Most of the tomatoes have sprouted, and two types of peppers. Peppers seem to take a long time to sprout! I’ve also got an arctic kiwi leafing out beautifully and several grape vines that are starting to sprout leaves.
Category: Homesteading
2023 Hazelnut Flowers
The bright pink bits are starting to emerge from our hazelnuts — hopefully we have bunches of nuts this year!
River Walk
We took an hour to check all the maple buckets before the sap run starts again — and paused to walk in the river, find cool rocks, and try skipping rocks.
2023 Garden — Seed Starting
We got some seeds started this evening — a lot of peppers, tomatoes, and a few other plants. There are a bunch of other peppers to get going, ground cherries, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. And, once we can start planting outside, corn, beans, peas, and all sorts of stuff for birds.
But here’s what I’ve got planted so far:
Hungarian peppers, Guadillo pepper, Pasilla pepper
Aji Lemon Drop pepper, Peri-Peri pepper, Sugar Rush Peach pepper
Black Strawberry Cherry Tomato, Brandywine Tomato, Trophy Tomato,
Rhubarb, Sugar Baby Bush Watermelon, Mary Washington Asparagus
Another Barn Cat – Fritter
Anya caught one of the other kittens from Ash’s litter — an orange and white cat. He’s scared and not so sure about us, but he is warm and snuggled into a blanket.
Kitten Snuggles
Ash is about six moons old now … and we still have lots of kitten snuggles!
Dirt!
I took the cart for a walk and dug up some of the really rich dirt from the forest floor … this will be our seed starting soil for the year.
Maple log — finishing boil
We used our DigiBoil 65L 240V pot to finish the sap since it’s quick to remove from the heat once the syrup is ready (and it’s got a spigot that makes emptying the pot easier). This also gave us a good picture of how long the DigiBoil is going to take to boil wort when we’re making beer. Yesterday, with temps in the upper 30’s, it took about 1h50m (basically two hours) to boil 10 gallons of concentrated sap. Today, with temps in the upper 40’s, it took about 50 minutes to boil 7 gallons of concentrated sap.
Sunday 05 March 2023
15:44 59F
16:40 167F
17:17 203F
17:34 208F and rapidly boiling
1h50m to boil.
Flamed out just after midnight
Monday 06 March 2023
09:43AM – 68F turned on 500W
09:50AM – Turned on 2nd switch
09:56AM – 111F – turned on 3rd switch
10:32AM – 7 gallons is now boiling
About 50 minutes to boil.
Maple flame out at 2:34PM
Bottled, we have 3.5 gallons of maple syrup from our first run
Mid-Season Maple Collection Status
So far, we’ve collected about 121 gallons of maple sap. We started boiling the sap on the 23rd using our new maple evaporator.
Maple Sap Collection Log
| Date | Location | Quantity |
| 2/14/2023 | All trees except river | 60 |
| 2/18/2023 | All trees except river | 20 |
| 2/23/2023 | All trees except river | 15 |
| 2/25/2023 | River | 6 |
| 2/26/2023 | Back woods and front yard | 12 |
| 2/26/2023 | Top of Driveway – east and west | 8 |
Gathering sap … and moss!
We spent some time clearing a path to the maple trees — not wading through privet makes collecting sap a lot easier! Anya found some moss she really liked, and she wants to propagate it in a moist, shady spot by the house.
