This is the year we fill the orchard! The plants have started arriving, and hopefully we will be able to get them in the ground this weekend (not looking good, so it will probably be next weekend)
I’ve also got plums, northern almonds, and northern pecans to plant in the pasture area. We’re excited to see what pecans and almonds that can survive USDA Growing Zone 6 taste like!
We finished our first batch of maple syrup — about 3.25 gallons completed boiling last night and have been bottled and sealed today.
This is the final sap collection for our first run of maple syrup — and a bunch of little fish in the river.
The crocus flowers are starting to pop up around the lawn. White ones
Yellow ones
And even one purple
The hazelnut pollen is starting to appear … should have bright pink flowers shortly!
We’re boiling sap — and Scott learned that the Ohio DMV system calculates expiry dates by “today but change the year”. So … you cannot register a car on Feb 29th since there is no Feb 29th next year. Maybe you could do a four-year registration?
Still collecting sap — the enormous tree by the river was disappointing. No sap from two taps! The big black walnut trees are producing well, but the smaller trees didn’t do anything.
We started collecting our maple sap — somewhere around 80 gallons of sap which will make 2 gallons of syrup. This is the first year we had kitten helpers – they were rather puzzled by the ratchet straps and buckets on the trees, but they enjoyed that we were playing in the woods with them. Even if they couldn’t figure out what our game was.
We’ve got 43 maple trees and two black walnut trees tapped. 18 maples were tapped yesterday in the back woods (plus the one right by the driveway).
The big maple by the river, that I’ve been waiting to tap since we found it … had nothing! Hopefully sap starts flowing there too. The other trees, though, were drip, drip, dripping steadily
Anya and I walked down to the farm by way of the river to get the trail camera card — coming up the western side of the river, I noticed there were bountiful rose hips. We stopped for a bit and picked the juiciest looking ones — not quite a cup, so I guess we’ll have to go out again next weekend.
