Here are the latest visitors to our Bird Diner. Plus a couple of others that I took last night also. The moon was so pretty, framed by the trees.
Ed is loading the furnace for the night. I was experimenting with some night shots, to see what the camera could do.
Click each photo to see a larger version.
Brrr, what a cold weekend! Ed and I talked about making maple syrup this year and had just about decided not to because the price of propane was so high. I told him I think we will be sorry if we don't. Since we want to eventually move to a flatter piece of property, suppose it doesn't have any maple trees? We have quite a few here, so we should take advantage of it, right? There is still enough gas in the tank to maybe get us through this season. We decided to go ahead and do it.
We hauled a lot of the buckets and other supplies out of the storage space in the barn loft. I washed buckets and tubing and various other stuff, in the bathtub. Later we hauled a load of it down the hill in a little trailer and tapped some of the trees and hooked up the tubing. They aren't running yet, though. These are some of our best trees, known as 'sap cows'. They almost run nonstop when they start. Some of them will fill a 5 gallon bucket in about 12 hours. We have two taps in some of those trees.
So now we wait for the weather to co-operate. We need days above freezing, such as 40° or above and nights below freezing, preferably in the 20°'s. It was so cold down in the woods this afternoon, but it was so quiet and peaceful. You could even hear the snow falling. Big beautiful fluffy flakes. I think it is supposed to warm up to 55 °by Thursday, so I guess you know where I'll be, hauling 5 gallon buckets of sap up the hill to the garage. Ed set up the stove and everything is ready to go.
It is a lot of work, and I'm always glad when it is over, but oh, it tastes sooooo gooood on a hot buttery waffle. Or in a cup of hot tea!
2 comments:
Now do you recken that is the same moon I saw here that night, shone in the bedroom window so bright that I had to turn over in bed to keep it out of my eyes? Wow,awesome! ...and the lesser light He made to rule the night.
Sounds like sap running time for you is like apple and pear canning time for me, it's a long strung out chore but we're glad when it's done.
Nice moon shot and colorful birds.
I, too, remember the 'sounds' of the football games, even though we never saw one. I remember the glow of the lights over the treetops from the lit field and laying there at night, not being able to sleep for the game calling over the loudspeaker. We musta went to bed early. Remember the 9:00 train whistle at the Old Mans house? Yep, our bedtime call.
You never cease to amaze me - first mulberry jelly and now maple syrup - I lead such a dull life...
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