The sun is shining and its cold, but the sap is running. Bob collected about 20 gallons this morning and started boiling. I love that he is helping with it this year. We plan to put in 10 more taps up the hedgerow in our back field - something we didn't do last year. We have no shortage of maple trees - indeed at least 15 acres of them. It is just hard to tromp around in the field on snow shoes, hauling buckets of sap. We're not set up for it. Having Bob help will make it possible. He's also going to talk to the local sheet metal shop about constructing an evaporator for us - something very simple.

I took one very full bag of maple sap in the kitchen today - I cooked it on the stove for the kids who were headed off to the girls hockey finals at Norwich Univ. I cooked a package of hotdogs in one pot of sap, and asparagus in another. I made tea from some of the sap that had been cooking down for awhile. It is so good!

I sauted scallops in a little oil, then deglazed the pan with lemon juice. I tossed the cooked scallops with the drippings and lemon juice, chopped sweet onion, chopped cilantro, and some Thai fish sauce. I served the scallops on the maple cooked asparagus. Oh - it was nice. I really love how Lent helps me to eat more fish - it seems like no hardship at all.

Lent - I gave up any alcohol during the week - and am trying to be more charitable and less judgemental when I deal with others. I know this sounds lame - not like my husband who gives up sweets for the entire time. But this is plenty for me. It will help me healthwise, and spiritually I hope.

Another gorgeous day - the cows were laying in the snow in the paddock, but in a nice warm patch of sunshine. The sap is running and I'm going to boil this weekend. I can't wait to taste the first batch of 2009 maple syrup!

tapping - it is time!

Aw - I really love this time of year. The weather is warming up, the sun is shining today, and I just tapped a lot of maple trees. I meant to do it earlier, but I knew the sap would be running today, so I finally got out there. The snow in the yard is a couple feet deep, so snowshoes would've helped.

Indeed boots would have been nice, and not the clogs I scoot around in the barn in. The feeling is coming back into my heels and the bottom 18 inches of my jeans will dry - so I'm not worried. When something needs to be done my husband takes half hour just to get dressed - I take that time for cleaning and sterilizing the equipment and slip on the barn shoes and go trotting off. I don't care - Spring is almost here - I'm sugaring!

But now the tapping is done - and all I need to do is set up the evaporator - er...the turkey deep fryer, which has never fried a turkey but has been put to 98 other uses. I'm loving life today!

damn

The driveway is a skating rink, now with 4 inches of fresh snow. Before, I carefully put my weight forward and walked with my nose over my toes as they tell you to do when walking on ice or hiking down hill. Bob wrenched his neck the other day and ended up halfway under my car after a spill in the icerink that is our driveway.

Today, I was not lucky. I was bound up in a mismatch of boots, a heavy fleece parka, a handknitted scarf and a camouflage hat with a snowboard company's name on it - all stuff I pulled out of the mudroom box quickly when I went to water the cows. With two large buckets, each sloshing wildly, I started my fall. It was in slo-mo ---- the feet flying forward, the back landing first, then the buckets, then the feet, the head.

I was wet with the new snow stickin to the wet -- and mad as hell. I went back in and refilled the buckets, the cows now mooing, cranky for supper and water, so loudly I could hear it as if the windows were open. I snapped on the moose-trax, the rubbery metal shoe things that older people use hear in Vermont to prevent shattered hips in icy driveways, and tried it again.

Damn those cows I was muttering as I made the trek to the barn. Damn the snow. Damn the ice. Damn the water. I made it out to the big red barn and through to the backside where the cows were standing at the window. Blue put her face up with snowflakes on her nose, she'd been poking around looking for a drink in the empty bucket attached to the wall of the indoor stall. Damn the cute cow! Damn the clean smell of hay, mixed with the smells of cows in winter.

I emptied the buckets from the house into the heated buckets in the barn, and dragged a bale of hay down from the loft. The hay stuck to my fleece coat, mismatched scarf, and curduroy pants. Damn the hay. Damn sticky fleece. Everything I own has hay or hair on it, or both. I reached out to pet Charlie, the newest calf. He licked my glove looking for molasses and grain. Sweet Charlie.

With empty buckets in one hand, I brushed the hay and snow off myself in the driveway with the other and headed back to the house, careful to avoid the ice patch with 10 gallons of water now quickly freezing. By the time I had the tea kettle going and my pants changed the damn was out of me. I love my cows and the snow, and the winter here. But it's the going out that makes the coming back in all the better, isn't it? If you stayed on the sofa you wouldn't know how nice it is to not be outside laying on the driveway.

How much sap it takes to produce a gallon of syrup

Maple sap typically contain 2-3.5% sugar. The job is to boil away enough water until the concentration is 66% sugar. Commercial producers use reverse osmosis to get to 6% sugar concentration first, which saves half the fuel.

The Cornell website has a formula to help determine how many taps you need to produce a certain amount of syrup. Of course it varies depending on sugar content and the size of the trees. If you have trees that are producing sap with an average of 2% sugar content, and your trees are large enough for two taps per tree...here is the math:

Rule of 86

Gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup = 86 divided by the percentage of sugar content
for our example - Gallons of sap = 86/2% sugar
Gallons of sap needed to produce one gallon of syrup = 43

(The gallons needed for less sweet sap is higher, and for sweeter sap is lower.)

http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/FAQ.htm

how to use a hydrometer to test maple syrup

You don't need a hydrometer to know when your syrup is ready, but it sure makes it a lot easier for a beginner, and more certain for a professional. I was lucky to have a seasoned professional lend me a hydrometer, then stick around to teach me how to use it.Fill a tall, narrow test cup with hot syrup. Carefully drop the hydrometer into the hot liquid. If it is still sap, it will sink to the bottom of the cup and sit there. If it is starting to be syrup, the hydrometer will float. At the level of the syrup on the hydrometer, you can read how dense the syrup is. There is a well marked red line that shows where the surface of the syrup should measure on the hydrometer when it is done. It couldn't be easier - the hydrometer floats in the hot syrup right at the measure of perfect sugar content when it is done cooking.You can also measure the syrup when it is cold - there's a measure for that too.

maple sugaring questions and supplies

questions about making maple syrup:

How deep should you drill the hole? An inch and a half deep, so that the above tap's left side fits into the hole, then you give it a tap with a hammer.

How do you install a sap bag? fold down the upper edge of the bag a couple times and fit it into the inside lip of each side of the handle, then push the metal piece down to hold the bag.

How do you know when syrup is done boiling? At sea level the temperature should be 219 degrees F. Use a testing cup and hydrometer to know for sure. It sits inside the test cup, which when full of hot syrup will float or sit on the bottom, to show the density of the syrup.

How do you make your own taps, or spiles? The maker of the wooden taps we own used a soft wood and carved the outside, then used an awl to carve out the inside. We prefer galvanized taps.

For my small backyard setup, this is what I'm using:

• 25 taps
• 25 handles and sap bags
• 2 large food grade buckets
• 2 x 30 gallon new plastic trashcans for storing the sap
• 55 gallon rain barrel - formerly an olive barrel - for storing sap
• turkey fryer stand and pot
• tank of propane
• large pot for finishing the syrup off on the stove
• hydrometer and test cup
• digital instant read thermometer
• felt maple syrup filter
• 4' tubing for taps on the other side of the fence
  
  

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how to make maple syrup

First, wash everything well, before you get started– the pot for boiling, the taps, the collecting bags or buckets, and storage containers.

Make sure you are tapping hard maple trees. A soft maple buds up sooner than a hard maple, and while it will produce sap, the taste can be "buddy" or funny tasting, and throw the whole batch of syrup into the unusable category. Don't tap a tree with a trunk that is less than 10” in diameter, or else you can do damage to the tree. A tree that is 18” can accommodate a second tap, and a tree that is at least 26” can have three taps on it.

Drilling and installing the tap- Use a hand drill or a battery powered drill with a 7/16” drill bit for drilling wood. Place a piece of tape on the drill bit to mark 1.5 inches. Drill the hole in the tree 2-6 feet from the ground. Drill at slight downward angle. Don’t drill the hole directly above or below or within a few inches of the old hole. Use a hammer to gently drive the tap in, but be careful not to drive it in too deep and split the tree.

Collect sap using a bucket, a gallon milk container, a handle and sap bag, or tubing which empties into a larger container. Hang or install one of these on the tap. Make sure the container is covered to keep anything other than sap out. Check on the containers regularly to avoid having overflow. To put a sap bag on the handle, fold the bag down a couple of times, and secure the folds in the inside lip, and press down on the rim. Be careful not to cut yourself on the handle's sharp galvanized metal.

Store the sap in a food grade container outside on the northern side of your house until you are ready to boil. Sap will sour if not kept cold and if you keep it too many days. If it's cloudy, don’t use it.

To boil off the water in sap, you need a good fire. Wood is a good source of fuel, but you need to use a stove pipe to direct ash and smoke away from the evaporating pan. ,You can also cook small batches indoors on the stove, but the process produces lots of sticky steam. The kitchen stove is a nice way to finish off a pot of sap though.

I use a turkey fryer cooking stand and pot, and cook the sap over a propane fire. It isn't that efficient since you have a small surface area for the evaporation to take place, so the next step up in backyard cooking is an evaporator, which is a stainless 5" or so deep pan that sits on the fire.

Boiling the sap in the pan. Add a little cold sap at a time, to avoid having to start over. The sap will foam up while boiling from time to time. Simply touch the surface of the syrup with a spoon with a little bit of butter on it or drop in a single drop of cream. I set a timer and come outside every 20 minutes to check the fire and add fresh, cold sap.

When the sap gets to 219F, 7 degrees above boiling at sea level, it should be done. If you boil too long, crystals will form, or it will scorch. It is worthwhile to buy a testing cup and a hydrometer to make sure the syrup has the proper density to be labled syrup. I've had syrup measure 219 degrees F, that was still too watery to be syrup - so I'm glad I use the hydrometer.

The testing cup is a tall narrow cup that can withstand the high temperature of the sap liquid and allows you to use just a couple of ladles full to test each time. The hydrometer is a glass tube that floats in the syrup and if enough water has been evaporated off, will float at a certain level in hot syrup that indicates there is 66% sugar content in the syrup. It also has a measure for cold syrup too.

When the sap is very close to being concentrated enough to be real syrup, you'll notice that there is a different kind of foam that builds on top of the surface. You really need to stay on top of this and use a drop of cream or a tiny bit of butter to create enough surface tension to bring the bubbles down, or it will overflow the pot.

Some people strain the sap before boiling and some strain it after. Straining before helps by improving the grade of the syrup. Stores carry a special filter for syrup, or you can let the syrup sit and then pour the clear syrup off the top, or you can use some cheesecloth. I've used layers of cheesecloth to filter the syrup and it gets the little flecks of bark out just fine. This year I have a new felt filter.

I store the syrup I make each day in our second fridge. At the end of the season, I group jars of the same color syrup and decant the jars slowly to keep out the maple sand. Maple sand is a calcium byproduct that settles out of the syrup. Rarely does it reform after it settles out and is removed this way.

For each color or grade, I reheat the syrup to just below boiling. Then I pour the syrup into sterile jars that have been boiled in a canning pot for 15 minutes, and seal with sterile lids and rings, leaving ½ inch of jar head space. I store the jars of syrup in a cool, dark place.

granola

I love making granola. Sometimes I overdo it and I have to wait a couple months to make it again. But we always come back to it because oats are so good for you and if you follow a simple formula, you can never go wrong. These proportions are easy to memorize too, which makes it more likely for me to make it.

Basic granola formula -
oats+ oil+ sweetener +heat = basic granola

Specifics of the basic granola formula -
6 c oats + 1 stick of butter + 1 c honey + 1 hour at 350F (stirring often)= basic granola

For a less basic granola the formula looks like this:
6 c oats + 1 stick of butter + 1 c honey or syrup + 1 T of cinnamon + 2 c nuts + 2 c dried fruit + 1 hour at 350F (stirring often) = nutty, fruity granola


The Overdoing It Granola recipe

4 sticks of butter melted
1 quart of honey
4T cinnamon
24 cups of oats
2 cups each of walnuts, pecans, sliced almonds, and sunflower seeds
6 cups of cut up dried apples, 2 cups of dried cranberries, and 2 cups of dried blueberries

I mixed together the butter and honey in a large roasting pan. Then I added the cinnamon, nuts and oats and blended well. I bake the mixture for 1 hour at 350 degrees F and pulled it out of the oven every 14 minutes or so to stir it up well.

Of course you can substitute oil for butter, maple syrup for honey, and play around with combinations of nuts, coconut, dried fruits, and candied ginger. The more variations you create, the more likely it will be eaten up!

food is not supposed to equal love

I've been trying to make breakfast every morning for the kids and Bob. This morning we had homemade cranberry muffins. We usually have oatmeal with blueberries from the freezer, or eggs from our own chickens. I know food is not supposed to equal love. But I love showing them that I care about them having a good day by giving them something good to eat for breakfast.

an early start to maple season?

I love maple sugaring. It is great to have to be outside trudging around on the warmer days in late winter and early spring. Even in the rain, just being outside is pleasant.

The weather is going to be very warm during the days this week, but about 20 cooler at night. I'm going to put my taps in even though it is about a month earlier than I did last year.

Last year we produced 8 gallons of syrup. But, I think we only ended up with 3 gallons in quart jars stored in the pantry this winter because we made a festival of handing it out and using it up in March. I cooked fish, chicken, and all kinds of other things with it, invented maple cocktails, and used it to sweeten cakes, granola, and even my tea.

I'm going to try to make the same amount this year. I had 23 taps in 14 trees, but will do 25 taps in 15 this year.

chore list

February Chores - you think because there is snow on the ground there's no work to do on the farm?? Well, think again! Here's my list this month.

1. finish planning the garden and order seeds
2. work with the collective to see what we are going together and order seeds
3. order chicks and turkeys
4. rebuild hoop house to start growing seedlings in March
5. set up plant light in kitchen to grow micro greens indoors
6. set up plant lights and heater in basement to start seedlings for summer garden
7. make sure all the maple sugaring equipment is clean and ready to go, borrow portable electric drill to put in taps
8. feed and water chickens and cows daily and check on them. clean the stall and add new bedding regularly.
9. keep using meats and vegetables from the freezer, and items from the root cellar and pantry
10. scrape blue cheeses in the cheese cave

Rutland Herald today

The Rutland Herald today had several articles that could have been part of a newspaper in the 20's. And I liked it. There was an article about root cellaring, one about milk prices, an article about working farm dogs, and the future of Vermont's agriculture. There were also articles about the stimulus bill and what it means for Vermont, including whether Vermonters will work for federal money and what it will mean.

This issue of the newspaper could have been published during the depression. Many of the commentaries were written by local and Vermont figures such as Barrie Dinsmore and Willem Lange, fellow VPR commentators.

Overall, I was very impressed. In a time when many newspapers are having financial troubles, this paper was relevant to my life. I know my life is not that relevant to most other people, but having a paper that talks about agriculture, including how-to information, is important in tough economic times when people are needing to produce more of their food for year round consumption in their own backyards.

Bravo to the Herald!

photos from our farm

our own homemade maki sushi

my sweet young nieces.

the cows taking a nap before lunchtime. charlie still gets inside the round bale feeder.

our back paddock in the snow.

here are the bagels i made last week.

Lemon Square Cookies

Do you remember lemon square cookies? These are delicious! They should be served with a nice cup of Earl Grey tea, with lemon for the tea of course.

Lemon Square Cookies

2c flour
2 sticks butter, cut into pieces
1/2 c powdered sugar
4 eggs
1/3 c lemon juice
2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Combine flour, butter pieces, and powdered sugar in the food processor and pour into a greased oblong glass pan. Press gently into the pan. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes. Combine the remaining ingredients and pour into the pan, and bake at 350F for 25 mintues. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and cut into bars.

Getting ready for sugaring

I'm getting ready for maple sugaring, even though it is at least a month away. We are expecting some weather in the 40's with cold nights coming up, but I don't think I'll bother trying to get started this early.

I did order some supplies though.

My neighbors built a fence for their dogs and fenced in several maples of our mutually owned hedgerow. The stockade-style privacy fence that is next to the trees is on our side of the border, and was built years ago. Last year I just walked around that fence and tapped the trees and collected the sap. But this year the way around the fence is blocked off since they've attached a fence perpendicular to the two ends. So, I bought flexible tubing so that I could put in a tap at the level of the top of the fence and then use the tubing to allow the sap to flow over the fence and into a bucket, perched in the snow bank.

We had 23 taps in 13 trees last year I believe. We mainly used the trees that surround our house, even though we have at least 16 acres of maple trees in our back yard. Problem is we are doing this to produce 8 gallons and not 800 and we're not set up to transport sap down a steep slope, and then cook it all up. Maybe someday, but what we get from the hedgerow trees is plenty for our use.

I ordered a hydrometer and test cup, and a new felt filter too. We borrowed a hydrometer last year from our neighbor who is a commercial producer. He was really lovely about teaching me how to use it too. This year we'll have our own. We also had a lot of sugar sand last year with using coffee filters, so I thought I'd invest in the real deal for this year. I think this is a hobby I could do forever - I love having an excuse to get out and walk around on those sunny warm days when the sap is really flowing.

I made a list in January of what I want to learn this year. We've done this each year for the past few and it has been fun. Last year I learned how to make cheese, how to pressure can, and tapped our trees and boiled sap for maple syrup. The year before we learned how to raise bees for honey, how to make kim chi and sauerkraut, and how to milk a cow. Over the years we've learned how to pickle, how to raise chickens and pigs, how to roast coffee, how to make good compost and save seeds, and how to use a root cellar and how to prepare foods for freezing.

Here are our goals for learning new things:

• how to make beer - but waiting until this summer for warmer weather for better fermentation
• how to make our own sausage - we will share in the collective hogs this year and will use that meat
• how to smoke foods - Bob wants to build a smoker
• how to build a stone oven - We're doing that with a master mason at one of the other family's homes in the collective
• how to raise turkeys - we're only getting 3 to raise for our own family and to smoke at least 4 breasts.

on chickens

We ordered our new chickens!

Last year we bought meat chicks from McMurray and over half of the first flock died. Then they sent us another flock and a few of those died. We never had so many problems raising chickens.

The year before, we bought our meat chicks from a local hardware store and realized that the day olds were more than that and hadn't been fed and were weak from the way they were kept. That led to problems too.

This year, we are buying our meat birds from a farmer friend who is driving to Massachusetts to pick up birds that are not day old chicks, but are a little older. Still chicks though. He'll bring us back 25 on the first trip and 25 eight weeks later. We'll raise the chicks in two batches in the barn brooder, waiting for May to have warmer nights.

At the beginning of April we'll replace our long serving flock of egg layers. We ordered 12 red star sex link birds, who will just have started laying when we get them. In the past we've paid a couple dollars for each chick and fed them for 6 months until they lay. This time we are paying $8 each for this early maturing breed, and we don't have to put them in the barn brooder to endure cold spring nights.

Problem is - we'll have to cull the flock that we have and that makes me a little sad. The 10 we have left are only laying a couple eggs a day and I don't want to buy grain to feed them and still have to buy eggs when I'm baking. They are so scruffy looking too!

I learned my lesson on buying breeds too. No more fancy chickens that don't lay more than 2 eggs per week, and wait until they are 7 months old to do it. We want early maturing chickens who lay large eggs and plenty of them. If they produce more than we want or need, there are plenty of people who could use the eggs and would be glad to take them off our hands, especially in these hard times.

natural remedies

It is cold season. There are natural remedies that are recognized as helpful to alleviate the symtoms. There are also foods that are good for the other things that ail you...you know what these are...

• Honey is good for coughs. Take a teaspoon and add it to your tea.
• Cranberry juice to ward off urinary tract infections

What are the others that you swear by?