Is it spring yet? Indiana seems to be confused. It’s been a long and whiney week, here. I think the kids are all annoyed by the cold, soggy weather. Little snippets of spring weather have us all the more disgruntled with the cold!
Our taps have been in for quite some time now. I had thought we were too early with our tapping, but looking at the forecast, I think we were right on. The sap froze the last few days and hasn’t been running, but it’s given me time to deal with what we already had. I have a scant 2 quarts of syrup and almost 15 gallons of sap yet to boil.
Speaking of frozen sap! Over night, some of the sap in the buckets froze. I didn’t have solid blocks, but just frozen sides and the top. It turns out that freezing is an age-old method of condensing the sugars in the sap. I scooped out the ice and was left with a sap that has a higher concentration of sugars that before. This is great, because it makes that painfully slow process of boiling go a little more quickly.
I’ve turned my camera to “manual” and plan to keep it there as a means of forcing myself to learn how to use it. It’s slow going! Bear with me through the awful pictures and shower me with suggestions for improvement! This little lemon tree blossom (of which I took roughly 10 zillion pictures…this is the best. Ugh) smells delightful. People had told me that the smell was amazing, but I was still stunned! Maybe it will cover up the stinky boy-shoe smell in my sunroom? A mama can dream!
Seeds!! So. Many. Seeds! I plotted out my garden and organized my seeds yesterday. I’m not sure why I have 7 varieties of pepper, but I do! I ordered a ton of seeds from Seeds Now!, which I’ve ordered from in the past and been happy. And their prices are great! We are majorly overhauling our garden this year, so I’m hopeful for success. I need to start those seedlings soon. I also ordered a bunch of flowers from Baker’s Heirloom Seed Co. Our flower garden is the one garden that has consistently been successful!
These ladies are starting to lay again. We’ve seen a slow uptick in production. It’s the time of year when sweet little chicks start to show up in the farm stores, so I’m holding my breath until Andrew starts bringing them home. He goes in for pine shavings and comes out with a dozen ducklings and chicks. Ducklings! Hopefully we will have some around here soon.
IS IT SPRING YET??
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