Oh Dear, First Storm

Oh Dear, (said in my most moarnful Eyore voice). Good Morning!

(Yes, Mel, my trees have faces, but the bear bit off my lips.)
I'm not complaining, by any means about the weather..
The sun barely peeked through after our first rainfall, leaving barely 3/4 inch of rain on our still frozen swamps, woods and slowly melting creek.
The slightest of rainbow crossed the eastern sky by time I retrieved my camera from the 4-wheeler parked in the barn. The music left by falling rain, still resonated in my ears. I love the sound of a powerful rainfall.
Angels wings were forming in the clouds,
showing us there was not fear in the next storm that arrived less than 10 minutes later,
pushing creek water fast east to west.
The air was still warmer than the ground causing much fog to form across the fields, on the highway beyond, and
in the swamps., trees and brush still dripping with raindrops. (Click on any picture for a closer view.)
Every spring since my son was old enough to pick a flower, he has brought me my first bouquet of spring. This time it was pussy willows. I hope he will never outgrow this. He's getting married next year. Do you think he will then forget ?
Parts of our state were hit by 5 different tornadoes, but we were missed., I'm grateful. In stead, our day ended with a beautiful sunset. ben (oops, GrandLove Ben had to write his name...)

Thanks for stopping. Have a memorable week and God Bless!

BlessYourHearts

Ray of Sunshine, Done

Is that a ray of Sunshine? Even a sliver of it's warmth gives hopes of a new spring day. All I can say, is, " It's about time." and " Thanks."The hygrometer says we are done.
We are done making our family a taste of fresh maple syrup. The trees are budding fast with the warmer weather and promises of thunderstorms by tonight. Once the buds open, the sap run is over.

No more collecting sap off the muddy trails, no more hearing that ' ping, ping ' in the bottom of an empty sap bucket. No more waiting hours into days, for the finished product to drip one drop into a thread of syrup at the tip of the spoon. The canning is done, the jars are full. The music to my ears, another kind of ' ping 'that a sealed jar makes, has been counted until the last jar has sealed in the sweet flavor of freshly cooked maple syrup straight from the Sugar Maple Tree for our tables.
Our total was 20 pints., more than enough for the ravenous appetites that grace our table time and again, until the jars are empty. Next spring will once again, bring an end to winter dulldrum, for there will be more maple syrup to make to fill another years sweet teeth. More memories will be made for the GrandLoves who missed this years run.

Until then, there are pans, pails, taps, strainers, ladles, collection buckets to clean and store for next year. The 4-wheeler needs the mud sprayed away, to make ready for another spring job., cleaning up the yard. There is much to be done. There is so little time. Soon the grass will be green, and there will be gardens ready for a winters worth of vegetables, to plant and tend. I can taste the Sugar Snap Peas already.

Oh, I cannot wait, though I have no choice. I can only do my share.

About my previous post, Thanks for stopping and lending your ears and prayers...I may share someday, what weighs so heavy, but until then, I am so fortunate to have you all to lean on. Silly, but true, how close we all have become. Thanks for just being you., each and every one of you. You help more than you will ever know.

BlessYourHearts

Easy Peezy, Gut Knots, Wait

Give me a project. Something Easy-Peezy, like restoring an old ice chest, or converting by inverting an old barn fork to hold my garden gloves and small hand tools.Teach me to make a Solomon's Man for the wee ones to play with as I wait for the knots,
as large as a Monkey's Fist Knot, to unfurl from my gut.
Give me patience, to wait.
Wait and see what's ahead. Impatience is blocking my view. Knowing that I will have some tough decisions to make, has distracted my clear thinking. I have heard it said many times, that God does not give us more than we can handle, but then I heard it another way. God DOES give us More than we can handle, so we remember to turn to HIM.

Give me strength, then~

Have the best weekend folks, and enjoy every last second of it.

Thanks for stopping and Thank God

BlessYourHearts

Last Float, Last Ride

The fun we had!

Far right is city cousin, Peggy, cousin Sandy and myself, in the drivers seat, off on a canoe trip with one of the canoes that my Dad built, way back in the mid 60's. The trip was in Aug. of '68., the year we all graduated from high school.My cousin Sandy and I had the best of times the last summer before we headed off to college/tech school, and most of that fun, started and ended with one last ride in the old '51 Chevy. ClaraBelle, as she was so rightly named, after dear Aunt Clara, carried us around all summer from one venture to another.

This particular day, we were determined to wet our feet while drifting down the Flambeau River from Nine Mile to Oxbo. This time, we did not even take a fishing pole, or any more food than a sandwich and a jug of water. Our goal was to just enjoy the sunshine, whiling away the day, as we took a float trip, dreaming of what our further education would bring as well as one last day of fun together. We knew things would never be the same. Mostly, we talked about how much we would miss each other and making ' pinky swears ' of how we would do this every summer.

Normally, a glide down the river from those two points takes about 5 hours. Oh, it can be done faster if you were to race it as had been done many times back when we were growing up until about 20-some years ago.

For some reason, those races no longer take place. Getting a bit off track here, I remember my Dad racing the river when I was a kid, and he and his neighbor won, not once but several times. Another year my hubby, Bill and his best man raced and won. That was the year we got married and also, part of a bachelor party. The last race I remember was in '86 when our son Stacy and his buddy, raced during Flambeau Rama, our towns big summer festival full of fun and fireworks. I think we all were stronger and far more active, back then. Anyway,

It took Sandy, myself, and Peggy, at least 8 hours to glide that trip. We took our time, checking out each creek that emptied into the river, and took pictures in our minds of the deer getting drinks, the muskrats and the beaver teaching their young how to prepare for winter, tho it was far off on this hot summer day. The eagle were fishing, but not us. We had an easier day planned.

There are several camping places along the river where canoe and river boat enthusiasts can take a break from the hot sun, the fishing and the trek down stream. That's today. Back in ' 68 when we pulled over, we rested on a knoll just past Big Barneby Rapids and off to the south of the river. With all of the sultry heat in the air, we were not on shore long. The mosquitoes were having a field day picnic out of us, and city girl Peggy started to cry, swearing she would never, ever again, go on a river trip with us, that we must be nuts. Sandy and I were sympathetic and holding back our laughter out of sheer respect for this poor cousin who obviously was no longer enjoying herself with her crazed cousins.

Needless to say, we gave in,( chewed up ourselves,) but never admitting that it bothered us tough country girls, we appeared reluctant to Peggy, but were glad to be back in the breeze of the rivers bend where the WI. state bird, the mosquito, was no longer a threat to our good humor.

It's been over 40 years, and we never did take another river trip together. I see that needs to change. ClaraBelle is a car of the past, a very bittersweet past. She now sits at the edge of the farm, a rust heap, full of sadness as a hornet nest rests in her rear fender.

The ol' 51 Chevy was to be restored at one time, but money never proved available, so as she sat waiting in the old shed at the farm, for years, finally Dad pulled her out, needing the room for other things. Mom was just telling me that it still makes her mad, the day she was dragged out of the shed and her front axle was broken. She said she just knew that we would someday have to funds to restore her. Now we finally could start, but ClaraBelle is sadly, beyond repair.

You know what they say, ' it was not meant to be.' Sad, but reality.

As for the float down the river, who could ask for more than good times just drifting the day away, just one last time.

Have a ' daydream day ' and

BlessYourHearts

PURE Maple Syrup Season

                                      Tight Sugar Maple Buds Promise Pure Maple Syrup

       
This article is from 2011, so some of you may already have come on this ride, but this is similar to what we do today.  Now, however,  we put out 100 taps and do the majority of the cook-off at the cabin.   We are still and always will be a ' small family operation ' but not selling our product.  Come along, and I will  give you a taste of what we are up to to break up winter.     
                        
~Saturday~April, 2011

Those of you who follow, already know that I have teased my dear love, Bill, about tapping just 6 trees. Well folks, he got the bug, and actually increased his productivity times 3, thus using 18 taps instead. I am no longer teasing. He worked so hard, for two days, a total of 21 1/2 hours, just to ' cook off ' his 35 gallons of maple sap from just a few of our hardwood trees.

Feast Your Eyes! Just look at that gorgeous amber-colored, PURE Maple Syrup. Is it ever delicious!

Follow along, and I will fill you in on what he did to accomplish this time-consuming process, the homemade, small family-produced way.After tapping the trees, a daily trip to the woods, is required, to collect the clear maple sap,as it collects in the pails, one drip at a time. This happens until you have enough sap to start your cook-off.

Depending on the weather, preferably, warm sunny days, cold nights, the pail slowly fills with sap that is rising from the bottom of the trees as the days lengthen and warm. Once the sap reaches the tight maple buds and gives nourishment to open them, the sap run is over. Only the good Lord and Mother Nature, determine the length and quality of the maple sap run., thus the quality of the syrup. Too many warm/hot days and warm nights means cloudy sap and the sweetness turns sour.
Looking at the sky, tells us that there may be another storm coming in, whether it's rain, snow, hail, wind, only time will tell. It's those dark, bottom clouds, that are telling us that we may be dumping tomorrow's run.
There is nothing as tempting, as an ice cold drink of sap, right out of the bucket, right off the tree, especially when you're a curious youngster. Sweet!It's hard to believe, that the clear sap is going to turn out to be a lip-smacking delight of pure maple syrup, as it lays in the pockets of a waffle.
Straining the sap several times on it's way to the cooker, is necessary to remove any bark, etc, that may have fallen into the bucket of a small family operation. The plastic tubing used by the big-time producers that put the maple syrup on your tables, eliminates this step.
Did you know that a turkey fryer has multiple uses? This weekend, it was used as an evaporator. Bill is pouring pre-heated sap into the final evaporator/kettle, to quicken the process.

We are cooking outside because we do not have a sap shack with fans and vents, so we are using Ma Nature to evaporate the steam that is created during the cook-off.

The first kettle is full of sap on the woodstove in the garage to pre-heat the cold sap.

From there, it is transferred with Bill's coffeepot, to the next pre-heat/pre-boil pan on the stove in the garage/canning section. It saves a lot of the time required to boil off 35 gallons of sap, to the syrup stage.

This was Sat. The sap finally started to boil in the make-shift evaporator in the late morning. We shut down the cook-off at 8 p.m. and started up again at 7 a.m. the next morning.~Sunday~

Just what we didn't need----another 3 1/2 inches of snow, sleet and wind. Wet, packy stuff that will most certainly mean dumping todays sap from the buckets, if this keeps up.
Many hours later, and the sap is starting to take some color and enhanced sweetness. A bit of this in my coffee was sure a treat with the cold wind.

Bill had to pull the operation into the edge of the garage door, set up wind blocks, and hope for the best.
There is a lot of hurry-up and wait, going on during the making of maple syrup for our family. And, a lot of steps. As the sap begins to boil, it leaves a froth that usually gets skimmed off the top, more for something to do, than any other purpose.
The entire process, in our case is for the ' fun of it.' The only profit we make is to see the smiles on the faces of our family as they consume the finished product. We spend hours watching so the cooker does not over boil and chance loosing the entire batch. It took 22 hours out of two days of cooking, to remove the water/moisture off the 35 gallons of sap to make 9 1/2 pints (1 gallon plus 1 1/2 pts.) of pure syrup. That's a long time. If we were to do this for a living, we would have to put out 30,000 taps and spend a fortune just in fuel to truck the tapped sap to production.

No, we only want enough for the kids to enjoy with their families, a taste.

It has given us a chance to break up winter a bit and utilize the beautiful hard maple trees we have on our property for other than firewood and lumber. The GrandLoves have had a ball watching and sneaking sips of sap, gathering, learning, so they, too can do this someday for their kids.Maple Syrup Season has been something that Bill and I both have seen as kids and we grew up learning. Only now, are we really learning to understand how time-consuming such a love is.

There are no pictures of pulling the pan from the fire, quickly straining the syrup through a sieve lined with 3 layers of dish towels, reheating and getting into the jars. This part has to happen quickly before loosing the benefit of the hot syrup. It's the ' breathe-holding ' moments.

All for the glory of that liquid gold in a canning jar.

Now to clean up after the fact. Any outdoor cooking kettles, pans, etc, that sits on an open flame for so long, gets tarnished with gases and soot. The best way to guarantee a quick clean-up, is really quite simple, if you remember this easy tip. Simply, wipe any liquid dish detergent on the outside of your pan before setting it on the flame. Even tho, this one had been on the flames twice, all day long, a nylon scraper easily took the burned on surface right off. Just rinse and dry., that simple.

I have done this even on my cast iron over a camp fire, and it cleans up so fast. If the pan is on the fire for just one use, all you need to do is to wipe it off with paper toweling or just spray it off. You cannot ask for an easier clean-up than that. Give it a try the next time you set a coffee pot, pan or griddle on an open fire. You will be amazed.I hope you have enjoyed jaunting the muddy trail with us in our quest to tempt our taste buds. It's been a blast from the past for me and I enjoyed every minute of it with my patient hubster, Bill, and the GrandLoves.

If you ever get the chance to do this with your loved ones, DO IT! I know, I know, it's takes an incredible amount of time, it is exhausting, it does not pay to do it on our small scale, in fact we went in the hole, but do it anyway. It is so worth it's weight in gold in more ways than one. Your heart will leap with satisfaction of creating something golden and delicious for your family. Furthermore, they will thank you in hugs and kisses. Now, what a better reason to make pure maple syrup, or liquid gold, as we call it! It's fantastic!!!!!

BlessYourHearts and ThanksForStopping

Ewweee, What's that Smell?

EWWEEE~~~The things some folks do to survive....or the few cents derived in this trappers day, I ask, Was it worth it?

My Dad used to recite a few poems he recalled from his youth, whenever someone was within hearing distance and wanted to hear them again. Cover your ears Mama!

This one goes untitled to his recollection, and goes something like this:

" I hunt the bear

I hunt the moose

I hunt the rat,

The other day I take my axe for hunt thee skunk polecat.

My friend Bill, say he's very fine fur and sometimes good to eat,

I think I get my wife fur coat and same time get some meat.

I take my ax upon my back and I walk some six, eight miles,

And pertty soon, and by and by,

I smell ONE ' AWEFUL ' smell!

I think the gotdamn skunk, he die, and fur coat gone to hell!!

Then pertty soon, by and by, up by the great big tree,

I see that little pussycat,

I thin he no see me!

I sneak up very close behind, I raise my ax up HIGH,

When-----Paatch, That little pussycat, throw something in my eye!

OH SACRA BLUE, I think I'm blind,

Yeeez Krise, I no can see,!,\

Now what you think that pussycat, he peest all over me!

I run round, all round and round, I throw away my ax,

That pussycat, and then 'bout Million pussycat, he climb upon my back.

When I get home my wife she say, she sick on me the dog,

She say I no can sleep in shack, I have to sleep with hog!

No more, I hunt thee skunk polecat, for his fine fur and meat

For if he peest , he smell so bad,

Yeeez krise

What if he should sheeet!??? "

I know this may be a repeat of days gone by but, when I came upon this picture of my crazy brother, it reminded me of Dad's idea of poetry. I can see him sitting on the fence rail laughing it up with some of his followers who wanted to learn whatever they could from Grandpa, Dad, or Uncle Ted or just a good friend., even if it was ' poetry.'

Beware out there! Ya sure do not want to hit one of those polecats! Or, be feeding one unaware! One once was helping himself to the barn cat's food right on the front step. Not a pretty scent.

Thanks for stopping and

BlessYourHearts

Yes, I'll Come, but What's Up Now My Love?

They say, that with true love,you will follow him anywhere~~~~~so where are we off to this time, dear, and
what are these tools for? And are those pipe fittings and short pieces of pipe? What the~~~~~
You've got to be kidding, right? Yes, I understand. You have this uncontrollable urge to drill holes in our trees to see what comes out?
I've been eves-dropping on your chit-chat with my brother...so you are hungry for the taste of sap coffee? or pure maple syrup?
I see you jimmy-rigged some home-made taps when you just as easily could have waited until tomorrow when I go to the farm. I could have gotten you some ' real ' taps and the pails. Why, my love, must you always be so impatient? I'm wondering, is this what retirement is going to be like? I was in the middle of spring cleaning AND making your supper.

Yes, dear, I see the sap is dripping 110 drips a minute....and your point is?I'm just saying, MY point is, it's like having a hobby farm. If you're going to milk one cow, you might as well have a barn full because you have to stay home for one just like you would for 50. So, either tap trees and make maple syrup or don't tap at all. What's with only tapping 6, I say, six trees? And, what's with only one tap per tree? This is going to be a hoot. Do you remember the last time you did this ' small fry ' maple syruping? Do you remember how you walked away from the boil at the most crucial moment and you lost every drop of syrup?
Yes, but, that was when I was a drinking man and had to get another beer~~~~

So, just why did you say we are Not tapping the whole woods?

Because I only want 30 gallons. That's all we need to make a gallon of pure maple syrup. Besides, we do not have the set-up to do it big.

Ok, so tell me why you want to make your own maple syrup when we can go up the road and get it from Dave? (Dave is our nephew who makes maple syrup on a much larger scale, but still small-time.)

Because I want the Grandkids to see this and help gather so they know how to do it for themselves someday. Or say they made maple syrup with Grandpa and Grandma.

Well, now that's the best reason in the world to tap 6 trees. One more question~~~~and why didn't we just tap the trees in the yard?

Because maple trees grow in the woods. That's what I'm telling the kids.

I've never liked beer, but if I did, I'd have to tell ya..........
All in fun and the family~~~~~

to be continued! I will have to keep you updated on this little venture that Bill is on. I'm kidding him a lot but really am looking forward to doing this with our GrandLoves as much as he is. Maple Syrup time is exciting. I remember tapping, collecting, cooking, the whole process until it was poured over our pancakes along with a hot cup of maple sap coffee to top it off. What a great way to welcome spring.

Thanks for stopping and

BlessYourHeart