lmballard's Blog

Signs of Spring
Feb 28, 2012 | 8:16 PM PST

I am not sure if this is a sign of spring or just the result of our mild winter but I have leaves out on my honey-cycle vine. I just planted it last spring so I don't know if it is supposed to leaf out yet but that's what it is doing. We also got about 40-50 taps in our maple trees. We don't have a very big operation doing maple syrup and for the most part we make it the "old fashioned way".  Though we have started to use tubing instead of the buckets in some places. We still use a few buckets but the tubing makes it a bit easier to get the job done. It is a lot of work but quite fun and fortunately for us our friends and family come around to help out. We only do enough for our own usage and so we can share it with friends and family we are not interested in trying to sell it.

The sap ran all last night and from what we hear on the weather reports the next few days should be great weather for making maple syrup. A bit warm in the daytime and below freezing at night. I will post a few photos as I get time to take them. Our operation is quite interesting as our "sugar house" is made of recycled items we call it our "Redneck Sugar Shack". The walls are made up of old refrigerators with the roof made up of old bed springs covered with tarps. An old tank was used to make our stove. I am posting a photo of it. As you can see from the photos we used what we had to make it and it seems to do the job just fine.

 

 

 

Above is our "Redneck Sugar Shack". We use it to boil off our sap into maple syrup. The bus in the photo is one we use for extra storage space.

 

 

This photo shows a couple of our trees with the taps in them. The tub is used to collect the sap.

Cardinal
Feb 25, 2012 | 7:40 PM PST
Tags: bird , cardinal
The photo above is of a Cardinal that visits our bird feeder. He was enjoying the sunshine before it started to snow a bit this morning.

Long time no post
Feb 25, 2012 | 6:51 AM PST

It's been quite a while since I posted to this blog. I am going to try to do better and post more often. This year we haven't had much snow instead we get rain. 

There isn't much going on here though we are getting ready to make maple syrup. We make it on a small scale getting just enough for our family and friends. It will be interesting to see how the syrup comes out with the way this winter has been.

In December I had buds on some of my rose bushes. I really hope that doesn't cause them any harm. I will just have to wait and see what happens. This year has been quite unusual.