I just thought I would thank everyone for praying and for the helpful advice.
Last Saturday I asked for prayer that our baby would get out of the breech position, and several of you commented that you would pray and gave us some suggestions. We also asked for prayer at church. We never had to consider a breech delivery in any of the other pregnancies so it was all new to us.
Lisa did some of the things that were mentioned in the comments last week, and coupled with the prayers of God’s people, the Lord decided to allow Timothy to turn around the way he should be! We are praising and thanking Him for the good report at the doctor’s!
They also said Lisa was not dilated anymore than she was last week and thought that Timothy should still be able to wait several more weeks before he makes his arrival. He is in the perfect position for delivery now, and they think he weighs over 7 pounds, but they say it would still be better if he could stay in the womb as long as possible to make sure his lungs are fully developed.
We know it is all in God’s hands. Timothy will come when God directs him to come, and he will be exactly what God has made him to be. Our job will be to love and care for him and guide him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Thanks again for your prayers and we appreciate everyone’s continued prayers for Lisa, Timothy and our family.
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2 comments
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Sugar Bend Farms on February 23, 2008 at 11:29 am
So glad to hear the good news! Praise God! We will continue to pray for a safe and easy delivery and the all will be well with Timothy.
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faithfarm on February 24, 2008 at 8:23 am
Wonderful news-Praise God! I will pray for an easy delivery for Timothy and your wife. Have a blessed day! >faithfarm
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Valentine Weekend Sap Flow '08: A Concluding Summary
I thought I would post again about the maple sap collecting, just in case we don’t remember things real clearly next year when we try to do this again. For us, the 08 maple syrup season started the first weekend of February and we got about 40 gallons of sap on the 2nd and 3rd. There were a few days when the taps dripped some, but it was nothing like it was on the 2nd and 3rd and we didn’t bother to try and collect anything. Our temperatures were consistently above freezing until the 10th and then the temperatures dropped and stayed pretty much consistantly below freezing until the 14th.
I had posted on the 14th about hanging the buckets back on the maple trees in the snow. That was Thursday. On the actual day of Valentines we only collected about 2 gallons from the 8 trees we have tapped this first year. We had snow all day on Wednesday and well below freezing temperatures. Thursday it was near 40 degrees but back below freezing Thursday night. Friday saw a wonderful day with temperatures in the 50s. Then the trees really decided to start flowing.
We collected 10 full gallons of sap Friday by noon and another 10 full gallons Friday evening around 6:00. Friday night was in the 20s and Saturday was another beautiful day in the 50s. Saturday saw another great effort on the part of the maple trees with 10 gallons again collected in the morning around 10:30 and another 10 gallons collected around 5:00 in the evening. Saturday night the temperatures stayed near 40 for a low and that apparently stopped the flow for the most part. When Matthew checked the buckets this morning there was only an inch or so in each bucket. Today was warm and rainy and not much more sap came into the buckets. Matthew went up at dark and said he probably could have filled up a 5 gallon bucket, but it was too dark by that time. We may go and get it tomorrow, but it has set out all day in warm weather (60s today) and tonight is not getting very cold. I don’t know if that sap up in the buckets on the tree will still be good.
I have been boiling the sap off and on all day Friday, Saturday, and today. I have found that it is not exactly a 50 to 1 ratio like I thought last time. It is more than 40:1 but a bit less than 50:1. I am still using 50:1 but I am having a bit more than a half pint from each 3 gallon batch of syrup, which is nice. I can fill each jar all the way to the brim and then I save the left over for another jar later. Out of the 42 gallons of sap this weekend, I have made 9 half pint jars of maple syrup so far with about 5 still to go. Six gallons of sap are boiling right now and we have about 9 gallons of sap still in waiting. And that is not counting what we left at the sugar bush, if it is still good.
I feel like I have the system of syrup making down pretty good this time. It has not been as difficult or confusing this go around. The super sweet, pure and natural, maple syrup is worth the trouble. And it has been fun, too!
I had posted on the 14th about hanging the buckets back on the maple trees in the snow. That was Thursday. On the actual day of Valentines we only collected about 2 gallons from the 8 trees we have tapped this first year. We had snow all day on Wednesday and well below freezing temperatures. Thursday it was near 40 degrees but back below freezing Thursday night. Friday saw a wonderful day with temperatures in the 50s. Then the trees really decided to start flowing.
We collected 10 full gallons of sap Friday by noon and another 10 full gallons Friday evening around 6:00. Friday night was in the 20s and Saturday was another beautiful day in the 50s. Saturday saw another great effort on the part of the maple trees with 10 gallons again collected in the morning around 10:30 and another 10 gallons collected around 5:00 in the evening. Saturday night the temperatures stayed near 40 for a low and that apparently stopped the flow for the most part. When Matthew checked the buckets this morning there was only an inch or so in each bucket. Today was warm and rainy and not much more sap came into the buckets. Matthew went up at dark and said he probably could have filled up a 5 gallon bucket, but it was too dark by that time. We may go and get it tomorrow, but it has set out all day in warm weather (60s today) and tonight is not getting very cold. I don’t know if that sap up in the buckets on the tree will still be good.
I have been boiling the sap off and on all day Friday, Saturday, and today. I have found that it is not exactly a 50 to 1 ratio like I thought last time. It is more than 40:1 but a bit less than 50:1. I am still using 50:1 but I am having a bit more than a half pint from each 3 gallon batch of syrup, which is nice. I can fill each jar all the way to the brim and then I save the left over for another jar later. Out of the 42 gallons of sap this weekend, I have made 9 half pint jars of maple syrup so far with about 5 still to go. Six gallons of sap are boiling right now and we have about 9 gallons of sap still in waiting. And that is not counting what we left at the sugar bush, if it is still good.
I feel like I have the system of syrup making down pretty good this time. It has not been as difficult or confusing this go around. The super sweet, pure and natural, maple syrup is worth the trouble. And it has been fun, too!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Baby Update and Prayer Request
We had an appointment with our baby doctor again yesterday. We are now to the every week appointment phase.
For the past few nights Lisa has been having contractions and pain, but the contractions have not been consistent. She felt that something was really going on the night before last, so we were anxious to see what the doctor would say.
Lisa is at 34 weeks but they measured Timothy with an ultrasound to already be 7 pounds! He still seems to be doing fine. The bad news is that he has turned around to the breech position and Lisa is dialated 2 cm. They were thinking about sending her to the hospital or putting her on bed rest, but decided there was not yet that great of need. They want us to just monitor the situation and try to get Timothy to turn around. They said that rocking in a rocking chair can help. We have never had a baby be breech in any of the other pregnancies so this is a new (and unwelcomed) experience for us.
I would appreciate the prayers of our Christian brothers and sisters. We are praying that Timothy will turn himself around while there is still a little bit of room for him, that there will be no need for a c-section, and that Lisa won’t have any more major contractions when he does turn around. It would be safest if we could still wait a few more weeks before having Timothy join us. We’re pretty sure that he won’t go 6 more weeks, though.
By the way, the due date that they are still giving is March 30th, but the ticker on the top of the blog is set for March 23rd. We are now thinking early March will be a good possibility.
Thanks for praying, and I will keep updating in the days to come.
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7 comments
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Kitty on February 16, 2008 at 10:26 am
Praying for you, your wife and the baby. It will all work its way out. Still praying tho………Kitty
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GrandmaRosie on February 16, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Praying for you all. Babies do come , usually when you are about ready to give up!
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sheryl on February 16, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I will keep you all in my prayers. Please keep us updated. sheryl
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~Melissa on February 16, 2008 at 10:27 pm
http://www.ican-online.org/pregnancy/breech
But if you want to turn baby since Lisa is contracting, here's a site with some more ideas for turning the baby. I've seen others as well, just do a search and you'll come up with more.
Warmly and Praying,
Melissa
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Morning Sunshine on February 17, 2008 at 8:30 am
my prayers for your family.
there is a chiropractic adjustment that can turn a baby – my midwife sends all her breeches to a certain chiropractor who has had great success. I think it is called a Webster Technique. just a thought.
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Chas on February 17, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I will be saying a prayer for you all!
Chas
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mom2ahousefull on February 21, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Praying Timothy (who better be a boy since 'they' already changed 'their' mnds once!) stays put and turns around. Things I've heard that help~ lay on an incline with your head downward (fun at 9 months pregnant), ice packs on your tummy where baby's head is, no sitting in recliners, etc. sit in a hard/straight chair, rocking in a rocking hair, swinging BIG on a swing, and the Webster technique someone already mentioned. If I can do anything, just call me
For the past few nights Lisa has been having contractions and pain, but the contractions have not been consistent. She felt that something was really going on the night before last, so we were anxious to see what the doctor would say.
Lisa is at 34 weeks but they measured Timothy with an ultrasound to already be 7 pounds! He still seems to be doing fine. The bad news is that he has turned around to the breech position and Lisa is dialated 2 cm. They were thinking about sending her to the hospital or putting her on bed rest, but decided there was not yet that great of need. They want us to just monitor the situation and try to get Timothy to turn around. They said that rocking in a rocking chair can help. We have never had a baby be breech in any of the other pregnancies so this is a new (and unwelcomed) experience for us.
I would appreciate the prayers of our Christian brothers and sisters. We are praying that Timothy will turn himself around while there is still a little bit of room for him, that there will be no need for a c-section, and that Lisa won’t have any more major contractions when he does turn around. It would be safest if we could still wait a few more weeks before having Timothy join us. We’re pretty sure that he won’t go 6 more weeks, though.
By the way, the due date that they are still giving is March 30th, but the ticker on the top of the blog is set for March 23rd. We are now thinking early March will be a good possibility.
Thanks for praying, and I will keep updating in the days to come.
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7 comments
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Kitty on February 16, 2008 at 10:26 am
Praying for you, your wife and the baby. It will all work its way out. Still praying tho………Kitty
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GrandmaRosie on February 16, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Praying for you all. Babies do come , usually when you are about ready to give up!
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sheryl on February 16, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I will keep you all in my prayers. Please keep us updated. sheryl
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~Melissa on February 16, 2008 at 10:27 pm
http://www.ican-online.org/pregnancy/breech
But if you want to turn baby since Lisa is contracting, here's a site with some more ideas for turning the baby. I've seen others as well, just do a search and you'll come up with more.
Warmly and Praying,
Melissa
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Morning Sunshine on February 17, 2008 at 8:30 am
my prayers for your family.
there is a chiropractic adjustment that can turn a baby – my midwife sends all her breeches to a certain chiropractor who has had great success. I think it is called a Webster Technique. just a thought.
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Chas on February 17, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I will be saying a prayer for you all!
Chas
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mom2ahousefull on February 21, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Praying Timothy (who better be a boy since 'they' already changed 'their' mnds once!) stays put and turns around. Things I've heard that help~ lay on an incline with your head downward (fun at 9 months pregnant), ice packs on your tummy where baby's head is, no sitting in recliners, etc. sit in a hard/straight chair, rocking in a rocking hair, swinging BIG on a swing, and the Webster technique someone already mentioned. If I can do anything, just call me
Thursday, February 14, 2008
A Sweet Valentine's Day (Of the Maple Variety!)
I hope everyone has had a wonderful Valentine’s Day today! Here at Pure Water Hollow, I think we may have started a new tradition for Valentine’s Day: maple candy from our own maple trees. I have posted previously about our first attempts at tapping our sugar maple trees and converting the sap into maple syrup. We successfully accomplished that earlier in February, but I still wanted to try to make maple sugar and maple candy. What better day to try than Valentine’s Day?
Today was a neat day to collect sap because we had snow on the ground like they do in New England when they do their sap gathering. I wanted to use today’s sap to make the maple candy, but the trees just wouldn’t cooperate as much as they did two weekends ago. We did get almost two gallons of sap today, which yielded about 6 ounces of syrup, but it wasn’t until late in the day. Here is a picture of one of our maple trees in the snow with a bucket waiting to be filled up. Our dog, Mammoo, is protecting the area I hope:
Since the sap didn’t come today early enough to make candy, I used some of the syrup from our previous sugaring day. We decided to experiment with one of the jars that we had boiled a bit too long which had caused the syrup to crystal up. I spooned it into a pan and heated it up on the stove. I was surprised how quickly it came to a boil, and how quickly the temperature raised to well above boiling.
I was trying for soft maple candy and I had read that you should bring it to about 30 degrees above boiling. Then you should let it cool in another pan until the temperature dropped back down to about 200 degrees and then stir it until it became a plastic consistency. It reached above 230 degrees very quickly. It also cooled very quickly; too quickly in fact! Maybe it was because I was using such a small amount (just a half pint). It turned to a plastic consitency so quickly that it started to harden before I could pour it into the molds. Instead I packed it into the molds which worked ok, but wasn’t exactly what I had wanted.
Here is a picture of the first maple candy made at Pure Water Hollow Homestead:
I don’t know if the candies turned out perfect, but they sure were good! They had a “melt in your mouth gradually” sensation, sort of like those soft peppermints you can get that fall apart as you suck them. I think the children loved these maple hearts for Valentine’s Day! And the amazing thing is that it is 100% all natural, straight from the tree!
I will need to try the process some more to perfect it. I’ve read that if you are able to pour the syrup the outside will have a glossy look to it, which I think would be better.
Something I was more pleased with than the candy, was the maple sugar I made. After the candy had hardened too much to be able to put into any more molds, I decided to see what would happen if I crushed the remainder of it into powder. Maybe it would resemble sugar? I crushed and sifted it and it stayed dry and fluffy, just like granulated sugar! Maybe I got it finer than granulated sugar? I was very happy with it! Here are a couple of pictures of the first maple powdered sugar made at Pure Water Hollow:
This sugar should work as well as store bought white sugar, but I believe it is much healthier! It is 100% natural and organic, but it is oh so sweet!
I also took a picture of the new syrup bottle I bought today next to the sugar bowl. The syrup that is in the bottle is Valentine’s Day maple syrup made today from Valentine’s Day maple sap collected today!
Today has been a nice Valentine’s Day but I am really looking forward to celebrating with my Valentine this Saturday evening. I am taking Lisa to dinner and a Doyle Lawson concert while Erica babysits for us. I am so in love with my wife, Lisa! I can’t really put into words how I feel, but I know that I have so much more than I deserve! A beautiful woman who loves and cares for me and who allows me to love her. I feel like God has blessed me greater than He could ever bless anyone else!
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4 comments
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Mom on February 15, 2008 at 8:03 am
That was a nice post! We have not gotten any sap this week. Today is going to be a bit warmer, so maybe today we will get sap.I ordered 20 more spots from Lehmans, but they are back ordered. I was hoping to have them for this weekend.
The candy and sugar look good!
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Debbie on February 15, 2008 at 8:57 am
My it look like you are having too much fun. It also looks like you are busy around the homestead. Your maple sugar reminded me when I bought some maple sugar. It was great. I loved putting it in my tea to have the extra flavor of maple. Great stuff. I've never had maple candy though. I'm glad to see that things are good at the homestead. Thanks for posting all this wonderful information.
Debbie
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Schatzi on February 15, 2008 at 11:48 am
What a great post….reminds me of my grandparents letting us help make maple syrup and candy.
Have a great "date night"
Connie
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Chas on February 15, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Hi there! I was just thinking about you guys and how you should be getting close to having a new little one very soon! I am glad to read that you are all doing well.
That candy and sugar looks wonderful… I would love to do something like that!
You are an inspiration!!!
Have a great weekend!
Chas
Today was a neat day to collect sap because we had snow on the ground like they do in New England when they do their sap gathering. I wanted to use today’s sap to make the maple candy, but the trees just wouldn’t cooperate as much as they did two weekends ago. We did get almost two gallons of sap today, which yielded about 6 ounces of syrup, but it wasn’t until late in the day. Here is a picture of one of our maple trees in the snow with a bucket waiting to be filled up. Our dog, Mammoo, is protecting the area I hope:
Since the sap didn’t come today early enough to make candy, I used some of the syrup from our previous sugaring day. We decided to experiment with one of the jars that we had boiled a bit too long which had caused the syrup to crystal up. I spooned it into a pan and heated it up on the stove. I was surprised how quickly it came to a boil, and how quickly the temperature raised to well above boiling.
I was trying for soft maple candy and I had read that you should bring it to about 30 degrees above boiling. Then you should let it cool in another pan until the temperature dropped back down to about 200 degrees and then stir it until it became a plastic consistency. It reached above 230 degrees very quickly. It also cooled very quickly; too quickly in fact! Maybe it was because I was using such a small amount (just a half pint). It turned to a plastic consitency so quickly that it started to harden before I could pour it into the molds. Instead I packed it into the molds which worked ok, but wasn’t exactly what I had wanted.
Here is a picture of the first maple candy made at Pure Water Hollow Homestead:
I don’t know if the candies turned out perfect, but they sure were good! They had a “melt in your mouth gradually” sensation, sort of like those soft peppermints you can get that fall apart as you suck them. I think the children loved these maple hearts for Valentine’s Day! And the amazing thing is that it is 100% all natural, straight from the tree!
I will need to try the process some more to perfect it. I’ve read that if you are able to pour the syrup the outside will have a glossy look to it, which I think would be better.
Something I was more pleased with than the candy, was the maple sugar I made. After the candy had hardened too much to be able to put into any more molds, I decided to see what would happen if I crushed the remainder of it into powder. Maybe it would resemble sugar? I crushed and sifted it and it stayed dry and fluffy, just like granulated sugar! Maybe I got it finer than granulated sugar? I was very happy with it! Here are a couple of pictures of the first maple powdered sugar made at Pure Water Hollow:
This sugar should work as well as store bought white sugar, but I believe it is much healthier! It is 100% natural and organic, but it is oh so sweet!
I also took a picture of the new syrup bottle I bought today next to the sugar bowl. The syrup that is in the bottle is Valentine’s Day maple syrup made today from Valentine’s Day maple sap collected today!
Today has been a nice Valentine’s Day but I am really looking forward to celebrating with my Valentine this Saturday evening. I am taking Lisa to dinner and a Doyle Lawson concert while Erica babysits for us. I am so in love with my wife, Lisa! I can’t really put into words how I feel, but I know that I have so much more than I deserve! A beautiful woman who loves and cares for me and who allows me to love her. I feel like God has blessed me greater than He could ever bless anyone else!
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4 comments
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Mom on February 15, 2008 at 8:03 am
That was a nice post! We have not gotten any sap this week. Today is going to be a bit warmer, so maybe today we will get sap.I ordered 20 more spots from Lehmans, but they are back ordered. I was hoping to have them for this weekend.
The candy and sugar look good!
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Debbie on February 15, 2008 at 8:57 am
My it look like you are having too much fun. It also looks like you are busy around the homestead. Your maple sugar reminded me when I bought some maple sugar. It was great. I loved putting it in my tea to have the extra flavor of maple. Great stuff. I've never had maple candy though. I'm glad to see that things are good at the homestead. Thanks for posting all this wonderful information.
Debbie
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Schatzi on February 15, 2008 at 11:48 am
What a great post….reminds me of my grandparents letting us help make maple syrup and candy.
Have a great "date night"
Connie
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Chas on February 15, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Hi there! I was just thinking about you guys and how you should be getting close to having a new little one very soon! I am glad to read that you are all doing well.
That candy and sugar looks wonderful… I would love to do something like that!
You are an inspiration!!!
Have a great weekend!
Chas
Collecting Maple Sap (In Authentic Snow!)
I love those pictures you see of folks collecting the maple tree sap in the New England area. There is always a big snow covering the ground, sometimes with drifts! Well, we don’t get that much snow very often here in eastern Kentucky, but we got a surprise inch or two yesterday. I had been planning for several days on hanging our buckets on our maple trees today, mainly because of the predicted temperature being in the 40s for highs. Last night it was about 25 degrees and we had gotten down into the teens before that. A nice warm day like today should get the sap to start flowing again.
After we got the snow yesterday, I was even more excited about hanging the buckets. It would feel so much more “authentic” to go trapsing through some snow covered woods to obtain the maple sap! We didn’t go up to the sugar bush until about 10:00am. The golden sun was shining and the temperature was starting to peek above 30 degrees. The snow, however, remained a still, white blanket covering the forest, making the scenery around us sparkle in the sun. The Lord also painted the most beautiful blue sky you can imagine, to contrast the glaring white of the snow. No Norman Rockwell painting ever looked this peaceful.
The pictures we took can’t do the reality any justice, but I was happy to take them anyway. I loved the thought of collecting maple sap with snow on the ground! I had two very good helpers with me on this fine Valentine’s Day adventure.
Here is Christina next to one of the trees:
And here is Matthew:
Christina took this picture of a frozen spout with snow on it before Matthew and I got up there:
Here is shot of Matthew and Christina from a distance:
I really like this picture. I thought it was artistic, with the fallen tree in the foreground covered with snow and the blue sky in the background above the ridge. The beautiful girl in the middle of the picture with the sap bucket makes it even better!
Speaking of that beautiful girl, when Christina got thirsty, she decided to eat some of the snow!
But you better be careful walking on steep hillsides in the snow! Matthew, Christina, and I each slipped and fell at least once as we climbed up and down the slick slopes. Christina got up too quickly for me to get a picture, but here she is in a good re-dramatization of her fall:
Our dogs usually come up with us whenever we go up in the mountains. Luna was there, with Chief and Mammoo, but I did not get a picture of her today. Here is one of Chief and Mammoo with Matthew:
And how about one more shot of the dogs. You can see a bit more of what the snow covered woods looked like in the background:
The sap flow was not very strong after all, today. The temperature did not get much above freezing until pretty late in the day. It did peak out at 48 degrees about 4:00pm and that was when most of the sap we collected probably flowed. There were still patches of snow all around when we gathered almost 2 gallons of sap at 6:00pm. The trees were all dripping, but nothing like they were on the 2nd and 3rd of February when we collected about 40 gallons. The sap may continue to flow through the night because it is not supposed to get below freezing, so we may be able to make more syrup tomorrow. Tonight we could only make about 6 ounces of syrup.
Along with the syrup, I also made some maple candy and maple sugar tonight, in celebration of Valentine’s Day. I am going to put those few pictures on my next post.
I am thankful for so much on this Valentine’s Day. I am thankful for the maple trees and for the snow, but I am mostly thankful for the love of the one who created them both and did so much more. God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die (and raise from the dead) so that our sins that were scarlet could be made white as snow! There is nothing so sweet as that!
After we got the snow yesterday, I was even more excited about hanging the buckets. It would feel so much more “authentic” to go trapsing through some snow covered woods to obtain the maple sap! We didn’t go up to the sugar bush until about 10:00am. The golden sun was shining and the temperature was starting to peek above 30 degrees. The snow, however, remained a still, white blanket covering the forest, making the scenery around us sparkle in the sun. The Lord also painted the most beautiful blue sky you can imagine, to contrast the glaring white of the snow. No Norman Rockwell painting ever looked this peaceful.
The pictures we took can’t do the reality any justice, but I was happy to take them anyway. I loved the thought of collecting maple sap with snow on the ground! I had two very good helpers with me on this fine Valentine’s Day adventure.
Here is Christina next to one of the trees:
And here is Matthew:
Christina took this picture of a frozen spout with snow on it before Matthew and I got up there:
Here is shot of Matthew and Christina from a distance:
I really like this picture. I thought it was artistic, with the fallen tree in the foreground covered with snow and the blue sky in the background above the ridge. The beautiful girl in the middle of the picture with the sap bucket makes it even better!
Speaking of that beautiful girl, when Christina got thirsty, she decided to eat some of the snow!
But you better be careful walking on steep hillsides in the snow! Matthew, Christina, and I each slipped and fell at least once as we climbed up and down the slick slopes. Christina got up too quickly for me to get a picture, but here she is in a good re-dramatization of her fall:
Our dogs usually come up with us whenever we go up in the mountains. Luna was there, with Chief and Mammoo, but I did not get a picture of her today. Here is one of Chief and Mammoo with Matthew:
And how about one more shot of the dogs. You can see a bit more of what the snow covered woods looked like in the background:
The sap flow was not very strong after all, today. The temperature did not get much above freezing until pretty late in the day. It did peak out at 48 degrees about 4:00pm and that was when most of the sap we collected probably flowed. There were still patches of snow all around when we gathered almost 2 gallons of sap at 6:00pm. The trees were all dripping, but nothing like they were on the 2nd and 3rd of February when we collected about 40 gallons. The sap may continue to flow through the night because it is not supposed to get below freezing, so we may be able to make more syrup tomorrow. Tonight we could only make about 6 ounces of syrup.
Along with the syrup, I also made some maple candy and maple sugar tonight, in celebration of Valentine’s Day. I am going to put those few pictures on my next post.
I am thankful for so much on this Valentine’s Day. I am thankful for the maple trees and for the snow, but I am mostly thankful for the love of the one who created them both and did so much more. God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die (and raise from the dead) so that our sins that were scarlet could be made white as snow! There is nothing so sweet as that!
Christina's Walk Through Snow Covered Woods
Christina wanted to walk through the snow up to the sugarbush this morning. We were going to hang the buckets on the maple trees we tapped a week and a half ago because today was going to be nice weather. We had a surprise snowfall yesterday and Christina wanted to take our camera on her walk. (The weather people had actually predicted 100% chance of snow for the day before but we did not get anything at all! The snow from yesterday was only a 50% chance of flurries. Just goes to show Who is really in charge of the weather!)
Christina is doing a great job taking pictures and I just thought I would share a few of her pictures of our snowy woods now.
Here is a small outcrop of rock that made a good picture on the way to the sugar bush:
Isn’t the hill pretty with the snow on it?
The “road” up the mountain was snow covered:
This is a nice picture of the West Cave. You can see the chairs in the opening where we had done some deer hunting:
When Matthew and I got up to the the sugar bush, Christina was sitting under a tree, taking in the beauty all around her. We took many more pictures of hanging the buckets on the maple trees in the snow and I will share them in my next post.
It has been a very nice Valentine’s Day today!
Christina is doing a great job taking pictures and I just thought I would share a few of her pictures of our snowy woods now.
Here is a small outcrop of rock that made a good picture on the way to the sugar bush:
Isn’t the hill pretty with the snow on it?
The “road” up the mountain was snow covered:
This is a nice picture of the West Cave. You can see the chairs in the opening where we had done some deer hunting:
When Matthew and I got up to the the sugar bush, Christina was sitting under a tree, taking in the beauty all around her. We took many more pictures of hanging the buckets on the maple trees in the snow and I will share them in my next post.
It has been a very nice Valentine’s Day today!
Monday, February 11, 2008
On Building Pig Lots
(The following is from a correspondance with another homesteadblogger.)
Hello,
Thanks for commenting on our blog. You asked about pig lots. I am suprised how much success we have had keeping the pigs in, because everyone told us it would be impossible!
We used as many standing trees as possible and dug holes for other posts (cut trees). Then we nailed cattle fence to the posts. We tried to bury the fence about 6 inches or at least made it curve inward toward the lots.
Our first lot we buried old roofing tin at the bottom of the fence so they would not be able to root out, and we put up cross rails for strength. The later big lots, I did not go to that much trouble. They have not really needed the cross rails, but we did try to put a solid bottom beam down on the ground to keep them from rooting up the fence. Otherwise they would just mangle the fence and go right under.
The only problems we have had is when they dig down so deep that they can squeeze under the rail or when they have stuck their snouts through the fence so much that they break some of the wires over time. In both cases we have had plenty of time to correct the problem before they would get to the point of being able to get out. We could just nail up a lower rail or put up another piece of wire fence over the hole they were making.
We did decide to dig some wallow holes and fill them up with water every few days in the summer, so there was quite a bit of work involved.
I just added you to our friend list so you will be able to see all of out past posts. We started completely ignorant as to what to do, but we seem to have found what works. At least it has worked for us.
If you go to the category section on our blog, you can go to "Learning About Pigs" and see all of our posts concerning our pig raising adventure. I think I have written more about pigs than anything else, I guess because it has been our first big project for our homestead (after chickens).
The posts with pictures of the children are viewable to "friends only", so you may have missed some of the earlier posts about pigs. Lately I have put them up for everyone to view just until it leaves the most recent 100 posts, and then I go back and make them "friends only".
I noticed on your blog that you are also thinking about bees. We started a honey bee hive also. I have only posted a couple of times about it, but you might want to check them out to.
If you do look around at the old posts, I hope you will be blessed by them. I sure have had fun recording what the Lord has been doing for our family!
God Bless,
Eric
Hello,
Thanks for commenting on our blog. You asked about pig lots. I am suprised how much success we have had keeping the pigs in, because everyone told us it would be impossible!
We used as many standing trees as possible and dug holes for other posts (cut trees). Then we nailed cattle fence to the posts. We tried to bury the fence about 6 inches or at least made it curve inward toward the lots.
Our first lot we buried old roofing tin at the bottom of the fence so they would not be able to root out, and we put up cross rails for strength. The later big lots, I did not go to that much trouble. They have not really needed the cross rails, but we did try to put a solid bottom beam down on the ground to keep them from rooting up the fence. Otherwise they would just mangle the fence and go right under.
The only problems we have had is when they dig down so deep that they can squeeze under the rail or when they have stuck their snouts through the fence so much that they break some of the wires over time. In both cases we have had plenty of time to correct the problem before they would get to the point of being able to get out. We could just nail up a lower rail or put up another piece of wire fence over the hole they were making.
We did decide to dig some wallow holes and fill them up with water every few days in the summer, so there was quite a bit of work involved.
I just added you to our friend list so you will be able to see all of out past posts. We started completely ignorant as to what to do, but we seem to have found what works. At least it has worked for us.
If you go to the category section on our blog, you can go to "Learning About Pigs" and see all of our posts concerning our pig raising adventure. I think I have written more about pigs than anything else, I guess because it has been our first big project for our homestead (after chickens).
The posts with pictures of the children are viewable to "friends only", so you may have missed some of the earlier posts about pigs. Lately I have put them up for everyone to view just until it leaves the most recent 100 posts, and then I go back and make them "friends only".
I noticed on your blog that you are also thinking about bees. We started a honey bee hive also. I have only posted a couple of times about it, but you might want to check them out to.
If you do look around at the old posts, I hope you will be blessed by them. I sure have had fun recording what the Lord has been doing for our family!
God Bless,
Eric
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Raising A Couple Litters of Piglets : Take 2
On the same day we were to pick up our cured ham and bacon from the first litters of piglets raised at Pure Water Hollow, we were blessed with their replacements!
Matthew went up to the barn to feed pretty early Saturday morning, since we were planning on leaving before lunch. We had an appointment at the meat market to pick up our 161 pounds of cured ham and bacon. The rest of us were still pretty much asleep on this lazy morning when Matthew called over the radio that Nellie and Sally had their piglets!
Needless to say, that announcement got us moving quickly. We had our work clothes on and were up at the pig lots in a flash. We knew they were expecting, but we did not know exactly when they were bred. I really thought they would have another week or so.
Nellie had 10 piglets nursing in one of the sties and they all seemed to be doing fine. Christina brought our camera along. Here is the first picture she took of them when Nellie was up eating:
Sally, on the other hand, delivered her piglets on the cold ground, outside the sty. Our temperatures were at freezing last night, and Sally was not doing well. She was obviously cold and was shaking as the 8 piglets nursed.
Here we are checking on Sally, wondering what to do:
The afterbirth was still all around Sally and underneath her and I was not sure if she could get up. (Nellie’s was all gone and cleaned up, and she was moving around quickly.) Matthew had found 2 piglets a distance away from Sally that were dead and another piglet was almost dead all the way down at the dirt road! They all looked like they would have been healthy, strong piglets so we think they must have wandered away from Sally and ended up too cold. Erica warmed the living piglet by cuddling him up in her sweatshirt. He seemed to be fighting for his life, but he would not nurse. I thought sure he would not last long, but after Lisa cleaned him up with a warm bath down at the house, he started to really perk up. An hour later he was energetic and able to go back to Sally. Now he seems to be as healthy as the rest of them!
Here is the first picture of Sally’s group (without the one that almost died):
Her piglets are adorable. You can see the markings better in this close-up shot (the one that almost died looks like the red/white one):
At this time, I still wasn’t sure about Sally. I thought she needed to get up and move around, and we really needed to get her down to the barn where she could get warm and care for her piglets better. But, how does one move a 600 plus pound sow with a litter of piglets?
This might sound cruel, but it was for her own good. We decided to take all of her piglets away from her and see if she could get up to follow their (pitiful, loud, screeching) squeals. When she heard her babies’ cries, she tried to get up. It took a bit of effort on her part, but I was glad to see her on her feet. She followed the squeals down the path, stopping a couple of times to sniff the ground as if she was trying to pick up the scent of her babies. When she stopped I had to take a couple of piglets back for her to see and smell again, and then she would continue to follow me.
She had to walk about 200 feet to the barn, but I bet she felt it was worth it when she saw her babies there in a big pile of warm straw! She went into the stall, sniffed her babies, made a nice hole in the straw, and laid down in it to nurse.
Here is Christina checking on Sally and the piglets in the barn:
Today, the mamas and piglets were all doing well when Matthew and Christina checked on them before we left for Sunday School. I had a preaching appointment at a church about 45 minutes away, so we couldn’t check back on them until late in the afternoon. We decided to spend quite a bit of time up there after dinner to better winterize their quarters. If it really gets down to 7 degrees tonight like the weatherman predicted, the day-old piglets would be in jeopardy. We stapled up used feed sacks over all the cracks and open places to keep out the wind and help to keep in whatever body heat the pigs produce.
Christina took several more pictures, especially of Nellie’s piglets. I think everyone likes this one because she is marked unlike any of our others before. Christina has been calling her Dalmatian:
I thought this picture was cute with that black one sticking his snout out over the others’ back:
These piglets are content to stay close by when Nellie gets up to eat or drink. Here is a picture of them in another huddled mass:
Erica came up to check on them because they are so cute. She did not hold any of them too much, because Nellie doesn’t like it, but here she is holding one of the red ones inside of the sty:
Here is a face shot of the proud mama:
Nellie has done a great job, once again. She did not have any difficulty either time giving birth. She had 7 piglets her first litter and this time she had 10.
Sally has had a little trouble both times, but she has recovered each time. Her first litter was 8 and this one was 11. It is sad that we lost 2 of this last litter, but I guess that is why God lets them have so many piglets in a litter.
If the rest of the piglets make it, we will have 19 to raise/sell/butcher this time, when we only had 15 last time! We feel very blessed and are looking forward to raising these pigs. They should be around 230 pounds and ready for market the end of August.
If Nellie, Sally and our boar, Rufus, continue the pattern, we could have another batch of piglets again next September! I have read that they have 2 litters a year. Our first litters were born on July 13th, and these were born February 9th. I wonder if having piglets every 7 months would be too hard on them? I guess we will just let nature take its course and see what happens.
I’ll post one more picture that Christina took today. Lisa said she liked this one of me in the pig lot. I’m wearing my new coat since the one I usually wear got covered in yuck from moving those piglets to the barn yesterday:
All of this has again reminded me how awesome of a God we serve. Praise be to Him!
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4 comments
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The Good Life on February 10, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I've always wanted pigs, but read they are soo much like having a dog – not sure if I could raise them for the pot.
Thanks for sharing I enjoyed very much the photos.
Hope its not too cold over there for you.
Love Leanne NZ
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mountainmama on February 11, 2008 at 7:03 am
We are looking into building the lot for our soon-to-be bought piglets. These pictures just make me want to go buy them now.
What type of lot did you build for yours? Of course ours would be raised during the spring-fall months so we would not have to worry about winters.
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Melanie on February 12, 2008 at 9:15 am
The piglets are adorable!! We haven't gotten into pigs yet, but I think one of my boys wants to eventually do it for 4-h so we will have to come back to you for questions. They are really cute, especially dalmation.
Melanie
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Schatzi on February 12, 2008 at 11:31 pm
What I great post….I love little piglets…they are all so cute….
Connie
Matthew went up to the barn to feed pretty early Saturday morning, since we were planning on leaving before lunch. We had an appointment at the meat market to pick up our 161 pounds of cured ham and bacon. The rest of us were still pretty much asleep on this lazy morning when Matthew called over the radio that Nellie and Sally had their piglets!
Needless to say, that announcement got us moving quickly. We had our work clothes on and were up at the pig lots in a flash. We knew they were expecting, but we did not know exactly when they were bred. I really thought they would have another week or so.
Nellie had 10 piglets nursing in one of the sties and they all seemed to be doing fine. Christina brought our camera along. Here is the first picture she took of them when Nellie was up eating:
Sally, on the other hand, delivered her piglets on the cold ground, outside the sty. Our temperatures were at freezing last night, and Sally was not doing well. She was obviously cold and was shaking as the 8 piglets nursed.
Here we are checking on Sally, wondering what to do:
The afterbirth was still all around Sally and underneath her and I was not sure if she could get up. (Nellie’s was all gone and cleaned up, and she was moving around quickly.) Matthew had found 2 piglets a distance away from Sally that were dead and another piglet was almost dead all the way down at the dirt road! They all looked like they would have been healthy, strong piglets so we think they must have wandered away from Sally and ended up too cold. Erica warmed the living piglet by cuddling him up in her sweatshirt. He seemed to be fighting for his life, but he would not nurse. I thought sure he would not last long, but after Lisa cleaned him up with a warm bath down at the house, he started to really perk up. An hour later he was energetic and able to go back to Sally. Now he seems to be as healthy as the rest of them!
Here is the first picture of Sally’s group (without the one that almost died):
Her piglets are adorable. You can see the markings better in this close-up shot (the one that almost died looks like the red/white one):
At this time, I still wasn’t sure about Sally. I thought she needed to get up and move around, and we really needed to get her down to the barn where she could get warm and care for her piglets better. But, how does one move a 600 plus pound sow with a litter of piglets?
This might sound cruel, but it was for her own good. We decided to take all of her piglets away from her and see if she could get up to follow their (pitiful, loud, screeching) squeals. When she heard her babies’ cries, she tried to get up. It took a bit of effort on her part, but I was glad to see her on her feet. She followed the squeals down the path, stopping a couple of times to sniff the ground as if she was trying to pick up the scent of her babies. When she stopped I had to take a couple of piglets back for her to see and smell again, and then she would continue to follow me.
She had to walk about 200 feet to the barn, but I bet she felt it was worth it when she saw her babies there in a big pile of warm straw! She went into the stall, sniffed her babies, made a nice hole in the straw, and laid down in it to nurse.
Here is Christina checking on Sally and the piglets in the barn:
Today, the mamas and piglets were all doing well when Matthew and Christina checked on them before we left for Sunday School. I had a preaching appointment at a church about 45 minutes away, so we couldn’t check back on them until late in the afternoon. We decided to spend quite a bit of time up there after dinner to better winterize their quarters. If it really gets down to 7 degrees tonight like the weatherman predicted, the day-old piglets would be in jeopardy. We stapled up used feed sacks over all the cracks and open places to keep out the wind and help to keep in whatever body heat the pigs produce.
Christina took several more pictures, especially of Nellie’s piglets. I think everyone likes this one because she is marked unlike any of our others before. Christina has been calling her Dalmatian:
I thought this picture was cute with that black one sticking his snout out over the others’ back:
These piglets are content to stay close by when Nellie gets up to eat or drink. Here is a picture of them in another huddled mass:
Erica came up to check on them because they are so cute. She did not hold any of them too much, because Nellie doesn’t like it, but here she is holding one of the red ones inside of the sty:
Here is a face shot of the proud mama:
Nellie has done a great job, once again. She did not have any difficulty either time giving birth. She had 7 piglets her first litter and this time she had 10.
Sally has had a little trouble both times, but she has recovered each time. Her first litter was 8 and this one was 11. It is sad that we lost 2 of this last litter, but I guess that is why God lets them have so many piglets in a litter.
If the rest of the piglets make it, we will have 19 to raise/sell/butcher this time, when we only had 15 last time! We feel very blessed and are looking forward to raising these pigs. They should be around 230 pounds and ready for market the end of August.
If Nellie, Sally and our boar, Rufus, continue the pattern, we could have another batch of piglets again next September! I have read that they have 2 litters a year. Our first litters were born on July 13th, and these were born February 9th. I wonder if having piglets every 7 months would be too hard on them? I guess we will just let nature take its course and see what happens.
I’ll post one more picture that Christina took today. Lisa said she liked this one of me in the pig lot. I’m wearing my new coat since the one I usually wear got covered in yuck from moving those piglets to the barn yesterday:
All of this has again reminded me how awesome of a God we serve. Praise be to Him!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good Life on February 10, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I've always wanted pigs, but read they are soo much like having a dog – not sure if I could raise them for the pot.
Thanks for sharing I enjoyed very much the photos.
Hope its not too cold over there for you.
Love Leanne NZ
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mountainmama on February 11, 2008 at 7:03 am
We are looking into building the lot for our soon-to-be bought piglets. These pictures just make me want to go buy them now.
What type of lot did you build for yours? Of course ours would be raised during the spring-fall months so we would not have to worry about winters.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Melanie on February 12, 2008 at 9:15 am
The piglets are adorable!! We haven't gotten into pigs yet, but I think one of my boys wants to eventually do it for 4-h so we will have to come back to you for questions. They are really cute, especially dalmation.
Melanie
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schatzi on February 12, 2008 at 11:31 pm
What I great post….I love little piglets…they are all so cute….
Connie
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Here We Go A Sugaring
I wanted to record some of the details of our maple syrup making at Pure Water Hollow, especially for any of our generations who may live here in the future and may want (or need) to process their own maple syrup/sugar.
I am amazed that it took us living here this long to realize that we have a very impressive “sugar bush” up at the head of the hollow. There are dozens of large maple trees in close proximity to each other where we used to call the “turn around spot”, or “the bowl”. Now we will call it the “sugar bush” or the “sugar bowl”! I’m not sure how many are truly sugar maple trees, but my guess would be 20 or more tapping size.
I don’t know if anyone planted the maples up there purposely or if they are just products of the forest, but it does seem that they were intentionally left here when the property was last logged in the 80s. We are grateful to whoever had such foresight in the past. Since maple trees grow so slowly, it would appear that some of our trees are well over 100 years old. I have read that it takes between 30 and 50 years for the trees to grow big enough to be good for tapping!
Once the trees were identified, we started reading up on the process. Carla Emery has a few good pages in The Encyclopedia of Country Living about making maple syrup. (Is there anything that she did not touch on?) There are also several great resources on the web. I especially liked the ones from Ohio State University and University of Cincinnati since they are not very much farther north than we are here. (I couldn’t get the pictures to load on the one from UC but it was still good info.)We also used the one from the University of Maine and a site from Massachusetts.
We found several places online that sell spouts for tapping, but we decided to order from our old friend, Lehman’s. They cost $1.80 a piece there if you buy them in quantities of 10. Ebay had some for less, but I didn’t feel very comfortable with the looks of any of those, and there were many used ones for sale, but I decided I would rather go with the new.
Here is a picture of some of the spouts with the hooks attached:
We would like to try to make some wooden spouts some day. I have read that elderberry stems are easy to carve and hollow out for spouts and we have many elderberry trees growing around Pure Water Hollow. Maybe some year in the future we will see if we can make maple syrup using all wooden spouts, hand drills, and wood fires, with no modern conveniences, just for fun!
We also purchased an iron spout driver to use to gently tap the spouts into the tap hole. I can’t imagine not using this tool, even though I've read that it is not necessary. I would be afraid of messing up the spout if I just tried to hammer it in without the driver. This item was expensive at Lehman’s, but averaged out if we had to spend extra shipping to just buy it alone from another source. We bought it from Lehman’s for $12.95 but I saw the same thing for $6.95 other places.
It is nicer to have a small hammer to tap the spouts into the hole you drill instead of using a rock. I used this one that had belonged to my dad:
These spouts go with a 7/16” drill bit that I did not own. I bought an inexpensive one (Hitachi) at Lowe’s for about $7.00 that worked wonderfully. I also bought an expensive one for $14.00 (Stanley) just to compare and have an extra. I could not tell that the expensive one worked any better. Maybe it will last for many more years? If we only drill 10 or 20 holes with it a year, I would imagine that both bits will last for decades or longer!
We drilled the holes into the trees only about 2 1/2” deep, but we did not measure. We just stuck the drill in and pulled it out and noted how far the wood was sticking on the bit. If it looked like it was less than 2” we stuck it back in a little farther.
Here are the drills we used with the drill bits:
The hand drill belonged to my grandfather and still works well. I am thankful to have it. It, however, was amazingly harder to use than the portable power drill. It really took a good effort to drill a hole. We drilled one hole with the old-fashioned hand drill, just to know that we can do it, but then we drilled all the others with the power drill. The power drill only took about 2 seconds to drill each hole. Very little force was needed and it was extremely easy to use with the trees. (We are really spoiled today in the 21st century, aren’t we?)
You can collect the sap in anything, really. I know the old timers used metal pails and before that, wooden ones. I looked at buying some used metal pails online, but they were so expensive and most that I found looked like they would have rust spots in them. I did not want to use something that would compromise the syrup, even if it were old-fashioned.
I decided to buy nice, new, plastic buckets at Lowe’s. They sell clear 3.5-gallon buckets that can have a lid snap on them for under $4.00 each. If you want a lid you have to buy them separate. (The same lids are cheaper at Wal-Mart than Lowe’s for $1.24 each I think.) I guess I put about $50.00 into buying the 10 buckets and lids we used, but I did not buy them all at one time.
So that’s all the equipment you need to tap your sugar maples: a drill with a 7/16” bit, a spout for each hole you drill, a small hammer and a spout driver to tap the spout firmly into the hole, and buckets of some kind to collect the sap.
We tapped the trees when the flow was on and sap began gushing out of each hole before we could even get the spouts in! It was sunny and warming up quickly at 9:30 Saturday morning. The night before was another freezing night about 20 degrees. These are the perfect conditions for tapping. I know they tap their trees in March or April up north, but I figured that here in Kentucky, we only have about a month until we start having everyday spring weather, so now was a good time. I do think that there will be some other good days in February that the trees could still be tapped here at our location. We just need to have the good freezes at night followed by sunny, warm daytime temperatures.
This may be a good place to note that the sap flow stopped sometime overnight Sunday. Friday night was 20 degrees, Saturday got up in the mid 40s, Saturday night was back in the 20s with a heavy frost, and Sunday got up into the 60s! We collected about 35-40 gallons of sap during Saturday and Sunday from the 10 taps and then Sunday night it stayed in the upper 40s. Monday we had a nice day in the mid 60s again. When Matthew went up in the afternoon to check on the buckets, there was almost no more sap in them than what he had left Sunday (when his transporting buckets were full), and the sap did not flow any more today.
We had read that the sap was supposed to stop when the temperatures stay warm for a prolonged time or when they stay cold for a prolonged time, and I guess that highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s was too warm. I think the sap will flow again the next time we have a night in the 20s followed by the day in the 40s. (We may not collect anymore sap, though. Even though it was only for a couple of days, the family is getting tired of the intense schedule. We will see how everyone in the family feels at that time, but it has been some long work to get the syrup out of the sap.)
We had our first few gallons of sap before noon on Saturday. I had read that it takes 40 or 50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Using the 40:1 ratio we figured that it would take 2.5 gallons of sap to fill a half-pint mason jar (8 ounces). After we boiled that down and it only made about 6 ounces, we increased up to the 50:1 ratio. This meant that we would need 3 gallons of sap to make 1 half-pint, and this is what we have used for the rest of the batches. Sometimes it has made a bit more than 8 ounces, but it seems to be pretty close.
I also had purchased a $4.95 candy thermometer to use in this experiment because I kept reading that the syrup should boil at 7 degrees hotter than the first sap. You should be able to note the exact temperature that water, or the first sap, boils at and then keep adding more sap as the water is steamed away. Theoretically, when the boiling temperature got 7 degrees hotter, we would know that we now have maple syrup.
This did not work for us, I guess because the thermometer was not marked off in that precise of increments. I could not really tell what the exact temperature was. I was a bit surprised that water boils here in our location somewhere between 200 degrees and 205 degrees. For some reason I thought that 212 degrees was an official constant boiling temperature of water no matter where you are. (So much for public education, even though I went to a good school. Or maybe that shows that I do not do much cooking?)
Anyway, we decided to use the ratio approach and boil down the sap in “batches”. We filled up our 21-quart stockpots with 3 gallons of sap, filtered through a couple layers of cheesecloth, and started them boiling. We found that our hottest heat source is the electric range in the kitchen. Our propane grill and Coleman camp stove had served the purpose, but took a long time. The day got dark on us up at our “sugar camp” and we still had plenty of sap to boil.
We stayed up there for quite a while Saturday night, boiling down the sap. Matthew made a nice campfire and we had supper under the bright stars. The clear winter sky was breathtaking.
It is still winter, however, and as I wrote earlier, it was dipping back into the 20s on this evening. Even with the fire and the stoves, we decided to move the operation to our nice warm kitchen. (I did have a dream after I went to bed that I was still up at the sugar camp sleeping on a bed of leaves. I was calling down to the house on our 2-way radios that I was going to sleep up there while waiting for the next batch of syrup to be made. Funny how my subconscious brain works at times during sleep!)
I had read in many places not to boil the sap in doors. At least one source said that all the steam would coat everything in the house with a sticky residue. After letting many gallons of sap boil on our kitchen range, I would now say the sticky residue part is a myth. After thinking about it, it doesn’t make sense that the steam would be sticky since the only thing that is boiling away in the steam is the water content. The tree sap is 98% water and only 2% sugar. About 2/3 of the water needs to be taken out. The remaining solution would be 66-67% sugar and would now be syrup. The only thing that is evaporated into the air is all that water. (Lisa later disagreed with this point. She says that we did mess up the kitchen with stickiness. I guess I didn't notice since I wasn't the one who cleaned it up!)
The only problem we had boiling all that water in-doors was the humidity. Most of the cabinets in the kitchen had moisture droplets form on them, and sometimes it was quite heavy. In some ways the humidity was not completely a problem here, however. We heat the house with propane so we usually have air that is too dry. The added moisture to the air did us some good, I think. We did have a fan on and cracked open a window and the kitchen door from time to time to ventilate out the steam.
Some day, I would like to have plenty of wood cut up to use in our wood stove that we could use outside, or even build something that would resemble the old-time sugar camps. It does make sense why folks who operate large operations build a regular “sugar house” or “sugar shack” to do all this boiling in and to also be warm while doing it in the winter. We have the space to build such a structure, and the shack could double as a hunting cabin. Hmmm…..
So we have three gallons of maple tree sap in one large stockpot. It takes about an hour to bring this quantity to just a simmering boil. I stir the pot every now and then so I feel like I am doing something. Another 2 or 3 hours pass before there is a real noticeable difference in the quantity, and I have felt good stirring the pot and watching the bubbles during this time. (If you stir it in real fast circles, you can make the middle boil straight up like a small fountain. Pretty cool!)
At this point it has evaporated enough to be moved into a 3 quart sauce pan, and we have to start watching it closer, stirring every now and then (partly to feel like I am doing something).
Here is a picture of one of the stockpots boiling:
and here it is in the smaller sauce pan:
The sap tastes like very lightly sweetened water right out of the tree and we enjoyed tasting the solution as it changed after every couple of hours of heating. As time progresses the drink gets sweeter and sweeter. We have thought that it might be nice to stop at a point far before syrup and just enjoy the sap as a very good and sweet drink by itself! I wonder what it would taste like on ice?
After about another hour it has really gotten to be a small amount, maybe 4 or 5 cups, and I like moving the contents to a smaller pot. Now I think stirring is very important to make sure the sugar content doesn’t settle on the bottom and get scorched. We did not have any to scorch, but I can imagine it happening easily. When the pot only has a couple of cups of sap/syrup it starts foaming up vigorously. I figured out that this is when it is almost finished.
We accidentally turned a couple or three batches into maple sugar because we evidently boiled it just a bit too long. We do want to have some maple sugar, so we will come back to those jars and work them some more.
After it has foamed a bit, the contents have boiled down to about 8 ounces and just the right size to pour into a half-pint jar. We used the cheesecloth again to filter any of the “sugar sand” as we pour the very hot syrup into the jar. When we put the flat and the ring on we set the jar upside down to let the syrup help seal the jar, along with the heat. Somewhere I read that maple syrup will keep almost indefinitely if the seal is not broken.
We tried to have 3 “batches” going at all times. As we moved one batch to a smaller pot, we would fill up the large stockpot with another 3 gallons. Originally, I wanted to have 4 and 5 batches going at one time. We could fit two large 21-quart pots on the grill and our grill has another burner on the side, and the camp stove has two burners. What I discovered, however, is when you have all the burners going, none of them are as hot as if only one were burning, and I could barely get anything to boil.
One thing that I was unsure of, was when the sap would flow. Somehow I had gotten it in my mind that the sap could fill up the buckets in the middle of the night. Maybe it can if it does not get below freezing, but our experience this time was that the sap cut off after it got below freezing, and then started flowing again the next morning with the warm temperatures. This was a relief, as I was picturing having to get up in the middle of the freezing night and empty the sap buckets.
Something else I was not sure about, was leaving the half-boiled pots of sap overnight. After it was so late Saturday, we decided to just turn off the range and start it back up Sunday when we were able to pay attention to it. We have read that sap can spoil like milk, but I don’t think ours was affected by leaving it overnight. We tried to keep the other sap that was waiting to be boiled stored outside each night where it was still cool.
To be honest, most of our sap was boiled down on our electric range. Saturday was the only day we made a real “sugar camp” out in the woods. The boiling on Sunday was at the house with the electric range and an electric hot plate that has two burners. Lisa and the children also had them going most of the day yesterday while I was at work and they were doing school and today they are finishing the last batch of sap that we collected.
As you can imagine, we are not necessarily looking for more sap flow days right now, but give it a few more days, and maybe we will be up for it.
I should note the only true negative aspect to this experiment. Obviously, the energy it takes to make a relatively small amount of maple syrup is a factor. I am wondering if we will notice a spike in our electric bill from running the range so much. It is hard, if not impossible, to figure how much this maple syrup has actually cost us to produce. I do think that we could come up with enough wood for a fire and we could do the same thing outside and make maple syrup for free. This would make it much more labor intensive. The saw mills around here gives their slabs away for free and many folks say it is the best wood for heating, so that is an option for stocking up the wood supply.
Another negative might be the time required, but if you think about it, it really takes a lot of time invested for anything worthwhile.
I haven’t showed you any of the finished products yet. Here are some pictures of the jars. We still need to boil down the sap for one or two more jars, and at least one jar’s worth has been eaten in the form of sugar. We will have 12 or 13 half pint jars from the 40 or so gallons of sap, and I think that is pretty good!
This picture may be too dark to see the light amber color:
Here is a good picture comparing one that we boiled too long with one that seems to be perfect.
It has sugar crystallized in it. I think we can heat it back up, stir it quite a bit and pour it into sugar cakes. We do want to have regular sugar but we still have to work on that. I think we could crush the contents of the solid jar and pound it into powdered sugar if we want.
Here is a close up of one of the jars (a bit blurry). I wonder what grade it would be?
All in all I am well pleased. Not only have the children learned some great science lessons of the natural world God has created, but we have also discovered another valuable resource that God put here at Pure Water Hollow. It is good to know that natural sugar is available on our own property if it is needed or wanted.
We also know that it can be done very successfully. I think the future will see us perfect the art and I’m sure we will come up with more efficient methods of accomplishing the goal of making maple syrup.
This first attempt has been a sweet success!
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6 comments
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haflinger on February 5, 2008 at 10:12 am
I must say you did a great job in details..I might of missed it but , did you say anything about the different grades? and the ratio 40 to one? Like I said I might of missed it..
Here in Maine they haven't started yet..And many leave there sap lines up year round…
Thanks for sharing..
Blessings haflinger/Sister Brenda
Purewater's reply:
It seemed that ours was more on a 50:1 ratio. We started with 40:1 but had to increase it. Maybe the trees here in the south have a slightly lower sugar content? As far as Grading, we have no idea. So far we have graded it as liquid or solid. Either way it is very sweet. This was our first attempt at sugaring. We are not planning on selling anything, just using it for ourselves.
Edited by Purewater on Tuesday, February 5, 2008 at 10:44 AM
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Karen on February 5, 2008 at 11:07 am
Very well done. I've always been curious about this topic. Wow, a stack of pancakes with some of that dark syrup would be good right now.
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LittleHouse on February 5, 2008 at 12:47 pm
It looks like you all had a lot of fun! It's nice to families doing fun things together:)
I hope you enjoy a big stack of pancakes!!!
Ma
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Belle on February 5, 2008 at 2:27 pm
This has been educational and interesting. Thank you very much for sharing.
You have done much more than create maple syrup, you have created a memory that will live on for genterations. Your children most likely will talk of this time to their children and grandchildren and on and on.
We are going to order our spouts today. I looked a the ones Lehmans had just last week. It was exciting to see your post about this since we have been talking about doing it too.I hate the freezing nights, but now I want them back so that we can give syrup making a try.
maa's mom
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sheryl on February 5, 2008 at 3:10 pm
thanks for sharing this with us. I enjoyed reading it. I will be down Saturday for pancakes. LOL Just kidding. I would love to be able to do something like this. We have several maple trees here on the farm. What color does the sugar maple tree leaves turn in the fall? sheryl
Purewater's reply:
The leaves are orange/red in the fall, but ours have not been overly vibrant theses past few years. More of dull orange.
Edited by Purewater on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM
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Mom on February 6, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I ordered our spouts and a spout driver from Lehmans, yesterday. Thanks to you I ordered the spout driver. I did not see it in the cataloug with the spouts, so I knew nothing about a spout driver. We are getting colder weather again so maybe we will get to do some sap collecting too. My husband is going to put all the spouts in for us, but he does not know one tree from another. I will go along to point them out to him. We got our buckets two weeks ago at the Dollar Tree for a dollar each. They are 12 qt buckets with a handel. If you need more buckets and you have a Dollar Tree near you, you might want to check them out.
I am so ready to give it a try. Thanks for all the valuable information that you have shared here.
I will let you know how we do.
maa's mom
I am amazed that it took us living here this long to realize that we have a very impressive “sugar bush” up at the head of the hollow. There are dozens of large maple trees in close proximity to each other where we used to call the “turn around spot”, or “the bowl”. Now we will call it the “sugar bush” or the “sugar bowl”! I’m not sure how many are truly sugar maple trees, but my guess would be 20 or more tapping size.
I don’t know if anyone planted the maples up there purposely or if they are just products of the forest, but it does seem that they were intentionally left here when the property was last logged in the 80s. We are grateful to whoever had such foresight in the past. Since maple trees grow so slowly, it would appear that some of our trees are well over 100 years old. I have read that it takes between 30 and 50 years for the trees to grow big enough to be good for tapping!
Once the trees were identified, we started reading up on the process. Carla Emery has a few good pages in The Encyclopedia of Country Living about making maple syrup. (Is there anything that she did not touch on?) There are also several great resources on the web. I especially liked the ones from Ohio State University and University of Cincinnati since they are not very much farther north than we are here. (I couldn’t get the pictures to load on the one from UC but it was still good info.)We also used the one from the University of Maine and a site from Massachusetts.
We found several places online that sell spouts for tapping, but we decided to order from our old friend, Lehman’s. They cost $1.80 a piece there if you buy them in quantities of 10. Ebay had some for less, but I didn’t feel very comfortable with the looks of any of those, and there were many used ones for sale, but I decided I would rather go with the new.
Here is a picture of some of the spouts with the hooks attached:
We would like to try to make some wooden spouts some day. I have read that elderberry stems are easy to carve and hollow out for spouts and we have many elderberry trees growing around Pure Water Hollow. Maybe some year in the future we will see if we can make maple syrup using all wooden spouts, hand drills, and wood fires, with no modern conveniences, just for fun!
We also purchased an iron spout driver to use to gently tap the spouts into the tap hole. I can’t imagine not using this tool, even though I've read that it is not necessary. I would be afraid of messing up the spout if I just tried to hammer it in without the driver. This item was expensive at Lehman’s, but averaged out if we had to spend extra shipping to just buy it alone from another source. We bought it from Lehman’s for $12.95 but I saw the same thing for $6.95 other places.
It is nicer to have a small hammer to tap the spouts into the hole you drill instead of using a rock. I used this one that had belonged to my dad:
These spouts go with a 7/16” drill bit that I did not own. I bought an inexpensive one (Hitachi) at Lowe’s for about $7.00 that worked wonderfully. I also bought an expensive one for $14.00 (Stanley) just to compare and have an extra. I could not tell that the expensive one worked any better. Maybe it will last for many more years? If we only drill 10 or 20 holes with it a year, I would imagine that both bits will last for decades or longer!
We drilled the holes into the trees only about 2 1/2” deep, but we did not measure. We just stuck the drill in and pulled it out and noted how far the wood was sticking on the bit. If it looked like it was less than 2” we stuck it back in a little farther.
Here are the drills we used with the drill bits:
The hand drill belonged to my grandfather and still works well. I am thankful to have it. It, however, was amazingly harder to use than the portable power drill. It really took a good effort to drill a hole. We drilled one hole with the old-fashioned hand drill, just to know that we can do it, but then we drilled all the others with the power drill. The power drill only took about 2 seconds to drill each hole. Very little force was needed and it was extremely easy to use with the trees. (We are really spoiled today in the 21st century, aren’t we?)
You can collect the sap in anything, really. I know the old timers used metal pails and before that, wooden ones. I looked at buying some used metal pails online, but they were so expensive and most that I found looked like they would have rust spots in them. I did not want to use something that would compromise the syrup, even if it were old-fashioned.
I decided to buy nice, new, plastic buckets at Lowe’s. They sell clear 3.5-gallon buckets that can have a lid snap on them for under $4.00 each. If you want a lid you have to buy them separate. (The same lids are cheaper at Wal-Mart than Lowe’s for $1.24 each I think.) I guess I put about $50.00 into buying the 10 buckets and lids we used, but I did not buy them all at one time.
So that’s all the equipment you need to tap your sugar maples: a drill with a 7/16” bit, a spout for each hole you drill, a small hammer and a spout driver to tap the spout firmly into the hole, and buckets of some kind to collect the sap.
We tapped the trees when the flow was on and sap began gushing out of each hole before we could even get the spouts in! It was sunny and warming up quickly at 9:30 Saturday morning. The night before was another freezing night about 20 degrees. These are the perfect conditions for tapping. I know they tap their trees in March or April up north, but I figured that here in Kentucky, we only have about a month until we start having everyday spring weather, so now was a good time. I do think that there will be some other good days in February that the trees could still be tapped here at our location. We just need to have the good freezes at night followed by sunny, warm daytime temperatures.
This may be a good place to note that the sap flow stopped sometime overnight Sunday. Friday night was 20 degrees, Saturday got up in the mid 40s, Saturday night was back in the 20s with a heavy frost, and Sunday got up into the 60s! We collected about 35-40 gallons of sap during Saturday and Sunday from the 10 taps and then Sunday night it stayed in the upper 40s. Monday we had a nice day in the mid 60s again. When Matthew went up in the afternoon to check on the buckets, there was almost no more sap in them than what he had left Sunday (when his transporting buckets were full), and the sap did not flow any more today.
We had read that the sap was supposed to stop when the temperatures stay warm for a prolonged time or when they stay cold for a prolonged time, and I guess that highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s was too warm. I think the sap will flow again the next time we have a night in the 20s followed by the day in the 40s. (We may not collect anymore sap, though. Even though it was only for a couple of days, the family is getting tired of the intense schedule. We will see how everyone in the family feels at that time, but it has been some long work to get the syrup out of the sap.)
We had our first few gallons of sap before noon on Saturday. I had read that it takes 40 or 50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Using the 40:1 ratio we figured that it would take 2.5 gallons of sap to fill a half-pint mason jar (8 ounces). After we boiled that down and it only made about 6 ounces, we increased up to the 50:1 ratio. This meant that we would need 3 gallons of sap to make 1 half-pint, and this is what we have used for the rest of the batches. Sometimes it has made a bit more than 8 ounces, but it seems to be pretty close.
I also had purchased a $4.95 candy thermometer to use in this experiment because I kept reading that the syrup should boil at 7 degrees hotter than the first sap. You should be able to note the exact temperature that water, or the first sap, boils at and then keep adding more sap as the water is steamed away. Theoretically, when the boiling temperature got 7 degrees hotter, we would know that we now have maple syrup.
This did not work for us, I guess because the thermometer was not marked off in that precise of increments. I could not really tell what the exact temperature was. I was a bit surprised that water boils here in our location somewhere between 200 degrees and 205 degrees. For some reason I thought that 212 degrees was an official constant boiling temperature of water no matter where you are. (So much for public education, even though I went to a good school. Or maybe that shows that I do not do much cooking?)
Anyway, we decided to use the ratio approach and boil down the sap in “batches”. We filled up our 21-quart stockpots with 3 gallons of sap, filtered through a couple layers of cheesecloth, and started them boiling. We found that our hottest heat source is the electric range in the kitchen. Our propane grill and Coleman camp stove had served the purpose, but took a long time. The day got dark on us up at our “sugar camp” and we still had plenty of sap to boil.
We stayed up there for quite a while Saturday night, boiling down the sap. Matthew made a nice campfire and we had supper under the bright stars. The clear winter sky was breathtaking.
It is still winter, however, and as I wrote earlier, it was dipping back into the 20s on this evening. Even with the fire and the stoves, we decided to move the operation to our nice warm kitchen. (I did have a dream after I went to bed that I was still up at the sugar camp sleeping on a bed of leaves. I was calling down to the house on our 2-way radios that I was going to sleep up there while waiting for the next batch of syrup to be made. Funny how my subconscious brain works at times during sleep!)
I had read in many places not to boil the sap in doors. At least one source said that all the steam would coat everything in the house with a sticky residue. After letting many gallons of sap boil on our kitchen range, I would now say the sticky residue part is a myth. After thinking about it, it doesn’t make sense that the steam would be sticky since the only thing that is boiling away in the steam is the water content. The tree sap is 98% water and only 2% sugar. About 2/3 of the water needs to be taken out. The remaining solution would be 66-67% sugar and would now be syrup. The only thing that is evaporated into the air is all that water. (Lisa later disagreed with this point. She says that we did mess up the kitchen with stickiness. I guess I didn't notice since I wasn't the one who cleaned it up!)
The only problem we had boiling all that water in-doors was the humidity. Most of the cabinets in the kitchen had moisture droplets form on them, and sometimes it was quite heavy. In some ways the humidity was not completely a problem here, however. We heat the house with propane so we usually have air that is too dry. The added moisture to the air did us some good, I think. We did have a fan on and cracked open a window and the kitchen door from time to time to ventilate out the steam.
Some day, I would like to have plenty of wood cut up to use in our wood stove that we could use outside, or even build something that would resemble the old-time sugar camps. It does make sense why folks who operate large operations build a regular “sugar house” or “sugar shack” to do all this boiling in and to also be warm while doing it in the winter. We have the space to build such a structure, and the shack could double as a hunting cabin. Hmmm…..
So we have three gallons of maple tree sap in one large stockpot. It takes about an hour to bring this quantity to just a simmering boil. I stir the pot every now and then so I feel like I am doing something. Another 2 or 3 hours pass before there is a real noticeable difference in the quantity, and I have felt good stirring the pot and watching the bubbles during this time. (If you stir it in real fast circles, you can make the middle boil straight up like a small fountain. Pretty cool!)
At this point it has evaporated enough to be moved into a 3 quart sauce pan, and we have to start watching it closer, stirring every now and then (partly to feel like I am doing something).
Here is a picture of one of the stockpots boiling:
and here it is in the smaller sauce pan:
The sap tastes like very lightly sweetened water right out of the tree and we enjoyed tasting the solution as it changed after every couple of hours of heating. As time progresses the drink gets sweeter and sweeter. We have thought that it might be nice to stop at a point far before syrup and just enjoy the sap as a very good and sweet drink by itself! I wonder what it would taste like on ice?
After about another hour it has really gotten to be a small amount, maybe 4 or 5 cups, and I like moving the contents to a smaller pot. Now I think stirring is very important to make sure the sugar content doesn’t settle on the bottom and get scorched. We did not have any to scorch, but I can imagine it happening easily. When the pot only has a couple of cups of sap/syrup it starts foaming up vigorously. I figured out that this is when it is almost finished.
We accidentally turned a couple or three batches into maple sugar because we evidently boiled it just a bit too long. We do want to have some maple sugar, so we will come back to those jars and work them some more.
After it has foamed a bit, the contents have boiled down to about 8 ounces and just the right size to pour into a half-pint jar. We used the cheesecloth again to filter any of the “sugar sand” as we pour the very hot syrup into the jar. When we put the flat and the ring on we set the jar upside down to let the syrup help seal the jar, along with the heat. Somewhere I read that maple syrup will keep almost indefinitely if the seal is not broken.
We tried to have 3 “batches” going at all times. As we moved one batch to a smaller pot, we would fill up the large stockpot with another 3 gallons. Originally, I wanted to have 4 and 5 batches going at one time. We could fit two large 21-quart pots on the grill and our grill has another burner on the side, and the camp stove has two burners. What I discovered, however, is when you have all the burners going, none of them are as hot as if only one were burning, and I could barely get anything to boil.
One thing that I was unsure of, was when the sap would flow. Somehow I had gotten it in my mind that the sap could fill up the buckets in the middle of the night. Maybe it can if it does not get below freezing, but our experience this time was that the sap cut off after it got below freezing, and then started flowing again the next morning with the warm temperatures. This was a relief, as I was picturing having to get up in the middle of the freezing night and empty the sap buckets.
Something else I was not sure about, was leaving the half-boiled pots of sap overnight. After it was so late Saturday, we decided to just turn off the range and start it back up Sunday when we were able to pay attention to it. We have read that sap can spoil like milk, but I don’t think ours was affected by leaving it overnight. We tried to keep the other sap that was waiting to be boiled stored outside each night where it was still cool.
To be honest, most of our sap was boiled down on our electric range. Saturday was the only day we made a real “sugar camp” out in the woods. The boiling on Sunday was at the house with the electric range and an electric hot plate that has two burners. Lisa and the children also had them going most of the day yesterday while I was at work and they were doing school and today they are finishing the last batch of sap that we collected.
As you can imagine, we are not necessarily looking for more sap flow days right now, but give it a few more days, and maybe we will be up for it.
I should note the only true negative aspect to this experiment. Obviously, the energy it takes to make a relatively small amount of maple syrup is a factor. I am wondering if we will notice a spike in our electric bill from running the range so much. It is hard, if not impossible, to figure how much this maple syrup has actually cost us to produce. I do think that we could come up with enough wood for a fire and we could do the same thing outside and make maple syrup for free. This would make it much more labor intensive. The saw mills around here gives their slabs away for free and many folks say it is the best wood for heating, so that is an option for stocking up the wood supply.
Another negative might be the time required, but if you think about it, it really takes a lot of time invested for anything worthwhile.
I haven’t showed you any of the finished products yet. Here are some pictures of the jars. We still need to boil down the sap for one or two more jars, and at least one jar’s worth has been eaten in the form of sugar. We will have 12 or 13 half pint jars from the 40 or so gallons of sap, and I think that is pretty good!
This picture may be too dark to see the light amber color:
Here is a good picture comparing one that we boiled too long with one that seems to be perfect.
It has sugar crystallized in it. I think we can heat it back up, stir it quite a bit and pour it into sugar cakes. We do want to have regular sugar but we still have to work on that. I think we could crush the contents of the solid jar and pound it into powdered sugar if we want.
Here is a close up of one of the jars (a bit blurry). I wonder what grade it would be?
All in all I am well pleased. Not only have the children learned some great science lessons of the natural world God has created, but we have also discovered another valuable resource that God put here at Pure Water Hollow. It is good to know that natural sugar is available on our own property if it is needed or wanted.
We also know that it can be done very successfully. I think the future will see us perfect the art and I’m sure we will come up with more efficient methods of accomplishing the goal of making maple syrup.
This first attempt has been a sweet success!
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6 comments
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haflinger on February 5, 2008 at 10:12 am
I must say you did a great job in details..I might of missed it but , did you say anything about the different grades? and the ratio 40 to one? Like I said I might of missed it..
Here in Maine they haven't started yet..And many leave there sap lines up year round…
Thanks for sharing..
Blessings haflinger/Sister Brenda
Purewater's reply:
It seemed that ours was more on a 50:1 ratio. We started with 40:1 but had to increase it. Maybe the trees here in the south have a slightly lower sugar content? As far as Grading, we have no idea. So far we have graded it as liquid or solid. Either way it is very sweet. This was our first attempt at sugaring. We are not planning on selling anything, just using it for ourselves.
Edited by Purewater on Tuesday, February 5, 2008 at 10:44 AM
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Karen on February 5, 2008 at 11:07 am
Very well done. I've always been curious about this topic. Wow, a stack of pancakes with some of that dark syrup would be good right now.
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LittleHouse on February 5, 2008 at 12:47 pm
It looks like you all had a lot of fun! It's nice to families doing fun things together:)
I hope you enjoy a big stack of pancakes!!!
Ma
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Belle on February 5, 2008 at 2:27 pm
This has been educational and interesting. Thank you very much for sharing.
You have done much more than create maple syrup, you have created a memory that will live on for genterations. Your children most likely will talk of this time to their children and grandchildren and on and on.
We are going to order our spouts today. I looked a the ones Lehmans had just last week. It was exciting to see your post about this since we have been talking about doing it too.I hate the freezing nights, but now I want them back so that we can give syrup making a try.
maa's mom
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sheryl on February 5, 2008 at 3:10 pm
thanks for sharing this with us. I enjoyed reading it. I will be down Saturday for pancakes. LOL Just kidding. I would love to be able to do something like this. We have several maple trees here on the farm. What color does the sugar maple tree leaves turn in the fall? sheryl
Purewater's reply:
The leaves are orange/red in the fall, but ours have not been overly vibrant theses past few years. More of dull orange.
Edited by Purewater on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 9:32 AM
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Mom on February 6, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I ordered our spouts and a spout driver from Lehmans, yesterday. Thanks to you I ordered the spout driver. I did not see it in the cataloug with the spouts, so I knew nothing about a spout driver. We are getting colder weather again so maybe we will get to do some sap collecting too. My husband is going to put all the spouts in for us, but he does not know one tree from another. I will go along to point them out to him. We got our buckets two weeks ago at the Dollar Tree for a dollar each. They are 12 qt buckets with a handel. If you need more buckets and you have a Dollar Tree near you, you might want to check them out.
I am so ready to give it a try. Thanks for all the valuable information that you have shared here.
I will let you know how we do.
maa's mom
Maple Syrup
(Messages about maple syrup with another homesteadblogger.)
Original message from Belle:
Hello,
I read your post about you and your family making maple syrup. I found it very interesting!
I am thinking about doing it this year. Is there any tips you can give me? DId you all use plastic buckets for your sap? Did you have to stay up and watch the syrup all night? If you can give me any info at all I would greatly appreciate it!
Belle
P.S. I am the girl who use to share a blog with my mom, maa's mom. Now I have my own.
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Hello Belle,
Thanks for commenting on my blog. I'm glad you all are enjoying it. Instead of replying with a large message here, I decided to put up another post about it and just now put it up on the blog.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Of course we are definitely novices at this and are learning ourselves, but it has been fun and not too difficult.
If you have a good sized maple tree, I'm sure you can do it, too! If you do try, we'd love to hear about it.
In His Love,
Eric
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Original message from Belle:
Hello,
I read your post about you and your family making maple syrup. I found it very interesting!
I am thinking about doing it this year. Is there any tips you can give me? DId you all use plastic buckets for your sap? Did you have to stay up and watch the syrup all night? If you can give me any info at all I would greatly appreciate it!
Belle
P.S. I am the girl who use to share a blog with my mom, maa's mom. Now I have my own.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Belle,
Thanks for commenting on my blog. I'm glad you all are enjoying it. Instead of replying with a large message here, I decided to put up another post about it and just now put it up on the blog.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Of course we are definitely novices at this and are learning ourselves, but it has been fun and not too difficult.
If you have a good sized maple tree, I'm sure you can do it, too! If you do try, we'd love to hear about it.
In His Love,
Eric
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