Maple Sugaring at Chiot’s Run
Yesterday Mr Chiots and I tapped 12 of our maple trees here at Chiot’s Run. I have always wanted to do it but I thought you could only tap sugar maples, but Saturday I found out this was not the case.
I ran to Lehman’s Hardware in Kidron, OH and bought some spiles to tap our trees. Then we spent a half hour tapping our maple trees yesterday.
One tree started running sap as soon as we tapped it, it was very exciting. We hung the jar under it and it produced almost a pint of sap in 2 hours before it got cold.
It’s a bit late in the year for us to be tapping, the season started a few weeks ago, but we still have a week or two of sap weather coming. We won’t get much syrup since it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. If I get enough for one pancake breakfast I’ll be happy.
This is such a great way to learn new things. I would never just sit down and learn about maple trees, but we had a great time looking in our tree book and finding out how to identify maple trees in the winter by their bark. It’s a good thing I already knew which trees on our property were maples, since identifying trees in the winter without being able to see the buds is a bit of a challenge. We learned a lot and we’re looking forward to the sweet reward!
Anyone else tapping their maple trees? Do you buy local maple syrup?
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A Spot of Tea
It’s always fun to go to my mom’s house when she’s babysitting the grandkids and hang out with my nieces & nephew. Yesterday I spent the day enjoying a spot of tea with my nieces.
I took a little tea set over for them as a gift and of course we had to use it right away. They got all dressed up and we enjoyed tea with cream, tea cakes (tiny peanut butter & jelly sandwiches), and mini oreos.
It really is fun enjoying the little things with kids. They were so excited that they got to pour their own tea and use cream in it.
Don’t forget about our Dress Up 2 Cure event. Check out all the people that have already uploaded photos to our Flickr group.
So get your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, pets, vegetables, or anyone dressed and if you need an excuse have a tea party. Dress up, send me a photo and I’ll donate $10 in your name to help little girls with Rett Syndrome.
Did you do anything fun yesterday?
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Liberating More Lawn
“But each spring…a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.” — Lewis Gantt
With the coming of spring I’m planning out my gardens and inevitably I don’t have space to grow everything I want to grow. So I keep eying different areas of my yard wondering what I could convert to growing space. I’m considering bringing the lawn in from the edges of the property in the front yard by 4-5 feet on each side, that would give me a good 500-600 sq ft of growing area on one side and 200-300 on the other. One side is bordered by an empty wooded lot, so I wouldn’t have to worry about neighbors, but the tree roots pose a bit of a problem.
The other side is behind a fence, I cleared the area of saplings last summer but never planted anything there. I’m thinking both of these spot are prime for tomatoes and other full-sun vegetables. I could also expand our front flowerbed in from the road some more and that would also add a few hundred square feet of growing space. In one of these areas I’d like to grow a lot of flowers like zinnias, cleome and globe amaranth for the bees and other beneficial insects. I also would like to put a 1-2 foot wide flowerbed by the rock wall that flanks our driveway, that would be lovely with a big row of lavender.
Whatever I decide it’s going to be a lot of back building work digging it all up (you remember our rocky soil), but it will be worth it in the end.
Are you thinking of liberating any of your lawn to expand your veggie beds this year?
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It’s Time
On Thursday I popped open the lid on my cold frame to check the temperature, this is what I saw.
An hour after I took this photo it was up to 75; this is just what I want to see on a 50 degree day. This means it’s time to plant my beet seeds and my lettuce seedlings in the cold frame, looks like I’ll be busy on the next warm dry day. This is all very exciting because I got my cold frame finished last fall a little too late to be of any use for my carrots. I’m interested to see how well it works for extending the season this spring and fall.
Mr Chiot’s and I attended a bee keeping seminar yesterday. We had a great time and learned a lot, I’ll be posting all about our adventures in learning about bees tomorrow.
Have you been able to do any garden chores in the garden this weekend? Are you already planting things?
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New In the Garden: Hoop Houses
For all of you who guessed a hoop house you’re right. Well, kind of, we added hoops to our raised beds (so not a proper hoop house, but 5 mini hoop houses).
We added these to help extend the growing season. I don’t have room to add a big walk-in greenhouse like Eliot Coleman in Four-Season Harvest
I’m planning on covering these with plastic here in the next couple days and this should help warm the soil so I can plant things even earlier. They should also help protect early tomatoes from frost. In the summer I plan on adding netting to these to keep the deer and rabbits out of my crops, so they will be very handy in all seasons!
How much did they cost? The tubing was $2.19 each and we used 4 per raised bed (our beds are 4×10). With the tubing and the clamps to attach them it cost about $10-$12 per raised bed, not bad if you ask me!
Do you do anything to extend the season? Anyone else using hoop houses or hoping to?
For details instructions on how we built our hoop houses see this post.
