Sapcicles

As you can see from the previous post, today is woodchuck....er....Groundhog...day. Not that that means anything, really. All our local marmota monax critters are hibernating and will be for a good while yet. Around here all the shadows in the world won't bring spring in six weeks, no way, nohow.

Of course when spring does come they will emerge from their burrows, make more burrows, gobble garden, and generally be annoying. You gotta take the bad with the good.

Anyhow, we took a little ride yesterday evening, looking at Amish farmsteads on the back roads around our area. There are certainly plenty of them!

As we passed under some sugar maples, which line the roads in many places around here, dripping down from some twigs broken by some passing tall truck...probably a milk tanker out there...were sapcicles.

Yay! The sap is running! There can be a lot of winter yet, but still.....

Our Maple Guy is on TV

This is where the sap from our trees is processed into maple syrup. Excuse the commercial.

National Pancake Day

We love pancakes!

Every now and then someone goes in early from chores to make a stack for supper. When we have sausage from our own pigs, maple syrup from our trees, (or homemade apple, grape or strawberry jam if you prefer) plus real butter, a glass of cold, fresh milk ....well, it is a feast of fine proportions I can tell you!

And every bite was produced on a farm. (Many of the bites right here on our farm). The local Farm Bureau has a program called, "What is a pancake?" wherein hard-working folks visit area schools to cook up pancakes and maple syrup for the children, while teaching them how each product involved is grown and harvested on farms. I think they do a fantastic job of showing how food isn't made in the back room at the grocery store.

***The photos were taken in our maple woods which are tapped by Mr. Savage from Johnstown. (We have a real nice barter deal, wherein he taps the trees and gives us syrup when he is done each year.) Word is that the sap has been running in some places, although we haven't seen any sapcicles yet. Everywhere you drive folks are out in the sugar bushes though, getting everything clean and ready to go

Wordless Wednesday

Sugaring Off

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These days of cold, moon bright mornings, and sunny-windy-blustery days, with hard, sharp frosty nights are perfect for making maple syrup.I am always excited by maple sugar weather! Yesterday, standing out in the yard with Matt and Lisa, buffeted by a wild, west wind, it was easy to tell that it was sugar time. (They brought us down a wonderful little chicken house which will be featured soon.)

Back in the day my dad, brother and I tapped some trees and made a little syrup every year. I used to walk my tap line on snow shoes, dragging a plastic toboggan with buckets on it to hold the sap. Keeping the buckets upright was a cuss-worthy challenge. Later I acquired a fifteen-gallon barrel, which worked better, but was still heavy and hard to handle. And it still managed to roll off the sled about fifty times a day, no matter how I tied it.

Now we let a man who runs a local sugar bush run a tap line in our maple woods and he gives us syrup at the end of the run. He has tubing instead of spiles and catches more sap in a day than we did in a year.

Less romance, but I don't miss the sled.


An old milk bulk tank our maple guy has converted to catch sap at the bottom of our maple woods. We almost never see him, but can tell by the appearance of tracks and hoses that he is out working the woods.

Swee-e-e-t

Our maple guy stopped by yesterday. Thanks, Steve!

It was a pretty morning too.

The day the Internet died

Or night actually...last night Frontier net went down in two area codes, including ours. It was still out this morning so... no Farm Side this week, among other things. However, here are some pictures from yesterday's road trip, which would have been yesterday's post, but for fatigue and technological failure.

A beaver house in a swamp on Corbin Hill Road.
There are two of these within perhaps thirty feet of each other.

Left side of Goldman road

We call this Lyker's Pond, although it probably has another name. The two sections of the pond are connected by a large culvert under Goldman Road. As I stood looking for nice shots (and praying against ticks) there came from behind me a booming sound, like someone heaving a bowling ball through the bushes and onto the ice. I must have jumped three feet. It was a BIG boom. I crossed to that side of the road and peered down into the woods. No bears, no maddened lumber jacks. No teen-aged mutant ninja deer ticks. Nada. I went back to taking pictures. (I love this place, so close to farms and houses and yet so remote-seeming and lovely. I will try to stop back as spring shows up, hot on the heels of all those geese (we hope) and take more pictures. It should be interesting to watch the ice melt and the plants green up.)

Then the booming erupted from the side I had just left. What the heck? It was an elusive sort of sound...seeming to come from everywhere and yet nowhere at once. Then it arose from UNDER the road. That is when I figured out (I think) what was going on. The ice itself was making those thunderous sounds as the sun rapidly warmed it after a night in the low teens...There were certainly pressure lines scored across it that weren't there the other day when I visited (You can see them in the right and left photos if you click). And if there were bears or bowling ticks or a train going off the tracks, I, at least, couldn't see them.

Right side of Goldman Road, where the first bowling tick sound originated

We were inspected yesterday and I guess we did okay, although we will probably never know. Liz was there when the inspectors came for which I am very thankful. That way we at least know they have done us and moved on to other victims.



The low tech method of gathering maple sap. This is adjacent to the big sugar bush we pass and is probably part of it. This is the hard way of getting the job done, but these pails seem to be nicely full of sap.

*****If you want to get a look at the incredible goose invasion that is sweeping over New York, visit my other blog, where I dump photos that don't fit here.
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