It's maple syrup season!

The best thing about this time of year is the promise of sweet things to come. We've got three maples tapped and flowing. As long as the weather cooperates, we should get a good run this year.

Our first run yielded 2 pints of lovely golden syrup--a far cry from the molasses-colored stuff we got last year. I think it was off the charts for syrup grading, maybe Grade C?

Given the price of this lovely treat, the money we spend on propane to produce our sweet treat is well worth it!

 

 

Our garage becomes a sugar shack

Snowed in

 

No roof clearing needed, thanks to the wind.

Yup, it's a blizzard alright. We've got an average of 24 inches, at least knee deep and up to my waist by the garage. I tried to help shovel, but can't do a lot without it hurting. Poor John needed to get to work, and I had to get out to the barn, so we asked our neighbor if we could use his snow blower. He kindly came over and did us before he even had his own drive done. He received a quart of our own maple syrup for saving the day!

I'm sure John will have a dull day waiting for customers who may never get there, but I applaud him for making the effort and showing up. And after all that, he wasn't needed until 1 p.m. So we made a quick trek out to the barn to check on everyone. All wanted to go out, but I think I'm going to wait until the storm subsides more and the wind abates. Swirling snow devils bring out the twisting, snorting dragons lurking in the bodies of our horses! Many of the back roads are still single tracks with mounds of snow in the roadway from plows and snow blowers, in addition to drifts blowing in from fields. We gave the stalls a quick pick, and fed the horses a beet pulp mash to keep them happy until dinner. John and I will head back out when he gets home from work to give them the once over and a thorough stall cleaning. Our farrier is supposed to come tomorrow--hmmm-- I expect to get a message that he is still digging out.

High snow line on the door where we shoveled out

Fall of the Year

2 Cords stacked

I'm finally posting to the blog after a 6 month hiatus of spending all my free time at the barn. There was life BH and now there's life AH--that's life before horses and after horses. My poor yard has been growing a bad case of Maine Yahhd Disease--stuff left lying around all summer, leaves coming down and burying said stuff, and junk I need to deal with--old broken wheelbarrow, dead table saw, cast-off windows that never made it into cold frames. So I vowed today to get some work done on the neglected home front. And since I did get in a morning ride and time with the ponies, I didn't feel guilty about spending the rest of the day working in the yard!

First up was to get the rest of the wood stacked. I've had nearly a cord sitting in the drive, waiting for me to get going on it. Due to my rotator cuff injury, I've been taking it slow and easy on the stacking. But I've been feeling a lot stronger, and decided to flex my muscles today! I even got out the maul and split some of the gigantic pieces. Those still sitting in front of the pile are tough ones I'm leaving for John to take a whack at. At its tallest, that pile is over 6 feet, probably closer to 7, especially near the back. But it was a good sense of accomplishment.

Adirondak Blues and Katahdins

Then I addressed the potatoes. I planted some of last year's leftover Adirondak Blues and Katahdins in one of the raised beds. What a surprise I got when I dug them up today! Not too many in quantity, but check out the size of some of these babies! And the grand winner is this one: a giant Katahdin that weighed in at 1 lb. 12 oz.--that's nearly a meal in itself!

Maple Sugaring season is upon us...

And what better way to do it than out of the back of the pickup! The days are too filled for us to run back and forth from barn to house, not to mention the price of gas! So we lugged all our equipment out to the barn and set up a drip spout to keep the "evaporator" boiling with a steady supply of sap.

While we boiled sap, we burned a pile of scrap fencing and downed limbs, bathed a couple of the horses and swept out the empty loft. After all this was done, we still had enough daylight to get Harley and Rolex Girl out for a short ride. I love these long daylight hours!

Single level living is finally over!

Here's the new roof in the works, complete with the 3 skylights! It will be so much brighter upstairs with all that light coming in. Of course, much work lies ahead--finishing the ceilings, painting, etc.

And here's the rose room with its new ceiling and skylight. You can see how much higher the ceiling  center is by the paint line on the chimney. This room still needs a lot of work. It's the one room I have done nothing to since moving in--hence the yucky color and battleship-grey floor.

I've set up our bed and a little furniture in here until I can get our bedroom finished. Now that it's turning colder, it will be harder to paint and ventilate, but with my handy, dandy new skylights, it's a do-able job! Let the sun shine in...

Camping out in the living room

Well, we moved into the living room back in August, and I must say, it's getting old. With all our belongings packed into the garage, stored in the attic crawlspace, or jammed into the back of the closet, finding warmer clothes has been a chore. I'm hoping we'll be able to get one of the rooms completed in the next two weeks so we can finally move our bedroom back upstairs, and I can unearth my turtle necks and find my winter coat!

The October 30th snowstorm dumped only about 4 inches, but it was enough (combined with the wind) to knock out power. So here we are, still camped out in the living room, but with the trusty wood stove keeping us toasty warm.

I think Callie Lou loves this setup--she gets to sleep on the folded up futon, right by our heads. She thinks it's nice and cozy, and she doesn't have to negotiate the stairs.

Giant fall carrots

Curiosity made me go pull one of the carrots, just to see what we had going on down there, under ground. Once the garlic was harvested, John put more compost on the garden, and voilá. we have a nine inch carrot! There still in the ground, snow covered, waiting for me to pull the remaining crop. Yummy!

Fall potato and squash harvest

This is what they mean by a truck garden!

We've harvested nearly half the potatoes and most of the squash. The apples are really only good for cider or horses--we give them to the latter. Our best squash variety appeared to be the Marina di Chioggia", an heirloom Italian winter squash. I'm not sure if I dug the Katahdins or Kennebecs, but they seemed to have produced a better crop than last year. I've still got the Adirondack blues, a few remaining red potatoes, and whatever else we planted--Sangre de Cristos, I think. I left some of the butternut that weren't quite ready, and one Queensland Blue, still ripening.
YUM!

Squashes galore!

It must be fall

The morning chill was enough for John to dig out a turtleneck and for Callie to snuggle up in his lap for a little snooze. Fall is definitely in the air. It's time to attack the unsplit wood and start stacking! I've got 3 lbs. of green beans to put up, tomatoes to deal with, and a lawn that needs mowing. But first, since we're both on vacation, we need to go for a trail ride!

52 heads of garlic!

That's a clove a week for a year!