Garden Before

Here's the annual Before shots of my father's garden, taken today:

The Girl and Grandma take a tour of the onions, garlic, peas, and whatnot.

He also added several new beds outside the fence, of rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, and gladiolas.  Because, you know, there was just good lawn there going to waste that could be GROWING SOMETHING.   Besides grass, which apparently doesn't count.  

Don't get me wrong -- I love me the fruit of Pop's garden.  And we'll be well prepared when civilization ends and we need to feed ourselves.

Which reminds me --  Father's Day is coming up; better pitch in for something nice for our Patriarch if I want access to that unlimited supply of tomatoes.  

Cousins! Cousins! Everywhere!

We had an influx of temporary agricultural workers from the South last week.

By which I mean two sets of cousins came to visit and help haul sap in from the sugarbush.

Bob's sister and family visited from Merry-land for nearly a week to celebrate Easter ... and then spent late afternoon on Sunday filling up the sap holding tanks.

The Girl and her first cousins hunt for Easter eggs

While I was busy with the Easter egg hunt, The Hubs, his sister The Troll, B.I.L. Rrrrrrick and Nephew#1 trudged out to the sugarbush to empty the rapidly overflowing sap buckets into the transport pails and bring them back to the sugarhouse.  Unfortunately, it started to rain between truckloads 1 and 2.  They were troopers, though, and brought it all in.

*spoiler alert*

reminder of the plot of The Maple Movie

(subtitled)  The sap's journey:

  Tree->galvanized bucket-> 5 gallon pail -> holding tank -> 

evaporator -> syrup -> filter -> bottle

FIL Jim furiously boiled the sap on Sunday and Monday and pulled off gallons of delightfully golden sweet Maple Syrup.  On Monday, the family spent the day bottling

(Syrup photography courtesy of the BIL Rrrrrick)

Then the cold weather swooped back in to halt sap flow just in time for Bob's cousin Sean and his two Seanlets to arrive from Virginia Beach.

Fortunately, the temps inched back up through the week and by Friday there was enough sap in the buckets to collect.

The Girl and her second cousin Rubydoo discover a very! full! sap bucket!!

Sean and the Seanlets empty sap buckets into the 5-gallon pails to transport the sap back to the sugarhouse.

Sweet maple-y goodness.  Mmmmm....  

I love it when cousins come to visit.  

Especially when they do the work that The Hubs usually makes me do.  

BWWWAAAHAHAHAHAHAAA!  

(anyone else want to come visit?)

Kitchen visitation

We got to go out to the shop today to visit our in-progress kitchen cabinets and countertop!   I managed to hold it in and only squeal once.

Here's our quartz countertop!   Squeeee!

The owner, our friend Mike, showed us all the bits and pieces of our cabinetry that are being fabricated as we speak.  SO.  EXCITING!!  

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Sorry -- I just couldn't hold it in anymore!

Spring Woods

Steam's Up!

YAY!  

The kids went up to The Lake with Bob today to collect sap.  In the balmy 42 F weather, the sap was a-runnin'!   So much so, that they fired up the evaporator.

Steam's Up!

Drip, thunk

As soon as our lovely sweet sap started to drip two weeks ago, the weather turned COLD again and those drips turned into sapsicles.  So no sweet sounds, just the occasional THUNK of a frozen sapsicle falling off into a bucket.

*sigh*

I'm pretty sure that we had a return of winter weather because we have family coming up from the South next week who were praying for an extension of the syrup season so they could help with whole maple-y process!   Thanks, guys.

So, in the meantime, we did a little of this:

But -- never fear!   Temps are on their way back up and the snow is melting away again.  Yesterday, The Hubs and his father (who is FINALLY back from Florida, the no-good-dirty-retirement-enjoying-guy) collected about 75 gallons of sap!   Today, the kids are helping him haul in the rest of the buckets, since the school district cashed in an unused snow day for an extra day of vacation.

Lucky ducks.