We took the plunge

Yes, we pulled the trigger on the old white van and bought a newer used van. It is a Dodge Grand Caravan and seems to have a lot more room, especially in the luggage storage area. The children were very excited about it. They wanted to try all the buttons. So now we've graduated up to the van with TWO side doors and POWER windows. Wow!

And just one more picture of syrup, shining in the sunlight.

Crazy weather

I took my Easter tulips outside to show you what we woke up to this morning. It did melt away by 3 pm, but it is still hard to take snow after Easter.

The Syrup is Done!

I finished processing the maple syrup today. I boiled the sap until I only had my big 18 qt cooker full. Then I brought it into the house to finish on the stove.


Nathan helped me can the syrup when it was done. He was a great helper.

Nathan poured the hot syrup through several layers of cheesecloth to filter it. We still get some sugar sand in the syrup but most of it is filtered out. Sugar sand is hard bits of syrup that don't dissolve. Kinda like sinkers in wine.

Then I poured the hot syrup into jars.

I put clean lids on the jars, screwed them on tight, and turned the jars upside down for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I turned them right side up. As they cooled, they sealed themselves.

The grand total: 3 gallons and 5 cups of syrup. This was more than we expected. So either we undercounted sap somewhere or we have great trees.

This year, the syrup was lighter than last year. The lighter the syrup, the better the grade of syrup. Nathan and I agree that it tastes amazingly wonderful.

Easter, part 2

Happy Easter to everyone! We started the day out with our Araucana eggs. No sense in dyeing them since they were already light green.

We had to open the church building so our Easter morning picture was taken there. We had a wonderful service. The pastor compared Matt 28 with Romans 4.

Now to the egg hunt. We had 17 children participate. Notice the coats! It was pretty chilly this morning. But since the snow wasn't deep and the ground was still frozen and the sun was shining, it was deemed warm enough to have the egg hunt outside. Here all the children are lined up ready to go.

The teenagers hid the eggs and then the youngest children were allowed to find their amount. The older children were then let loose to find their amount of eggs. Here Deborah and her friend talk about what they found.

We had two families from church over for Easter dinner. It was quite a spread. We couldn't even get the potatoes on the table. We had ham, applesauce, potatoes, fruit salad, rolls, pickles of every kind, and green beans for dinner. Dessert was pumpkin pie, jello cake with sprinkles on the frosting (big big hit with the kids), and chocolate cake.

Easter, part 1

This year I decided to hold our Easter Egg hunt on Saturday. Easter Sunday always seems busy, we had an egg hunt at church anyway, and since we were having friends over for Easter dinner, Saturday was the egg hunt day.

Since this is Michigan, it was cold so we hid the eggs in the house. The children wanted to find them upstairs, so after our cleaning chores were done and the pumpkin pie for tomorrow was cooling, I hid the eggs.




It was also our last day of sap collection. We got a grand total of 125 gallons of sap. Stay tuned for how much syrup that made. The boys took care of taking down the sap collectors (otherwise known as milk jugs) and plugging up the holes with sticks. Then came the best part - stomping on the milk jugs. They found that by loosening the lids a little and then jumping on the jug, the lid goes spinning down the driveway.

Good Morning

It is a gorgeous morning here. A beautiful Good Friday morning.

It is also our last sap gathering day. Last evening we collected gallon number 116. Today we'll gather what was collected and then plug up the holes in the trees.

Butterfly Day

Today the sun was shining and we had to be in town anyway, so after our errands, we went to the Butterfly House in town. But first, some pictures of the garden in the snow.

And pictures of boys taking pictures with their cameras.

We had a great time there and it wasn't too crowded. We timed it perfectly between two school groups. All but Aaron got a butterfly (or two) to sit on their hands. Nathan has a Buckeye butterfly.

He gave it to Deborah to hold. She was thrilled. It had just come out of the cocoon house (?) and seemed to be content just to sit.

Stephen has a Julia Butterfly on his hand.

And now for some just pretty butterfly pictures. I think this is a White Morpho.

Julia

Red Admiral

Monarch

Zebra

And Stephen's favorite - Red Postman

Gym time

We took part in a gym time yesterday. There were 5 families involved and probably 20 lightsabers were present. I was having such a good time talking to the other moms that I only got two sort of okay pictures. I'll try and get better pictures next time.

Sap Update

We've had a slow start to the maple sap season. We got almost nothing the first week of March. But now it has started to pick up. Last weekend was great! We harvested 14 gallons of sap on Friday, 12 on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. We're now up to 80 gallons harvested. My goal is to harvest and process 110 before we leave on our vacation to see my sister. So another 3 or 4 good days will do it.

We collect the sap in milk jugs. We store them in the cool garage until it is time to boil them down.

We don't have the traditional sugar house or the flat evaporator pan. So instead, I boil them down on our screened in porch. We use my regular electric skillet...

...and my 18 qt electric cooker. It cooks the sap pretty slowly but it gets the job done. I just have to keep a timer going so I don't forget to go put more sap into the cookers. You can see that it is starting to get its darker color already.

Happy St. Pat's Day!

We had a wonderful St. Pats dinner last night. Yes, I know that it was one day late, but our friends couldn't make it on Monday night. Please note the glaring John Deere Green suspenders my dh has on.

I made the requisite Corned Beef with Vegetables but since there was thirteen of us, I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't run out of food. So I made a version of Dublin Coddle. It is a big pot of onions, potatoes, sausage, bacon, and apples that sits and simmers for a while. It was delicious. I'm definitely making this before next St. Pat's Day.

Here's the spread (sorry for the blurriness).

And for dessert, I made Irish Whiskey Tea Cake. It was a light cake filled with moist raisins and tasting of lemon and a hint of whiskey.

A Walk in the March Woods

It was a sunny Sunday. Cold but sunny. We decided to take a walk in our woods. The chickens are also enjoying the warmer weather. We've let them out because it is good for them and we are trying to distract the chicken or chickens that have taken a fancy to eating eggs.

As you can see, there is still a lot of snow on the ground.

There were lots of leaves that had melted leaf shaped holes in the snow.

Our river is thawed.

But there is still plenty of ice for boys to break off in big chunks.

See the big chunk?

Watching the ice chunks flow down to the ocean.

We even got some ice to go under the ice, under the bridge, and come out the other side.