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.

Relax to the sweet sounds of...

... the slow drip of maple sap.

This has been the adult contemporary stylings of Mr. Maple T. Ree on WSAP TV:  The North Woods straight to you!


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Check, check, check....

It's that time of year again!

It is a gorgeous Pre-Spring day here in the North Country, so we took the snow sled up to the sugarbush to do a little sap check.

But it's just not warm enough up at The Lake yet for the sap to run too much.  Oh, the sap is dripping, but it certainly is not gushing yet like it is in some lower elevations.  So, we didn't empty any buckets, but we did get some nice time together in the woods.   Except The Boy.  He's hanging out in a friend's hot tub today.   Sheesh.

No matter.  The Girl got to pretend she was a fearless snowmobile racer.

And go for a walk with Mommy and Daddy:

And Bob got to spend some time with his True Love.

Oh, and me too.  I was also there.  

Just kidding!  He qualified his "one true love" comment by saying sugaring is actually about third on the list.  And, being a wise woman, I did not ask him what the others were on the list.  I will blithely believe I am both #1 and #2 on his list of "true loves."  I do not need clarification.

But, I'm pretty sure logs and good beer are somewhere near the top too.

Priming the ceiling

After The Girl and I made Green Eggs and .... {sausage} yesterday, we all went up to The Lake to work on the living room ceiling.

Bob churns the butter... er, the bucket of primer.  

... while Anne holds all the many painting implements.  

(Photographic genius courtesy of The Boy, this time)

The Hubs does the neck-cricking parts...

While I cut in around the edges.  (Like how I used fancy painting talk there?)

The Girl "helped"....

.... for about 2 seconds.

Thanks to our zealous photographer, we have 35 pictures of us priming half the ceiling, including this gem:

Yes, that's the inside of the bucket of primer.  

We'll need to have a wee talk with the lad about what it's just NOT necessary to photograph...

On Dr. Seuss' Birthday

Instead of dashing up to The Lake on this fine Saturday morning, The Girl and I took some time to make a memory and help reinforce that reverence of the Written Word that nerdy families like us tend to have.

We made Green Eggs and ...  well, sausage.  But that's not the point.

The Girl (wearing her Cat-in-the-Hat hat she made in Kindergarten yesterday) cracks the eggs...

.... and adds the green food coloring to the cream...

.... and beats those eggs.  Beat them!  Beat them!  

... and adds green goo to perfectly respectable eggs.  I can't believe she didn't utterly refuse to eat the final product after having done this.  

... and this.  

And we have Green Eggs!!  Great culinary success it is not, but The Girl was delighted.  

And The Husband's eggs?  In the shape of a tree.  

Green Eggs and Lorax, I guess.  Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss.

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