I think we're done with the syrup. We didn't produce much this year - partially because our set up is so poor. Next year we're doing a real evaporator pan and a wood fire, and a lot more taps. We only made 1.5 gallons this year and made 8 gallons last year! Oh well.

Our cows are happy though. Although one of them has lost a lot of hair from her tail area. The vet is coming this week to check that out and to give rabies shots. There was a case of cow rabies up in Charlotte this year and with all the sick bats flying around, I want us all to be safe.

We had friends over this weekend, parents and sons from the Bernie's basketball team. It was fun, but what a mess I make when I cook. It took a long time Sunday to clean up. Then we made 275 party favors for Grace's swim banquet last night, finishing tying the last ones up in the car as we pulled into the parking lot! Phew.

We have a new visitor at our house too. Tingyu came to stay with us Friday and will stay for the balance of the school year and possibly next year. She's an exchange student from Taiwan and is very sweet. She likes to cook too so I know we'll have fun in the kitchen.

Easter is coming up quickly - next weekend I'll make our chocolate bunnies and chocolate covered coconut and peanut butter eggs. We'll do the Ukrainian egg dying too. Our kids love that. I had to buy eggs this week for the first time in ages - our chickens are taking some time off apparently. We get our new layers in a couple weeks and I was hoping to keep this flock in our second coop if they were still laying, but the nine 3-year old birds are not, so they will probably have to be culled. I don't know who'll do that job - not me!

spring artwork

i love spring - it has been cool - but the skies have been lovely and walks in the woods have been a delight.

We took a walk on Sunday up onto our ridge. Our neighbor Becky Weisman had installed an art project in the field near our land. The little tarp hut has a recording device inside it that repeats in several different voices - Please -- Don't Forget Me -- When I'm gone.

dead bats - a sad sign of a buggy summer to come

I cleaned up 3 dead bats from the ice shelf still remaining on the back patio. Did the cats deliver them there, or did they hit the house in their desperate search for insects in the deep winter? Once again, the bats were afflicted with white nose syndrome. They awoke and flew out of their cave on Mount Aeolous when they only had enough stored in their bodies to sleep until spring. We've found 10 dead bats around the house as the snow and ice has receded to reveal their tiny bodies.

Bee problems

We checked our hives and two of the three have died. We have equipment for four hives, so we ordered 3 nucs for late May. Last year we had 4 hives to begin with and one swarmed and one queen never "took". We ended up with a bumper crop of honey though from the first two hives, and those bees left in the hive that swarmed produced a new queen that was doing fine. It is always sad when something dies at our farm, and the bees are no different.

Bob is going to beekeeping classes and will try to figure out what caused the loss. Our beekeeping mentor has said she'd come and take a look inside too to see if we can learn what happened, in order to prevent continued losses.

Our neighbor reports that several in the village have had significant hive loss this winter. I hope nothing's up with diseases.

Cooking with Maple Sap -

Last night I made a fusion dinner - and I'm not sure what cuisines I fused! I started off with a tremendous amount of performance anxiety, even though close friends were coming over. But we were going out for pizza originally with one couple, then I realized I had defrosted 2 lbs of scallops for dinner the night before, which we hadn't used and needed to. Another couple called with a last minute invite to their house and they were included. This is what I started with:

Scallops
Asparagus
Crescent Potatoes
Mesclun

I marinated the scallops in sake with some ginger slices that had been peeled and flattened with a broad side of a cleaver. I made a sauce for the scallops with 1 cup of maple sap which was halfway to syrup - and I think I'd substitute 2 T syrup mixed with water to make one cup when I make this in other times of the year. I added 1T corn starch, 1/2 tsp white pepper, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar, and 1/2 c more rice wine.

I stir fried in vegetable oil 2 cloves of minced garlic, 2T minced ginger, 6 cut up scallions, and then added the scallops and cooked them over high heat and turned them once. When they looked done, after a few minutes, I added the sauce and stirred until it thickened.

I served them with crescent potatoes which I had cut up and tossed with olive oil, then roasted and tossed again with a little salt. One couple brought a gorgeous loaf of crusty bread from a baker in Brattleboro, and the other a marinated and roasted tofu for the vegetarians in the group.

The salad was the mesclun lettuce with asparagus that I had peeled at the base of their stalks, then steamed. I dressed it with 1/4 c sesame oil, 1/4 c rice wine vinegar, 1T soy sauce, 1/2 tsp of sesame seeds.

So...potatoes instead of rice with Chinese flavors? Substituting maple sap for chicken broth in a sauce? It worked somehow.

For the kids, I sauted 3 boneless chicken breasts until browned, then added 2 cups of sap and simmered. I added 3 T of sricha hot sauce at the end and cut the cooked chicken into slices and poured the sauce, which I had thicked with a little of the scallop sauce, over top. I sprinkled sesame seeds and chopped cilantro on top. The boys really liked the flavors and the chili sauce is actually pretty mild.

Spring Day Chores - with am temps at 17 degrees F?

Today is a big day. this is my list:

• the seeds are here - I need to start my tomatoes and peppers!
• food is coming for our produce/fish/dairy/bread pre-order coop that meets weekly at my house - help split it up, invoice people, clean up bits of broccoli from the floor
• work on the proposal to buy the nearby church that just closed to have a coop there
• meet the couple that I'm marrying in April (I'm a Justice of the Peace, not a priest/minister)
• get propane tanks filled, gather and boil sap - hope to finish off a gallon today
• pick up my new eyeglasses because I put a heavy book on top of the other ones, since I couldn't see where they were because they weren't on my face. I tried to have the new pair fitted with a ringer so I can call them when they are lost, but they don't do that yet.
• dinner with friends tonight - we're supposed to go out but I have 2 lbs of scallops in the fridge, asparagus, and nice wine. All I need is crusty bread. I might cook the scallops and/or asparagus with a splash of maple sap for a nice flavor too.

late winter walking

I shot some pictures last week when I was out walking. Here is our multi-headed cow.
Why do they always stand in a line according to age?

I've been walking regularly since the new year started. Here are some of the places I pass by.

My daughter is home from college and as is typical, she's sleeping 20 hours a day. She got up and asked for rice pudding tonight, and Aunt Joan's Macaroons, a no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookie that she's been helping me make since she was old enough to stand on a stool.

So, in addition to boiling sap to finish off our first 1/2 gallon tonight, the kitchen is warm and messy with new batches of good food in process, including granola, rice pudding, and the chocolate cookies. Grandma Wright's rice pudding recipe and Aunt Joan Wright's cookies along with my own granola recipe, and a couple hundred year old recipe for turning tree sap into sweet golden goodness.

I love having all my children at home. I love being able to make good food for them. I love the friends who stopped in and drank coffee this weekend, returned laundry baskets, or those who called to check up on me because I blogged about falling. And I'm fine by the way.

Our chores on this gorgeous day included filling up our cows' waterer with fresh water, eliminating the carrots and pumpkins from the root cellar because they've dried up or rotted out, washing the chicken waterer, and cleaning out the cars. And we gathered sap and boiled and boiled and boiled. It was fun. At the end of the day, Bob and I took a walk through our village. A mile and a half of a relaxed stroll with the dog either pulling us or lagging behind. It was a lovely day.

Sunny springy saturdays

This morning one of the cows was lowing plaintively. I went back to check on her and her tail was caught in a dead branch that had fallen across the electric fence. I don't know if she was being shocked, but I ran up to set her free. As I approached, she ran away freeing herself. That's the first time that's ever happened and I think she must just have been afraid to move because she freed herself easily when she saw me coming.

We're boiling sap today. We threw away all the sap that had frozen, hoping that the sugar concentration in ice is very low compared to melted sap. I'm never sure if that old chestnut is true or not, but we do operate as if it is. I hope to have a couple gallons of finished syrup from the next week to put in the pantry. It will be warm, or so the weatherman says.

We need to check on the bees today - the temp will be up to 50 or so and it is sunny, so it is a good time to peek in. I hope they all survived. Bernie and I put our ears to the hives a week or so ago and definitely heard buzzing on at least two of the hives.

I hope this warmer weather melts the ice in the back field. I'm still sore from my fall this week. Glad I didn't break anything, but with that thick fleece barn jacket I usually just bounce around a bit!

List today:

• distribute the rest of the food coop stuff - one more person to pick up
• gather and boil sap
• do laundry
• make supper for friends tonight - chicken dopiaza, vegetable korma, basmati rice and raita OR chicken breasts sauted and deglazed with lemon juice and capers, served on asparagus and cilantro, with a spinach salad on the side.
• cat meds
• fill the wood ring on the front porch
• go for a hike with the whole family and take lots of photos

film makers and the elderly

A doctor I know was visiting a patient at a nursing home. A 25 year old guy put his head into the room and asked the doctor and his patient to "keep it down because we're filming out here". The doc went back to the medical visit and again, the young man opened the door to the elderly patient's door without knocking and said - "can you keep it down in here?"

Becoming annoyed, the doctor replied - "No, we're doing a medical visit in here. I'm not going to keep it down. This is this lady's home." The woman told the doctor that they had told her that she had to turn her TV off earlier when she was watching the news.

Well, the doctor became angry. What made these young people feel so entitled that they could treat older people this way? He told the nurses that they needed to watch out for their patients and make sure that whatever the film makers were doing that it didn't cause the nursing home patients any concern.

And to top it all off, what were the film makers doing? A film documentary for a college course - on how we treat the elderly in our country, with clearly no consciousness to how disrespectly they were treating the elderly to make the film.

too cold, too sore, and busy!

Another spectacular fall on the ice yesterday really left me sore today. When will it be spring? I went to start boiling sap in between phone meetings today, and couldn't break through the ice in our sap storage container to be able to pour it into the evaporator pot. Instead, I took a brisk walk up the hill in the sunshine to clear the policy thoughts and prepare for the afternoon's calls.

the cows start playing

The paddock is muddy and miserable looking. I had to let the cows out into the field today, even though it is still snow covered. I turned the fence on, opened the gate, and coaxed the cows out of their winter home. I yelled "c'mon bossy" until the oldest one came first, followed by the next older, and then the reluctant calf. Once in the field, Giddy starting kicking up her heels. She bucked and kicked and ran in circles.

The others joined in, racing up and down the hill, headlong into the farthest sections of the five acre meadow. The played at chasing each other through the snow, stopping short, and turning to race off in another direction. They were playing.

This is spring. Crazy stuff happens when the temps get to 50, like the cows start playing.

list for today:

· stack wood in the ring on front porch
· empty sap buckets and start boiling
· put sawdust in the stall
· water cows
· fill feeders for chickens and gather eggs
· give cat her meds
· work on dog fence and unstring interior pastures from cow fence
· walk

Joy!

It is warm. The driveway ice sheet that would surely never melt is turning into deep puddles. The hens are doing their absolute best to crow like young roosters - begging to come out of the coop into the chicken run.

This morning I'm boiling sap. I collected from our trees this morning and each bag was full. One bag ripped off its handle and now it's on the other side of the fence where the barking dog lives. I have to go in the gate and retrieve the bag, so I hope he likes me and that his barking is just his way of saying "hi" everyday. He's probably just been telling me what he'd do to me if he ever saw me on his side of the fence.

I love this time of year, and not so much because mud season is pretty. It's just a time when we're on our way to a much, much nicer time of year. Now walks can be done in the early morning because you're not waiting for the temps to be above 10 degrees F. Any temp just above freezing means no coat and no hat, especially after this long, cold winter.

Purists

Being a purist may appear admirable from a distance, but no one wants to live with someone who demands things just perfectly so all the time. I thank God that I have a partner in life who is not that way and is very easy to live with. I hope he feels the same way, but sometimes I must be a real challenge.

Our coffee machine broke awhile back. I'd been reading that a French press was really the way to go, and that if you heated the water to just below boiiling, then let added the water and allowed the grounds to float for one minute, then you stirred it with a wooden spoon, and then waited 4 more minutes before plunging, you'd have a perfectly lovely cup of coffee. That is, of course, if you used beans ground from home-roasted green coffee beans which were raised with loving care on a microplantation in Costa Rica.

So for several months we made the shift and the coffee was good. You had to get up a little earlier, and my husband would never time the stages, but the coffee was actually damn good.

We missed the timer on the old machine that started the coffee brewing into a thermal carafe at 5:30, so no matter what time we had to get out in the morning, we still had a steaming travel mug to take with us. We missed setting it all up the night before when we could see straight, since neither of us is a morning person, despite the need to get up quite early most days.

Mostly - we missed the casualness of coffee. The whole French press thing was a little too fastidious for us. So a week or two ago, we took ourselves down to the lovely Kerry Comollo at Vermont Kitchen Supply and talked coffee makers. We came home with another thermal carafe machine and we've been very, very happy. Ah, coffee. still home roasted, still from a farmer named Frank in Costa Rica, but brewed on our schedule by little Cuisinart kitchen elves - just the way we like it.

Town meeting has come and gone. Sadly, we vote all the issues by Australian ballot nowadays and so fewer and fewer people come to the actual meeting - maybe 85 of 1700 registered voters in our town. And those that came to the polls the next day decided the school budget via the regular secret ballot, but only 300 out of the 3000 people in our town showed up. It is sad that we're losing the tradition of debate and discussion.

The weather is warming now. Today and the next several days, the sap will be running. I have work to do to make all my calls for my job, and gather sap at lunchtime and before dinner. It is great exercise, running around and carrying heavy buckets of sap. I love being outside this time of year and being thoroughly warm too.

The cows are getting big. I think both must be pregnant. I look at Charlie a little wistfully sometimes - wishing we didn't have to have him slaughtered. He's cute, but scheduled to go in June. We just don't have enough land to have a steer running around.

Ugh - Cold

When the temps dipped down the last few days, the sap stopped running as if a spigot was shut off. Today will be another cold one, predicted to not even reach the high teens. I'll do my walk later, down the driveway passing the sap bags, empty and flapping in the stiff breeze, and I'll grumble. As I step out onto the street, which is still icy from yesterday's storm, I'll suck the cold air through the fibers of my wool scarf and groan...Why is it still cold? When will this batch of coldness end?

This is the time of year I plant seeds, in between enjoying the snow and hating the cold. I love watching the seedlings emerge and tending to them. I used to pour water on the top of the seed container and mix the nasturtiums with the marigolds. I used to write the names of the seeds on labels that became separated from the flats. This year, I'll be spritzing and using proper markers. This year, there'll be no mistakes. I'll start the seeds under lights suspended from our new plant stand in the dining room. I'm done with the 55 degree basement.

Today I feel like I can bring Spring to me. It may come kicking and screaming - but I'll bring it here on my terms and start growing my plants for the summer garden and microgreens and sprouts for the late winter kitchen.