Today we planted a kale mix, radish easter egg II and red romaine lettuce seeds in the greenhouse.
A big thing we've been focused on the last few weeks has been maple sugaring. We tapped 2 red maples near the house (we couldn't find any sugar maples nearby), and have been collecting the sap when it's there. We haven't gotten too much, but enough to put on pancakes 3 or 4 times. A generous neighbor gave us about 8 gallons of sugar maple sap this week, which we boiled down over the course of the last few days. It resulted in about 6 cups of syrup. Yum! We'll try not to eat it all in one meal...
Next year we want to get better set up for maple sugaring. We plan to build an outdoor bonfire pit where we can boil the sap down, and get more taps for trees. Boiling it indoors uses a lot of electricity as well as evaporates a huge amount of water into the house. Running the kitchen fan helps, but it gets obnoxious listening to that all day. We took a walk this afternoon through part of our forest, and found at least 4 or 5 maples relatively close by to the house and to each other. Once the trees leaf out, we'll go back out there and try to determine if any are sugar maples, and mark those so we'll know where to go next year to tap. We'll also have to cut a trail to get there and back easily, for collecting sap.
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