Spring Projects

Maple syrup season is slowly getting started here on the homestead.We tapped about 75 trees Friday. Saturday it rained and last night and today we received about 8 inches of snow. Of course we started tapping close to the cabin and we use our buckets close so we don't have as far to move them. The down side of that is that they are now all full of snow and rain so we will have to dump them all tomorrow if it is done snowing. Then I will go and repack the trails I have stumped down over the last week with my snow shoes. Hopefully we will get the warmer weather they were predicting. I have at least 40 more buckets to use and 100 sap bags. A lot of the trees I will be using the sap bags on are larger trees and they will get two taps each. Then I use a plastic line tap and a section of tubing to run both taps into one bag.  A few of the trees I tapped Friday ran a bit so it looks like things should take off if it warms up a little.

Our garden seed orders have arrived so I will have to get busy in the green house soon also. This year we ordered all of our seeds from Johnny's Select Seeds and from The Seed Savers Exchange .Everything arrived as ordered so we are all set. We are trying quite a few new species this year such as a artichoke which can be grown as a annual and bulb fennel. I like to have different things at market along with the foraged wild foods that we offer.