Mid-June and tomorrow's a full moon?!

I didn't know what I should title this post, so I thought I would make up a rhyme. Maybe it's a little lame, but sometimes I can be a little lame too ;o)

The view from the back yard by our garden

I am totally finished with my Rocky Mountain Jaywalkers. I've also started another pair of socks with my Lorna's Laces Grumperina sock yarn, finished one and am turning the heal on the other. (No pictures of those yet because I am a bad person that doesn't always take pictures when she should).

I like them a lot, but sadly when I put them through the wash their color faded a bit. Admittedly, I had thought the colors were a little too bright when I first started them way back before I really had figured out how to knit socks, but as I was working on them I really grew to like the play of the colors and their crisp color. I should take an after picture to show you the difference I suppose, but I don't ever get around to such things.

We have been having a lot of fun playing with baby kittens lately. I got them a bunch of milk replacer to boost the amount of food they are getting from their mother though. She is a wild cat (well, she is also a wilde cat, but that is just a special breed of kitty that comes from our farm), so she doesn't like spend as much time with her kittens because we might come around and want to pet them. Usually, our mother cats have been the friendly sort and like to get petted and payed attention to just as much as their babies, so they are always hanging around and the kittens get well fed.

Sadly, on Sunday night a raccoon came into the barn and reeked havoc in our cat's food area and killed one of our little babies. We occasionally have visitors in the barn that enjoy eating the dog and cat food and if they cause real problems we end up having to deal with them, but normally we let things be as long as real problems aren't caused. (like the time we had about 4 or 5 skunks coming into the barn every night to eat the dog food--yucky) I have to tell you though when I found out about the creature that came into the barn on Sunday night and killed one of our precious little kittens, there was not a smidge of regret when we got out the 410. We weren't able to catch it yesterday morning, so I spent the day with the kittens in the house feeding them milk replacer every couple of hours and wiping their little milky mouths and feet. (let's just say, the kitchen floor needs a good washing after those little milky paws went wondering around until I could get a washcloth on them) Last night we went into the barn to set our live trap, but noticed that things were knocked over in the cat food area once again. Dan went up into the haymow and saw it scurrying down into the wall and we were able to get rid of it right them and there. I am not a fan of killing creatures just because they come onto the property (some people around here will do that), but once an animal figures out that it can get a meal at the expense of a little defenseless baby, it will continue to do so and that is when we have to defend those little lives.

Montana's is right in front and Dakota's in the background

Thankfully we have a couple of dogs around our house that scare off most of the critters and really when we do have a raccoon, skunk, or possom coming around it causes me to worry that they aren't in their right mind and may have rabies-otherwise they would have stayed away.

Ummm . . . we also are in the process of putting a new pump in our well and getting it piped into the house. We used to just use an electric motor that pumped water into a cistern that then was pumped into the house, but because cisterns aren't allowed anymore really for people's drinking water, we had to replace it with a new system (not a new well (its been going strong for many, many years-our area has a lot of water underground), but a new pumping system) It is actually sad to see our old pump go. We would plug it in and it would use the old fashioned pumping stuff that could be attached to our windmill. We had actually been hoping to someday fix the shaft that had been broken many years ago, so that we could just use the windmill for our pumping our water again--but we still would have had to have used the cistern and that can't be ;o(

And that is most of what we've been up to lately-oh, and this coming Friday I am going to be singing and playing guitar/piano in the evening at the Mushroom building in my town (if you aren't from here you might not understand, but we have this building that was built here in the 30's that is shaped like a mushroom and used to be a gas station way back when they just had a little building that the service people would wait in during the day. It was donated to the city a few years back and they made the it into a little spot where we have live music on Friday nights in the summer and the historical society sells ice cream cones, popcorn, and lemonade for fundraising). Wish me luck!

A couple weeks ago an old friend of mine played her harp!

What have I been doin' lately?

Hey there all. I thought I would let you know what I have been doing lately. We have had a busy couple of weeks (umm . . . not like too busy to go on the computer or anything, but busy enough that we have done some interesting and different things) and I even have pictures to prove it!

Our first tulip bloomed this morning (Last year they were blooming in April and usually they bloom more around the first of May). It's leaves got a little frostbitten a couple of weeks ago when we had snow, so it has some brown edges.

We also had some little babies born about a week and a half ago at our place.

They are located in a little nest in the wall of our barn. Their mother is not the friendly sort, so we have to wait until she leaves in order to go over and pick them out of their nest to pet them. There are two totally gray kittens, one gray tabby, one totally black kitten, and one black tabby. They are very precious little babies and we hope they will be friendly little babes and that their mother won't hide them away somewhere else. Last year their mother (or Scared Little Kitty, as we call her) had three kittens, but by the time we knew they were born they were at least a month old, hissed, spat, and scratched. They did not want to be caught, so we were vigilant this year in making sure we found kittens right away!

Last week Dan took the week off and he hauled scrap metal off to the scrap yard. We ended up bringing in about 17,000 lbs of metal. I went with him several times to watch the metal get unloaded and the last time we went down, I got the idea that this would be something cool to get pictures of, so here are a couple of neat ones.

Here are a bunch of old tractor parts that we were parked next to as we waited in line to drop off our trailer of metal. Note the bird in the little tree on the right.

Now, when it was time for our trailer to get unloaded the big grappler came down and picked the metal off the trailer.

Here it is taking off some old chicken nesting boxes that had seen better days. (Did I ever tell you that when I was little we had laying hens? My mom used to supply one of the local restaurants with eggs as well as bring them in to sell at a couple of the small factories here in town. I only vaguely remember her doing this, so I think she stopped selling eggs when I was 2 or 3)

Lastly, knitting has been taking place.
These jaywalkers are almost done. I called them my Rocky Mountain Jaywalkers because I started to make them a couple of years ago (long before my pink knee highs) when Dan and I went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park and the way they were turning out looking a lot the mountains in Summer.

Well, have a great day all!

May Day!

Happy May Day everyone!

This is always one of my favorite days because it usually means the wild flowers are blooming and beautiful, but not so much this year. Last year I had already gone out and taken some pictures of the local flowers and the tulips were in full bloom in my yard. This year the tulip greens are up and I am just starting to see the fist buds coming up out of the ground.

Still, they will be here soon, so even though 30's and 40's are on tap for this weekend, Spring is here and it is time to be out and enjoying the weather (possibilities of snow and all). Since I don't have any pretty spring flowers to show the pictures you are seeing are of the maple sugar I made last weekend from my last batch of maple syrup.


You make maple sugar by getting maple syrup up to 240 degrees and then you whisk it until it starts to cool a bit and you can kind of see that there are granules forming. (it should still be liquid-ish and not too stiff) Then you pour it into forms and after it all cools down you pop it out of the forms. It took me a bit to figure what way to get the sugar out of the forms. I used some old cast iron heart forms and even though they were well seasoned the first sugar I made didn't want to come out of those pans. I ended up heating up the pans in the oven to soften the sugar so I could redo the whole process and sprayed Pam into each of the little forms. It still took a fair amount of cajoling to get them out, so I think I will get a whole bunch of little cookie cutters of the same shape and use them next year. (if you want to make candy or stuff like that you should really think of getting a candy thermometer--although, because I am a lazy person I ran into my parents' apartment and took their thermometer from the kitchen drawer--their apartment is right next to the gallery and it is soooo much closer than the grocery store (a block away)). ****Make sure to keep a steady eye on the syrup and that you put it into a pan that looks like it is too big for the amount of syrup you are putting in there because the syrup can boil up and over the sides pretty quick even if you do keep a good eye on it.****


Maple sugar is kind of a hard packed sugar sort of like brown sugar. To granulate it you could take a piece of the packed sugar and break it up. It is kind of hard to explain exactly what it is like if you have never seen anything like it before. I would suggest reading about sugaring and stuff like that in Little House is the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and you might understand the whole process a little better. It seems whenever I think back on how to make old fashioned things, I think of what Laura Ingalls did as a little girl and it all makes sense to me.

Maple Syrup Making

Here is the long awaited showing of the making of maple syrup from beginning to end.
(or close to the beginning-I suppose I could have gotten pictures of Dan and I walking around and tapping the trees and sterilizing all of our equipment, but I can't go back in time)

As the bags on the trees start to fill up we go collect the sap. Some days there is almost nothing in the bags and other days the bags have to be collected twice. It just depends on how the sap is running that day.

We bring the collected sap to a lean to that is next to our shop where we put it in big blue barrels until we are ready to start boiling down a batch. The stove you see was the stove in our house when I was growing up. When Dan and I got married we bought one of those glass top stoves and this one was put outside just for the purpose of boiling down sap. I have also made supper on it on occasion when the power has been out as it is a gas stove and I can used a match to light the burners.

Here is the sap in the barrel. You can see that it looks just like water. Sap is essentially sugar water and as you boil it down the water evaporates and eventually it gets to become syrup.

This is the sap boiling down. The white line that goes across the top of the pan is where the level of the sap started. We start out by putting about 15 gallons of sap in the pan and keep adding sap as it boils down until we have put in about 40 gallons of sap and have boiled it all down until there is about an inch of liquid left in the pan.

Then we strain it while it is still boiling hot through two kinds of straining material. It goes into a smaller stock pot that we will bring into the house to finish off the syrup.

This is the syrup when it is nearly ready. We bring it back up to the boiling point and start to can it when a hydrometer floats at just the right level.

I wash all the jars and then put them in an inch of hot water in a 200 degree oven to keep them sterilized while the syrup is boiling.

I also put the jar lids into water and keep them in boiling water while we wait for the syrup to be ready. (I realize that the water isn't boiling at this point, but it did start boiling not too long after I took this picture--I had to keep my focus on making sure the syrup didn't boil over onto my nice stove.)

We pour the syrup into jars, put on the lids, and screw on the twisty part of the lids. Then we wait to hear them seal. The lids make a popping noise as they seal just like the popping noise that is made when you open up an airtight jar. Normally when you can you have to put things into a canner for 20-30 minutes, but because we keep everything sterilized and the sap is boiling when you can it (as well as the whole sugar content on the syrup) the jars seal up and are well sterilized.

All of our syrup this year has been a lovely amber color. Sometimes it can be much darker. Darkness in color can be attributed to lots of different factors. Sometimes it bets darker because of the sugars getting burnt during the cooking process, but some years the sap is also less clear because of weather stuff that I don't fully understand.

Hope you enjoyed looking at all the pictures and learning about how maple syrup is made. When you go to the store and look at the prices of maple syrup as compared to that other syrup stuff you will probably understand why there is such a difference. (Of course real maple syrup tastes tons better than the fake stuff, too. I have been blessed to have only rarely have to taste the other stuff. My parents started making maple syrup when they first moved out to our place and now Dan and I are carrying on the tradition and even making enough that we will be able to sell a couple jars at either the local farmer's market or the gallery)

Earthquake

Nin isn't the only one to experience an earthquake. My brother in Iowa has now felt one, too. Although, I imagine it wasn't too rough.



He sounds really sleepy in this video--if you look at the time on the news cast, I can tell you I was not awake yet (well, I had briefly been awake, but had already fallen asleep--who knows maybe I woke up because I felt the earthquake, but probably not).

I Won Something!

I am doing my income taxes today, but I just took a quick break to look at blogs (okay, this was an early break--the only thing i have done with the taxes today is just gather all of our receipts and info--Now, I actually have to log onto TurboTax and get started) and guess what----

This is sooooooooooo exciting!

I just won two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Grumperina colorway!!!!! I love Grumperina. In fact I am working on a second pair of Jaywalkers at this very moment (well not this very moment, but I brought them with me into town today and they are currently in my purse--I may need a study break). Of course, I will make sure to put a little scowl on my face as I knit the socks in honor of Grumperina, even though I have to say I am just so excited--hmmm, I have said excited a bunch of times in this post.

Anyone who has been watching her blog recently will have seen this very interesting way that she is putting together some striping socks (read the following entires as well-including how to do the heels--so cool!) with four colors of yarn. I look forward to doing that someday as well (although this colorway is of the self-striping variety)

Anyway--on with my exciting day of figuring out our taxes.

(By the way--I have taken pictures of the entire process of making maple syrup now, so expect a post on that very soon--I got some fun pictures!)

April, Maples, and something new

I made it home safe and sound the other night even though the road
was a bit mushy and now the snow is starting to melt again.

I thought you guys might to see part of our maple syrup operation
(I make it sound like some big thing, but it isn't really--it's just boiling the sap from the maple trees down until it makes syrup) To start I will show you a picture of two of our big maple trees out front with the sap bags on them.


These trees could have as many as three bags on them. We only have 20 taps and a fair amount of trees that produce, so we weren't able to tap quite as much as we could have. Next year, we will probably double what we have.

We were able to finish up one small batch of maple syrup on Sunday. We got about 5 1/2 quarts of syrup out of 45-50 gallons of sap (sap has to boil down a long time to get to the syrup stage).

This is one of our jars. This year the color is about the prettiest that it can get. Usually the syrup get darker than this.

This is just another picture of that jar, but I just liked the look of it so much I had to try a couple of different shots!

I'll go home and get some more pictures of the process tonight and in the next few days.

Now, for an addition to the story of my going in the ditch on Good Friday.

The reason I might not have been paying attention to the road as well as I should have (hey, I could have about a million of these excuses) was that as soon as I got home Dan and I were to go over to the home of one of his co-workers to look at a stray 9 month old puppy that had come to their place. We have been wanting to get a yellow lab-ish puppy for a while and this winter we had to put down our old Dalmatian, Bombero.

(Poor old bombaroo was 14 1/2 and his poor arthritic legs were getting to be too painful to walk with--he finally came to the point where he wasn't happy to see us anymore and couldn't get up--we will miss him. He was my mom's dog and we got him when I was 14. Dan and I inherited him when we bought my parent's place because he would not have enjoyed moving into the apartment in town)

They had this little yellow girl that had shown up at their place and had been hanging out for over a week, so we went to check her out. She is a cutie pie and our black lab-german shepherd-whoknowswhatelse, Dakota, just loves her. They play a lot and get into trouble as well.
Soooo, this is Montana our new teenage puppy. She enjoys finding dead and decaying animals, catching voles, belly rubs, and rolling in the snow. We are teaching her to stay home and not go up on the road--She already is limping from some kind of a mishap--(when you have 40 acres to run on putting a dog in a kennel just is not the right thing to do (Bombero was never in a kennel and lived to be 14 1/2--that is about the longest dalmatians live-he outlived all of his siblings by several years--One of our other dogs (a little mutt we named Pab) lived to be 16-something about that freedom must be good for a dog).

One last picture from the camera because it just turned out so nice ;o)

Sugar Snow

Well, March is about gone here and it is snowing a wet and sloppy snow. I think this would be called a sugar snow, but then again it has snowed several times in the last few weeks and each time I have wondered if that was a sugar snow. Maybe this will be the real one. (It would be fun if it was. We have been collecting sap from our trees this year and the sap has been really slow so far)

It seems that I don't ever get over here often enough to tell you what I'm doing, so let me fill you in on a few things to catch up today with a few pictures and a little story.

More Banners that I made

On Good Friday it snowed all day long and continued on through Easter Weekend. We had to decorate the church for Easter breakfast on Friday afternoon, so I did a good bit of driving in my Tahoe and was feeling pretty good about the roads and my truck being able to handle them.

As always, pride goes before a fall, so I hopped into my truck and headed home on the road that I have been driving since I could drive and walking on since I could walk. On the way up the big hill that leads out of town (which is nicely steep--I usually have to get off my bike about 2/3's the way up or so because my legs can't handle it (that might not be saying much-I mean we don't exactly live in the mountains, but the road is gravel and when it is loose or wet or thick my weak legs have a tough time)) my tires decided that they had dealt with too much snow and lost their traction. Soooo, I headed off the road down a steep embankment into a very muddy, snowy plowed field. I just missed the power pole and thankfully I had gotten the truck to head straight down the embankment rather than sideways because that could have been a very bad rollover. Now, this field is at the bottom of a hill and the only way out is to go up, but I was able to get my truck turn around and headed up the hill, but not to steady ground. A neighbor was passing by, so she brought me home.

Later on that night (when the ground got a little more frozen) Dan got out our old Farmall 350 and we went to retrieve my truck. We had just enough tow rope and chains to reach down to where my truck sat from the solid grounded hay field that is above the plowed field and as Dan drove the tractor I was in the Tahoe pushing on the gas. I will tell you that was even scarier than going down in the ditch. My tires still had no traction (even in four wheel drive) because all the crevasses were filled with frozen mud and snow. Even when we got up to the road my truck wouldn't make it up the hill (plus I was pretty freaked out from the wild ride I had behind the tractor-let's just say my truck was sliding around for a good 50 feet or more before we were actually up on the road again), so Dan pulled my truck the rest of the way home. Needless to say, I didn't drive the rest of the weekend and the only reason I drove the rest of the week was because I had to. Although I think I have recovered by now. And--let me tell you Dan won't be playing any little hijinks behind the wheel of his truck for a while because I nearly started to hyperventilate when he slid a little on the road on our way to church on Easter.

I wish I had some pictures to show you of my adventure, but I was far too embarrassed to get any. Of course, the guy who plows our road goes to my church and saw my truck way down in the field on his way past and made sure to let my pastor and his wife and who knows who else all about it. I have only gone into the ditch or gotten stuck in a snowbank 4 times in my life and he has been around to see half of them (once I was stuck in the snow at a corner on our road that is notorious for filling in during high wind and heavy snow--he pulled me out). Actually, I think he is also the person who pulled us out of the ditch one muddy spring when my mom rolled our old Volkswagon van.

Anyway, all that being said here are a couple of pictures of something I finished lately.

A brightly colored hat for Dan's cousin who is going through chemo.

Now, I will be on my way home in the slush and muck that is my road. Don't get me wrong I love the slush and muck--I love country roads--I love living on a road that doesn't get plowed right away--I even love it all the more because it puts me in my place sometimes and tells me I am a bit of a wimp that can't handle everything that gets put in front of me--I need that reminder. All the same, I am hoping that I make it home without incident today. I don't think I need that much of a reminder! ;o)

Good Friday

In honor of Good Friday I just wanted to post a couple of
banners that I just made for my church.

Minnesota in February (and finished JYWKRS!)

This past Sunday was a beautiful day in the mid and upper thirties and the sun radiating on the south side of our house was so warm that Dan and I sat alongside it for part of the afternoon.


It was a respite from the cold temps we've been having and made even Dan (who loves winter to its fullest) hopeful for Spring.

Of course, it being February in Minnesota, the temps swing from one day to another (sometimes as much as 40 degrees--although, that was a couple of weeks ago--now the temperatures swing only about half that). Today we have a light snow falling with a bit of a chilly breeze.


The snow will soon stop (Central MN has been quite cold this winter, but most of the has snow fallen far South or Northeast of us) and we will have a small coating of white to pretty up the muddy fields and sidewalks. Maybe there will be a big snowstorm in March that will force people to stay home because the roads are blocked, but soon winter will be over and it will be time to plant the garden. (before that, though, we will be making maple syrup--it is the perfect time of year for that right now!)


I think I will think of this pretty picture when the heat and humidity of July get to be too much.

It is also the perfect time of year for these socks. They are finally finished. This isn't the greatest of photos, but I wanted to give you at least one picture of them right now.


The camera battery died just after I took this photo and the digital camera is going on vacation to Washington D.C. tomorrow. There will not be time for a proper photo shoot before it has to get on the airplane.

Finally, here is a precious picture of the Barney's face. He looked so cute Sunday afternoon wondering outside that I had to take a picture-or two-or actually a couple more after that (if it hadn't been necessary to take these photos on Sunday-there may have been enough battery life left to get more pictures of the jaywalkers, but I digress). This is the best one.

(his face is so cute and angelic that you would never believe him possible of peeing on the red chair in the background of the previous picture, would you?)

My writing in this post sounds so formal--I guess I've been watching too much Jane Austen.

Valentines Pie and other such stuff

Here are a couple of those promised pictures of the Mile High Strawberry pie (it was quite good even though the crust slouched to he bottom of the pan)

My present from Dan
They are still alive and well on our kitchen table!!!

Lastly--some gifts of knitting
I gave Dan the neckwarmer on the left a couple of years ago for either his birthday or Valentines day (can't remember which just now) and he loves it, so I thought I would make another one for myself. They are great for skiing and for those cold days when you don't want your face to touch the air outside.

I wore mine last night while fetching in wood to heat the house and Dan just laughed because he could barely see my eyes between it and the hat I was wearing.

Oh, and just 'cuz I mentioned heating with wood I will tack on a picture of our old wood furnace

It is about the same age as me since my parents put the basement under our house and changed to wood heat the year after I was born--(wait did I just call myself old? I am not old---maybe old-fashioned, but if I start calling myself old at 28 there won't be words enough to describe my age at 93)