total.  I love my pantry even more now!  We’re making do with the space we do have and liking what we have a lot more!

-3 packets of dry yeast (I used 4 tsp of instant yeast)

-1.5 cups of warm water

1 TBS of sugar

2.5 cups of all purpose flour

I mixed it all in the bowl and it said to cover loosely to allow the gasses to escape so I threw a cloth napkin over the top.  It’s suppose to sit in a warm spot in your kitchen for 2-3 days and get sour smelling and begin to bubble.  At this point you can store the starter in the fridge or leave it in a cool, dark part of your kitchen (nothing cool and dark in my kitchen so I’ll probably put it in the fridge).

I suspect the instant yeast is the reason that my sour dough attempted a take over of the kitchen counter within hours of meeting up with sugar and warm water.   It bubbled out, wildly!, all over the kitchen counter!!!! I managed to lasso most of it into the bowl again and this time I  moved it to a 1/2 gallon canning jar.  I’m hoping that the narrow space will force the dough up and back onto itself before it can manage another escape attempt!

I’ll update in a few days with a sourdough recipe.  If you don’t hear from me, send help.  Hopefully, someone with experience taming wild sourdough. 

Anyways, I digress.  My oldest boys helped me can up our peaches.  The assembly line approach helped us speed things along but it was still a learning experience trying to pack the peaches correctly.  In the end, our jars of peaches looked so beautiful but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t better off just buying them at Aldis.

Well,  my husband is adding more shelving to our pantry and I had to pull out all of my canned goods.  We decided that we had waited long enough and opened up a jar of the peaches.  Oh my gosh!  FANTASTIC!  The boys and I devoured the quart jar in a matter of seconds.   I thought I’d use the light syrup that now tastes of the peaches for smoothies but truthfully, it’s gone, too.  I was just like that juice that runs down your chin in the summer.  The boys and I decided that the time and labor was totally worth the enjoyment we got out of just that one jar!  Granted, we have more to use up but it’s going to be hard rationing them out until this summer’s harvest.

I feel like I’ve tasted summer.

Anyways, last week I DID get excited about shopping.  It wasn’t about what I was going to spend but what I was going to save!

My first stop:

CVS-I had  $3.50 in ECBs (Extra Care Bucks).  I was out of dishwashing liquid!  My free or nearly free stash was gone!  Anyways, CVS hadDawn on sale for .96 each.  I had two .20 coupons as well.  They had Folgers coffee on sale for 2 for $5.00.  I bought just one and used a .55 coupon.  So, between my three coupons totaling .95 and my $3.50 ECBs, I ended up with them owing me .02!  I held out my hand for my .02 but the cashier said that they couldn’t give me the .02 BUT I could buy something else.  I politely explained that I wasn’t going to buy something else so I could give them more money.  They could have my two cents.

So, after my free CVS stop, I went onto Shaw’s Grocery store:

Shaw’s was having a roast sale.  In addition, when you bought one of the roasts that was on sale, they had a coupon for a free 2lb bag of onions, a free 1 lb bag of carrots AND a free 5 lb bag of Maine potatoes!  I had a $5 coupon from a previous promotion (one of those deals when you buy $20 in select products and get $5 off your next trip).  I was able to get a 4lb chuck roast, the onions, carrots and potatoes for only $6.24!  I was on a roll and feeling good now!  Hey, that’s what shopping therapy is all about, right?

Next stop!

Jon, my 8 year old, goes through the knees of his jeans like crazy!  Not to mention, he’s growing, constantly!  My oldest two have left a slew of hand-me-downs except that around the size 8 jean period, the oldest two grew at such a great rate through the summer that when fall came around we jumped from 7’s to 10’s!  There are NOT a lot of size 8 hand-me-downs for Jon.  My husband wanted to just drop $19.99/pair for new jeans.  I cringed, knowing that Jon would put holes in those jeans just as fast as a gently used pair.  So, my next stop was the thrift store.

I went to one of my favorite thrift stores right down from the Shaws.  Found a pair of jeans there for just $1!  WOO HOO!!!!  I was pumped now!  The adrenaline was rushing!  hehehehe

I decided to hit the Goodwill just down from the highway on-ramp (I’ve done a large loop here, by-the-way, making sure to minimize my gas consumption and get the most out of my trip).  Now, I don’t know about your Goodwill, but mine has gone up in prices.  I used to be able to snag jeans for about $3/pair but they’re up to $4 now.  I shouldn’t complain because new would be $20 but after my $1 find at the other store, $4 seemed ‘pricey’.  That said, I managed to find two  more pairs of jeans for Jon for $8.  Three pairs of gently loved jeans for $9 instead of nearly $60!  I didn’t think this trip could get any better…

THEN I spotted the brand new, unopened bags of quilt batting!  Oh my lucky stars!  I tried not to look too excited as I walked over to the rack, fearful another quilter was afoot and I’d lose my find.  I grabbed both bags, claiming them quickly.  Brand new, queen-sized quilt batting for only $2 EACH!  I felt a rush to my head!  It wasn’t possible!  I asked an associate that was loading up some racks if it was the real price.  She confirmed my wildest dreams!!!!!  Normally priced over $20 each, I was about to get two bags of queen-sized quilt batting for only $4!

THIS WAS EXCITING! This WAS therapeutic!  Only I was sure I wouldn’t have gotten the same adrenaline high if I had spent full price for all of this.  I wasn’t sure how people could get the same therapeutic effect dropping lots of cash.  No matter.  I came home.  My need for shopping therapy fulfilled.

Hmmmm, wonder if I can find Sue a really big snowblower with a headlight on my next trip.  Hmmmmm

Instead, snow covers everything.  Although I’m more lucky than my more northern friends, there is still  snow and frozen ground here.  My dad had major back surgery so I’m not even getting out for  my normal ice fishing trips this winter.  I am definitely feeling more down this year.

My seed catalogs have started coming in full force.  I’m already laying out my garden for the spring.  I’ve got at least 6 more weeks before I can work the first peas into the ground.  My first attempt at cold-framing has been successful as there is still spinach growing in it!  The last big storm that blew through here flipped the large, heavy sliding door over though and shattered one of the double panes.  One of my first big jobs with spring will be to pick up the hundreds of shards of glass out of that bed.  sigh…

I’m trying to keep my hands busy so that my brain won’t dwell on the cold,  short days outside.  I’m not sure it’s working.

I’m never going to give up my New England snow for sunny, warm locations but I still can’t wait for spring this year.  Seems like the more I enjoy my garden and working outside, the less I like being stuck inside.