Snow, More Snow, Maple Syrup, and My First Radio

It has been busy here.  My seeds started at the last new moon are ready to be potted up and put on the new seed starting stand I built (see a couple of posts ago). I'll be starting more seeds shortly to take their place.  By now I normally would be planting directly in the garden boxes, but we are still getting plenty of snow -- 3" here and another 3" there, seemingly neverendingly -- and my gardens are all buried.  My fruit trees arrived early and I was able to heel them into the ground during the last warm spell (thank you, St. Lawrence Nursery!), and while the hot and dry spring I expected has not materialized, I do think that when the warm weather does show up it will come suddenly.  Thank goodness for muck boots!

The rocket stove I built for boiling down the maple sap was not getting hot enough to boil the sap down quickly, and I didn't have the time to mess around with it, so I reverted to my old standby set-up:

Filling my big pots with sap and burying them in the snow works out great. The sap freezes overnight and in the mornings I lift out the ice that has formed.  Then I boil down the remaining sap which cooks down quicker because there is now less water in the sap. As each pan boils down to 1/3, I pour it into another pot (the one sitting on the bricks) and take that into the house to finish boiling down on the stove after we eat supper.  This isn't my preferred way to boil down sap, but until I can get a decent "sugar shack" built, it will have to do. Working without a sugar shack puts me at the mercy of the weather; if it is too windy I won't start a fire, and I can't boil sap if it is raining or snowing too heavily.  So, it takes a while to get the work done, but it is worth it.

Believe me, it takes a lot of work to get this gallon of syrup.

The good news is that today the temperature is up and the sap is really running now.  I hope to net us at least another gallon. Hopefully I can keep up with the sap.

Earlier this month there was a ham "super fest" at the AES store down in Milwaukee.  Since I hate driving in Milwaukee, I decided to participate in the fest with a phone call.  So, I finally bought my ham radio! It is a Yaesu FT-857D.  I bought a Bencher Morse key, a Comet UHV-4 antenna, and a 45 amp switching power supply.  So far I have been able to figure out how to set up the CW (Morse Code) training and practice features, but that's about it.  I am still trying to figure out how to just tune the radio so I can  listen to how other hams operate on the 2 meter band.  I think I need to read a book about basic electronics.  Maybe then the radio wouldn't seem so complicated.  I am afraid I'm going to accidentally fry it from my own stupidity.  In the meantime, I keep studying.  

Well, time is short and there is much to get done around here, so I'll let you go.  Take care!

Another Week

For years when the kids were small I used to buy them gold foil wrapped chocolate coins for St. Patrick's Day.  Then, after we moved to Wisconsin I was unable to find any chocolate coins at the store -- until this year.   Lara had been lamenting that the Leprechauns hadn't brought her any gold for a long time.  I told her that maybe our territorial gnome that lives in the chicken coop ran the Leprechauns off whenever they tried to come, but that we would try to entice one to sneak past the gnome.  So, we made some Irish Soda bread. We thought he might like it better if we gave him some gold, too, so we added golden raisins to the dough.  Our ploy worked and Lara (and Ed) were very happy to eat their Leprechaun gold!

Tom was at the butcher in Phillips this week replenishing his kishka stash (I hate stinky blood sausage and refuse to cook it) and while he was gabbing with the butcher, somehow the conversation turned to lard.  Now I had just been griping that when I went to the grocery store there wasn't any lard anywhere to be found.  Tom mentioned this to the butcher who asked if Tom would like some pork fat.  He said that when most people buy an animal for their freezer, they don't want the fat because it has to be rendered.  So Tom bought home a garbage bag full of ground up pork fat for me. 

If anyone tells you that you can render fat inside your house and it won't smell, don't believe them.  Have some scented candles on hand to light after you are done rendering.

Anyway, rendering pork fat into lard is really easy.  This is how I did it:

First I pulled out my little roaster.  It's a bit bigger than my crock pot and you can control the temperature, which is great.  I set the temperature on 250°F.  Then I put a cup of water in the bottom of the roasting pan and added some of the pork fat till the pan was about 2/3 filled.  The water gets hot and starts the fat melting without burning it on the bottom of the pan.  After a while the water evaporates and the fat melts leaving little browned pieces of meat or cartilage.

Strain out the browned bits and ladle the hot lard into clean, dry and hot canning jars.  Cover the jars quickly with heated lids and bands and the jars will self-seal.  Each batch took about 2 hours, and after the better part of one day I bottled 8 beautiful quarts of lard.  (The chickens got the browned bits.) See how the lard turns a beautiful white as it cools.

It was really fun doing this and I'm glad to have learned another skill!

Till next time, be safe and well!

Back to Work

Well, we've had around another foot of snow here since I last posted.  We had 6" one night, then 4" another night, and about 3" last night.  I've shoveled out my various snow paths twice.  It has also gotten colder and the trees appear to have frozen back up because the temperatures have not been getting high enough during the day to get the sap running.  I spoke with a friend of mine who makes maple syrup to sell at the farmers market every year, and she told me that her husband had only just tapped their maple trees so I think I tapped mine a bit early.  I also mentioned that I built a rocket stove to boil my sap down this year, but I forgot that many of you may not know what a rocket stove is so here is a link to how to build a basic rocket stove.  I like this video because it is simple and clearly understandable. There is much more information available on You Tube about building variations of rocket stoves for different applications.  I think I am going to build another one using smaller bricks to heat the greenhouse.  permies.com is a great site to give you some ideas. 

Lara and I went to the farmers market meeting for the Park Falls farmers market this past Wednesday.  It was great to see our vendor friends from the Phillips market and meet new ones.  This market has a lot more financial backing than our Phillips market.  I expect it will out grow its current location in the small park across from the Marshfield Clinic before too long.  There are several established farm business vendors, and that is really great for a market because you need those kinds of marketers to bring a regular supply of produce to a market.  Then there are small producers like Lara and I who just want to sell their extras.  Everyone gives food to the local food pantry, too, which is wonderful.  I found out at the meeting that our market area is considered a food desert.  The percentage of the population receiving food stamps is awful.  Here are some statistics for Price, Ashland, and Iron Counties. (Scroll down to find the counties).  (I believe this data is several years old but I couldn't find anything more recent so current figures are probably higher.)  Anyway, the first market day will be Wednesday, June 5th, from 2:00 p.m. to around 5:00 p.m., or so.  This year the market will experiment having a Saturday market on a few Saturdays to collect data on whether customers would be interested in going to a regular Saturday market.   That, of course, bothers me because the Phillips market is on Saturday mornings, and I am committed to the Phillips market. 

I went to the Builders Supply as I said I would and ta-da! --

one new Spring seed starting shelf unit strong enough to store winter squash on in the fall.  The unit took  6-2"x4"x 6's, 12-2"x6"x6's, and a bunch of good wood screws to build. (I already had the lights.)  Cost was just under $100.  Best of all, the only pieces I had to cut were the cross supports for the shelves so the whole unit took me just a couple of hours to put together. It's also not too heavy for me to move by myself if I had to move it.  Shelves are 20" deep.

I'm still studying for my General level ham license and learn Morse code, and still am trying to decide what kind of radio I want to buy.  What fun!

Talk to you soon.  Take care!