Our animals did a good job of disillusioning us of the thought that we were falling into a good rhythm around here. We’d past the point of getting the hang of it, now we were starting to think we might even be (dare I say it) experienced! Yeah, maybe not. Animals can be humbling like that. Pepper is on a milk stand strike. What is a milk stand strike? Why, it’s where a goat refuses to get up on the…
Okay! We started recently with how to tap maple trees and collect sap; now we’re going over burning off. Sap is almost entirely water, so we use the burning off process to evaporate the water and leave behind the sugar syrup. This is something you want to do outside, as it takes something like 30-40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. If you’re doing the math with me that’s a lot of water being released into the…
One of the statements that we often hear is a marveled “I don’t know HOW you do it, I could never do that!” The fact of the matter is that most of what we do is not hard. Indeed, most of it is pretty easy. Tapping maple trees is probably the easiest of those things; I think more people should do it it’s so simple. Though we’re in the throes of winter and only just finished a brutal polar vortex,…
No ‘big’ things on the homestead, but there have been plenty of ‘little’ things to keep us busy as of late. January isn’t much a month for ‘doing,’ but it is a great month for dreaming, planning and organizing. It might be the dead of winter, but kidding season has already started for those who breed their does early in the season. This would not be us; we have a solid 2 months before we have to even think about…
Ten years…. TEN! In some ways it seems like it’s only been a short while – in others it feels like it was never any different. I don’t know that either of us saw where we would end up after 10 years. A large family, a big old yellow farmhouse and a couple of chickens …. that was the dream picture. I don’t suppose we’re far off the mark, but boy was there a lot in there amongst all! 4…