Snowdrops

You just don't think of a flowers especially small delicate flowers as surviving a person by 50 years but these little beauties have done just that. My father died 50 years ago on March 2 and he planted these snowdrops at least ten years before that. They haven't received any care or tending. They are on the edge of a bank almost completely overtaken by vines but they are blooming this cold march day despite below freezing temperatures at night and dustings of snow. It makes you wonder.

AH Retirement

Timing is everything. One should always retire in March. The frozen streams are melting, the green shoots are already popping up, the birds are returning and I can look forward to afternoons with the trees leaving out, the blossoms coming, the bees darting from dandelion to dandelion. I couldn't be more relieved to have the outside world back again in the days to come. Spring is a magical thing and I won't miss a minute of it. Things I now have time for: Watching the birds at the feeders, sitting in the sunshine and reading, lingering over tea and a crossword, walking everyday with Shadow, driving the tractor through the woods and that is just in March.There's a voice that sometimes whispers, "But won't you get bored?" And then my real voice answers back, "Don't be idiotic. You never run out of projects and things you love to do."

Oh The Things You Can Make

Oh the things you can make on a freezing cold February afternoon with some flour and butter and a ready supply of maple syrup. (From the Maple Syrup Cookbook- my February Bible) Teatime never tasted so good as with these maple sticky buns.

Sugaring 2013 photo essay

And that is how we do it.

Sugaring

The season got off to a shaky start this year. Last Wednesday Feb 6, the forecast was for warm days and cool nights: the magical combination of weather that produces sap in maple trees. Wednesday morning was positively balmy so I headed out with my buckets and taps and drill and hammer to test a few trees. After the first tap I knew it was in fact running so I went to the second tree. When you are drilling a 2 1/2 inch hole in a tree some distance from your house, you need a battery operated drill. We keep the battery on the charger all the time with one spare to charge while the other is in use. While the charger said the battery was fully charged, apparently that wasn't quite true. The drill ran out of power most of the way through the second tap so i had no choice but to wait for the second battery to charge. in the meantime, winter was coming back in the form of icy cold winds and by Friday/Saturday 15 inches of snow. Snow is a good thing for tapping because while the day gets up to the high forties sometimes in the season, with the trees' base in a foot of snow,it means it won't get too warm. When it does get too warm the sap stops, the bugs come and what sap is left in the bucket turns sour. Now most of our maple trees are conveniently located on the side of the driveway where it is easy to reach them. The tree largest trees (I don't know heir dimensions but it would take at least three grown people with heir arms outstretched to reach around them) are about 200 feet from the road in the woods. The snowstorm meant that in Sunday when the temperatures promised to return to ideal and we finished doing the taps, we had to do the last five on snowshoes. The only way it would have felt more authentic is if we collected them on horseback. We in fact collect in in my tractor. It was my birthday present from my husband and sons last year; an old gravely with a cart behind which is perfect for the buckets as well as cord wood.It has made our lives much easier. Before that we collected it by hand or by wheelbarrow. I'll take the tractor any day. It was how I learned to drive at about 11 years old on my father's old Ford tractor.I never feel so much at peace as on the tractor. When I say buckets, you are probably picturing those quaint metal buckets with lids on them that you used to see driving through Vermont and New Hampshire. For the record you probably won't find them there anymore either; them use tubing strung between the trees. But when we started doing this 13 years ago (modestly with 1 tree and 1 tap)we used what we had on hand which was an empty milk gallon jug. Even when we added taps, we still used empty milk cartons. Most of the time they worded fine. But it is often windy during sugaring season and when the milk jugs were empty, they would occasionally blow off the trees and we'd had to find them. Then we happened on the perfect solution. Ice tea and apple juice also come in gallon jugs but it is made of a heavier, non recyclable plastic which is heavy enough to stay on a tree when it is empty and the wind is blowing. We are occasionally tempted by the look of those metal buckets but they hold more than a gallon and carrying two of them through the woods to the tractor does not appeal. One gallon on each arm is heavy enough! So the sap did start to run; we had nine taps in 7 trees and we are now busy boiling it down. Each of the trees along the driveway has one tap and two of the massive tree in the woods have two taps. We could do more and still not hurt those huge trees but there is a limit to how much we can boil and still each have full time jobs. Because we do all this without that most expensive of investments: an evaporator. As I write there is a 20 quart soup pot almost boiled down downstairs while another 20 quart pot is upstairs from taps I collected at 11 this morning. The pot downstairs was started at 10:30 last night and boiled until about midnight when i went to bed. I finished the another one from yesterday first thing this morning and started the full one again. There are still four gallons of sap in the refrigerator and I'm guessing about 7-8 more gallons to collect by 5 tonight. I have to leave for work and Perry will take over. Usually I work at 10 and I can just collect it and maybe bring it to boil for an hour. Sap just left at room temperature will turn sour quickly. It is easier on weekends when one of us is bound to be home and the sap boils all day. By the way that is one of the joys of being a hobbyist. For the month of February and part of March our house always smells like maple syrup. Of course the absolute best part is having all that maple syrup in the downstairs fridge. We regularly have waffles and blueberry pancakes. Of course when the house is infused with the smell of maple, sometimes you just don't want to wait for breakfast. The you do what my sons did. When the smaller pot of syrup is finally finished (it has a certain glassy look that you come to know) and you pour in into the quart jars, because it is syrup, there is always some left i the pot. You can take a scraper and get most of it out but a better way is to scoop out some vanilla ice cream and let the pot's heat melt the ice cream. You swirl it around until all the reast of the syrup is mixed with the ice cream and then taste a little bit of heaven.

BIRTHDAYS

Julia's grandmother always said that February wasn't a month, it was a disease- something to be suffered through. But I try to think of it as the turning point of winter- a few warm days here and there in anticipation of the coming months. Since it is my birthday month and valentine's day and my son's birthday, I think of it as one long month of chocolate treats. Now that we are tapping and the warmer days are coming earlier, I also think of it as days when are house smells of maple sugar steam everywhere.

The pleasure of a sting

January did some thawing out at the beginning of this week. Temperatures had climbed all weekend until Monday Jan 14, the day burst into an almost spring in the high 50's.What I had dared to hope was true- the bees were alive. They cleaned out the dead bees and flew around near the hive. That morning when it was still chilly I had seen a few venture out. I wasn't sure if they were just dead bees or live ones too cold to move. Then I felt something in my hair and reached up to see what it was and was surprised at the sharp pain in my finger. I pulled out the stinger and then was happy to see more bees moving around. The sting really hurt; my finger swelled up and stayed hard for several hours but I was so happy to have live bees that it was a good feeling after all.

Good Garbage*

I've been composting my whole life. My father was an organic gardener (not his profession, just his great love) and so we composted all food scraps except meats. They were put into a large garbage can in the kitchen which held about a month's compost so by the time my father took it back to the compost pile (no one else could lift it) it was pretty well on its way to being compost. Our bucket is not that big so it fills up pretty quickly. In fact I have it in my head that the more often I have to empty the compost (I seem to have inherited the job) the healthier our eating habits. All those carrot scrapings and cucumber peels mean we're eating fresh whole foods. In the summer, it can fill up in a day with carrot tops, watermelon rinds (cut into small pieces)and tomato innards.I think the more colorful the compost the better. Orange cantaloupe , green lettuce and purple cabbage leaves all mixed together in a kaleidoscope of composted material ready to help create a new batch of vegetables. *from Tom Chapin's excellent song, "Good garbage smells bad to your nose."