Three Plus Two

The Syrup That Worked

Temperatures have finally gotten up into the lower 40's, and we've had a string of sunny days (which never happens in the winter.)  Aside from some rain and sleet yesterday morning, it's been perfect weather for the maples.  We've gotten two buckets of sap in the past two days.  I ruined one batch (more on that when the little boys can go two minutes without fighting), we somehow made maple sugar with one small amount of sap, but with the rest of the sap, Andy made a beautiful, light-colored syrup.

Here it is close-up and held to the light:

He also stayed up until 1:30 doing it.  Maple syrup has its own schedule.

Back to Work

Well, we've had our vacation, and Holy Week, and Easter Monday to recover from Easter, so now it's back to work.  I'd brought all of our school books along on our trip, but we didn't crack them once.  (I did, however, count many of our days as "school", simply because there was so much learning going on.)  Last week, our gentle reintroduction to the ordinary included reading aloud and math (Gareth would protest the gentleness of math, I'm sure), but today I think it's time to reinstitute our normal routine, which would be:

• Read-aloud with or right after breakfast. 
• Regular chores after read-aloud.
• Choice Time (an hour or two, depending on how long we read and how long chores take)
• Lunch/chores
• Outside time (for big kids; if it's warm enough, I'll take the little ones out.)
• Quiet time/Naptime (Big kids do bookwork independently)
• Free time/computer time/TV time for littles
• Dinner/chores

(Of course, this is just a sketch of the day, which in no way implies that the finished product will be a masterpiece.  It just helps us not to degenerate into the chaos of, say, a Jackson Pollack painting... although I hear even a Jackson Pollack piece has a pattern if you look hard enough.)

Here's a taste of what's on tap for us this week:

Okay, so I couldn't resist the pun.  Andy tapped our trees on Good Friday, but temperatures haven't been in the sap running range until today, really.  (I'm pretty sure it's almost April, but you can't tell it from our forecast for the next five days.  And Good Friday, when Andy was outside tapping the trees, was really brutal: about 20 degrees with 30 mph gusts. ) Tonight we've got a canning kettle of sap boiling on our stove.  We're hoping to avoid the burnt smoky taste we got in our syrup last year.  (But you've got to start somewhere, right?) Andy says, "We're probably using more propane than this is worth."  Farmerboy is convinced that the solution is to build a saphouse.  I think we'd need a few more trees.

This is a portabella mushroom kit I ordered from Territorial, because spring takes so dang long to get here and I need to grow something to eat.  Gareth, who likes fungi because they're weird and not because he thinks they taste good, asked to set the kit up at choice time today.  We put it in our new "pantry", which has a window dimmed by a roller shade, and will stay in the mid to upper 60's (which our basement may not).  Gareth's job will be to keep the compost with its mycelium moist on a daily basis.  (The mushrooms grow right in the box, so you could grow this kit in an apartment if you wanted to.)  The mushrroms should start to grow in 12-14 days.

    

We're also taking advantage of the presence of Easter lillies to do a little botany.  Today we dissected a few flowers to view their anatomy, and Farmerboy ran around the house with a stamen, yelling, "I'm a bee!  I'm a bee!"  So I guess he gets that part.  Here, Katydid (who is attempting to grow out her bangs) is attempting to view pollen using a portable magnifier, which didn't work too well and led Mommy to remember yet again that she has been meaning to order a real microscope. 

As for me, I need to get all my seeds started.  The kids are sprouting pumpkin and pea seeds in Mason jars, and they'll (hopefully) be keeping track of their progress.  Last year the pumpkins that Farmerboy started in the window turned into this (or at least a portion of that harvest), so we are all hopeful.  Gareth is especially hopeful, because he is growing Full Moon pumpkins and wants to sell a few giant ones at Halloween.

So goes the beginning of our week.  And I promise that I am going to start working on a post about Choice Time.  Tomorrow.  Right now I have to put several little people in pajamas, and check on some boiling maple sap.

A few random thoughts on being a snowbird

Is it still Monday?  Did Monday ever really end?  I can't tell.  Andy was out of town last night, and I think my sleep qualified as a series of naps.  When Gareth was born my mother-in-law told me that they used to torture prisoners of war by waking them up repeatedly through the night, just after they'd fallen asleep.

Um, yeah.

Anyway, I think it's supposed to be Tuesday.  In the dark of early morning, I turned on the Weather Channel and discovered that it's supposed to rain today.  Well, after the freezing rain.  But rain, at the end of January.  Strange.  We're supposed to go snowshoeing this weekend with our Little Flowers/Blue Knights group, but it doesn't look like the "Rain/Snow/Wind" coming on the heels of this Freezing Rain Advisory will put down enough snow for it.  Last year there wasn't enough snow either.  The 10 day forecasts are starting to inch closer toward the time when we will leave for our long trip to Tennessee.  A few thoughts have begun to plague me.  What if we get a snowstorm like the one we did last Valentine's Day when we're gone?  We won't be able to pull the van back into the driveway when we get home.  We won't be able to get into the garage to get the snowblower out.  What if...

The kids want to know what if the sap starts running; will we be able to make maple syrup before we leave for Tennessee?  Judging from the temperatures predicted in the next week or so... I'm not sure.  But we just received a postcard in the mail notifying us that one of the local saphouses will be hosting pancake breakfasts again, starting this weekend.  Last year our syrup didn't turn out too well because we didn't boil it long enough.  And the smoke from the outdoor fire made it taste... smoky.  If we do have the chance to make some this year, we'll be able to boil it on the woodstove.  That may prove stickier, but at least we'll be able to keep an eye on it more.

The trip has snuck up on us, and I really have to get going on the planning.  We're going to be gone for a little over three weeks (but, beware any Internet strangers who want to come take our Legos!  Andy will be popping back in for some work responsibilities mid-trip.  I guess when he does that he can dig a path to the snowblower.)  Taking this many kids on a trip this long is... well, daunting to say the least.  (Some would say insane, but I prefer to be optimistic.)  We made this trip two years ago when the twins were about the same age as Chipmunk.  Up till then, we had taken them out to places other than the doctor's office maybe... say... three times.  (No, really, I'm serious.  After they were born I thought I would probably be stuck in the house forever.)  We went to visit my mom and dad first, a drive of 16-18 hours, which we accomplished in two days.  The trip down was okay.  The trip back, from Andy's mom and dad's, was more like 20 hours (or more), and by the end of it we had a couple of sick kids on our hands.  Mostly what I remember about the return trip was being unable to find a hotel on the other side of Cleveland, and finally finding one with a huge jacuzzi tub out in the middle of the room.  Since various kids were sick and there was no pool, we let the kids play in the huge jacuzzi tub... and ended up with water all over the carpet.

I'm hoping to avoid that hotel this time.

So, things I need to do this week? 

• Make a "trip planner" -- "trip planner" being my fancy name for a place to write enormous lists of stuff to bring and do before we go.
• Order "surprises" to keep the kids busy on the way there and back.  (We put all the "surprises" in a bag and let the kids choose one per day in the car.  Usually they are things like coloring or sticker books, novels, travel craft kits or games, etc.  One time I bought the kids Silly Putty.  Not such a good thing, really.)
• Decide on seeds to buy.  Order seeds by next week.
• Start making "travel school" plans.  We can't afford to take three weeks off, so we'll be bringing books with us. 
• Have a trailer hitch installed on the van so we can get one of those luggage carriers that attaches to the back.
• Find one of those luggage carriers that attaches to the back of the van.

We're not actually leaving until the end of February, but things like trips planned well in advance have a way of sneaking up on me.  If I write this stuff down now... there may be slight chance that I will avoid paying rush delivery charges for surprises which I will undoubtedly have to order online (being out here in the bookdocks and all).

Wood Stoves, Custard, and Cooperstown

I've been trying to sit down and write this entry since Saturday afternoon, but whenever I manage a few minutes, someone needs something to eat, has lost something Very Important and Immediately Necessary, starts a fight, and/or wakes the baby up.  So now I'm not sure what it really was that I wanted to say.  Occasionally, I have these brain breakdowns where I really feel like writing but am convinced that nothing I write will be worthwhile to anyone.  Most of the time I don't have a problem about going on and on and on whether anyone is reading or not, but every once in a while...

Oh yeah, that's writer's block.

The best thing for writer's block is really to just sit down and start where you are at the moment.  And this is where I am: I am sitting at the computer in the living room, watching a light rain fall past the spruce tree.  I just put a maple pumpkin custard in the oven (since everyone is now convinced that we need a continuous supply of pumpkin desserts) and for this brief instant, the house is blessedly quiet. (Naptime!)  I have a cup of hot Sugar Plum Spice tea beside me.  The school bus just drove by, and I am glad my kids are not on it.

Now, as to where I was on Saturday...

Saturday we piled everybody in the van and drove to Oneonta (about 45 minutes away) to look at woodstoves.  Our hearth has had a checkered past.  It started out as a wood burning fireplace; subsequent owners put in an electric insert, a gas insert, and finally a small, Jotul wood stove.  From the looks of its website, Jotul has since gone to grated doors, but ours is not grated.   In fact, you can't see the fire at all.  Not very cozy.

The hearth also happens to be in the learning room -- er, dining room -- where we do spend a lot of time.  Andy and I have been thinking about replacing that woodstove almost since we moved in.  It isn't big enough to make a real difference in our heating bill, and the chimney pipe the previous owners installed... well, the less said there the better.

So, after ordering a bunch of information on stoves from Lehman's (which has got to be the coolest store in the universe), we decided that a Vermont Castings stove was probably the way to go.  (The runner-up was a soapstone stove from Hearthstone, which we thought would match the hearth nicely.  But the Vermont Castings stoves had better EPA ratings.)

Since we've all been sick and stuck inside lately, a trip to a bigger town like Oneonta was a real treat.  First, we stopped at Brooks Barbecue for lunch.  Brooks is a locally famous place -- and, I suppose, a more nationally known place after Rachel Ray ate there for her $40 a Day show -- but um, if you ever do happen to go there, eat the chicken (which is really good and what they're known for), but stay away from the other BBQ entrees.  For instance, they serve a dish called St. Louis Style Ribs.  Andy turned to me and said, "Did you ever eat St. Louis style ribs when we lived in St. Louis?"  The answer is -- no.  I do not believe there is any such thing as St. Louis style ribs.  St. Louis style pork steaks, yes -- ribs, no.  Ribs are from Memphis, where they know how to cook a pig.  Andy is from Memphis, which I suppose makes us barbecue snobs, but barbecue pork should not come in a slice, nor should it have a beet ring on top of it.

Ok, nuff said.  Anyway, the chicken is good, and if you ever happen to take a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, you should head down to Brooks.  It's not very far away.

The kids were all very good at the restaurant, which I appreciated since everybody was watching us.  Venturing out with six kids is like living in a fishbowl, especially if two of them happen to be twins.  Everyone is curious.  When the kids are being good, I choose to view this sort of humbly as something good -- most people are nice, and I feel a little like a cultural envoy for large families everywhere.

Which is why it was surprising when the salesman at the stove shop never remarked on our family size.  he did, however, answer about a hundred questions from us on the various stoves he had for sale, so maybe he was just overwhelmed and never had the chance.  We ended up with an Encore, which heats up to about 1900 sq.feet (our house is bigger than that, but we didn't want it to be too hot in the room where the stove was) and has a ridiculously low emissions rate.  (The lowest of any wood-burning stove in the world, they claim.)

Feeling pretty darn green after buying that stove (in Bordeaux red), we headed home the long way -- through Cooperstown and around Otsego Lake (James Fenimore Cooper's "Glimmerglass").  Cooperstown is pretty dead right now, but I did note that the Farmer's Museum is hosting a few holiday events in December that we might want to attend and which I will put on our wall calendar.  As we left Cooperstown behind us and drove along some really beautiful, snow-covered shoreline, I caught sight of wings and turned to look behind us as we passed a creek.

The wings happened to belong to a bald eagle.  That's right -- a bald eagle.  Really, I am restraining myself from an excessive use of exclamation points here, because -- a bald eagle!  Outside a carefully planned and scheduled event!  When we lived in St. Louis, we used to go eagle watching on the Mississippi in January.  The eagles gathered near the locks on the river to fish in open water.  Naturalists set up spotting scopes and put on bird shows, and across the street, cafes sold hot chocolate.  It was a wonderful experience, but it was all rather scripted.

Of course, my husband chooses not to believe me because he didn't see it, and he's jealous. (Don't let him tell you otherwise.)  But Gareth caught a glimpse of the white head and he backs me up.

Well, now it's three over five hours since I sat down with my tea.  The pumpkin custard is done (and pretty good, if I do say so myself), I've changed numerous dirty diapers, gotten snacks, done laundry, nursed a baby, and defrosted some hamburger for dinner made dinner  eaten and cleaned up dinner.  If you've stayed with me this far, here's your reward: the recipe for the pumpkin custard.  It's adapted from a recipe in Super Baby Food.

Maple Pumpkin Custard

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

• 1 1/2 c. pumpkin puree or canned pumpkin or sweet potato puree (haven't tried sweet potato, but it sounds good!)
• 1/2 c. maple syrup (the original calls for honey)
• 3 beaten eggs
• 1 1/3 c. milk
• 1 tbsp arrowroot or cornstarch
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Pour into greased baking dish and bake for 45-50 minutes or until set.  Refrigerate, covered well, and eat within 2-3 days.  Serve cool.

When made with maple syrup, it's a not too sweet dish, and a good way to get kids to eat orange veggies.  Also, this can be a thoroughly local dish: if you buy local milk, local eggs, use pumpkin you grew yourself or from the pumpkin patch, and use a local sweetener like honey or maple syrup, the spices are the only "exotic" ingredients.  I had to use canned pumpkin today, but I did enjoy using local maple syrup!

Boil it Down!

We made maple syrup today!  This afternoon Andy found 5 or 6 gallons of sap in the buckets and decided that was enough to make syrup.  Here's what the sap looked like when he and Gareth poured it in the pan:

He boiled it for two or three hours over a wood fire.  The wood was a little wet, so it did get kind of smoky.  After that time, the pan looked like this:

This stage was signaled by comments such as, "Hey, it really did turn brown!" and "How do we tell when it's done?"  At about this time, Andy came in for a pat of butter to throw on the pan when it boiled up too high.  The butter breaks the surface the tension, and the bubbles go back down.  (In Sugaring, the picture book by Jessie Haas, Nora flicks cream on the bubbles to make them go down.) 

Now came the tricky part.  Supposedly the syrup "sheets" when it's done: it drips off a spatula in sheets.  Or, supposedly, you can use a hydrometer to tell the same thing.  But we couldn't figure out how to use the hydrometer, especially with our shallow pan.  So we went with the sheeting technique instead.

(I say "we" but really, by this point Gareth had decided he was more interested in robots than syrup and wanted to come in, Katydid and Farmerboy were both sick and couldn't go outside in the first place, and I was playing musical babies trying to get them both to a)stay asleep, and b)sleep at the same time.  So "we" here means "Andy".)

The syrup was done while I was rocking Pop, and then apparently Andy had the realization that he was not prepared to get it out of the pan.  He came rushing in for receptacles, oven mitts, and ladles.  As soon as I could put Pop down, I ran out to help him.

Here's a picture of the finished product:

It's a little dark (I'm not sure we got it out in time) and a little smoky-tasting from all the woodsmoke, but that first cup of warm syrup still tasted pretty good! 

And what did we have for dinner tonight?  Well, pancakes, of course!

Sap's Rising

It's finally spring, and the sap is rising!

Yesterday our temperature hovered at near 60 until the rain moved in late afternoon.  After school and lunch we all ran outside to play in the warm, windy weather (and the cold, gooey mud, and all the puddles left on the driveway by the melting snow), and the kids made a beeline for the maple Andy tapped last weekend.  I was on twin duty, which meant I was busy running from one baby to the other, trying to keep them from running down the driveway to the road, falling into the remaining snow drifts, beating each other with snow shovels... that sort of thing.  (This only worked for about 30 minutes until Pip tumbled into a particularly BIG puddle and literally soaked himself head to toe.)  Katydid fussed with the bucket for a while, then ran back, yelling, "The sap's running! The sap's running!"

Alas, because I was so busy keeping track of the babies, I have no pictures.  But I had no idea that maple sap is clear, like water.  When I went to check the bucket (babies in tow), I thought at first that she must be mistaken, because it just looked like there was water in the bottom of the bucket, and some condensation around the tube.  But the big kids all tasted it, and they proclaimed it sap.  Gareth said it tasted a little like apple juice.  I didn't have a chance to taste, but I felt the "water", and it was definitely sticky.  Sap!

About five minutes after we came in, it started to rain -- hard -- then tapered off to a constant sprinkle, flung against the windows by a strong March gale out of the west.  When Andy got home, the kids immediately crowded around him to tell him about the sap... and out into the rainy evening Andy went, to tap the rest of the trees. 

This morning it's sunny and already in the lower 40's.  (I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be our high for the day.  Could the forecast be wrong, I wonder, or is it gluttony to wish for more 60's in March when you live in upstate New York?)  We plan on boiling sap tomorrow in our backyard fireplace (I knew it had to be good for something.)  And don't worry, if there are pictures to be taken, someone will be able to take them tomorrow!

(Andy has been reading the kids the book Sugaring Time, by Kathryn Lasky at bedtime.  He says it's been more helpful in learning how to sugar than the how-to books we ordered -- listed in this post.  The book, a Newberry Honor, is aimed at elementary/upper-elementary aged kids, and contains wonderful black and white photos along with a step-by-step description of the sugaring process.)

Backyard Sugarin'

Or front yard sugarin', in our case.

My dear husband has decided that we should tap the maple trees in our front yard this year and make our own maple syrup.  For some reason, I was under the impression that you need six good sized trees to make syrup in any quantity, but my husband got hold of Noel Perrin's book Third Person Rural last weekend at the used book store and he says we can get a quart a tree.  Imagine that -- a whole gallon of our very own maple syrup!

Sounds like the perfect homeschool project, right?  Outside in the cold with Dad, hauling buckets of sap to the fire in the backyard, maybe sucking on a little maple ice while you watch the fire...  We can read Miracles on Maple Hill and Sugaring Time and feel like Almanzo Wilder in Farmer Boy.  It might even be the perfect hands on unit.

Except that my dear husband conveniently neglected to remember that he has a bunch of business trips in March, so when he says we are going to make maple syrup, what that really means is, "Honey, I'm going to be at work every day and in Phoenix for part of the month, so it's going to be up to you to check and haul all these buckets and keep the fire going, all right?  I'm sure the babies will cooperate."

Well, anyway, he's reading Backyard Sugarin' and Making Maple Syrup: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-51 and we're waiting for the imminent arrival of the Nearings' The Maple Sugar Book.  The local Agway sells taps, buckets, and lines.  (Last March we had been gone for a few weeks, and when we came back, the woods were strung with green rubber tubing.  "What the heck is that?" we all wanted to know, until it occurred to us -- sap!  Maple syrup!)  So I suppose we will be stocking up, and Mom will try to get motivated.  (I could use a pep talk here, in case anyone is interested.  The idea of making maple syrup sounds real interesting, but the logistics of trying to keep everyone out of the buckets and away from a fire while gallons of sap boil away to syrup is... well, a little daunting.) 

The first thing we'll have to do, though, is identify our trees.  I wish I had thought to press a few leaves in the fall, but all I have are the pictures I took. 

They're not red maples, because they didn't turn scarlet in the fall.  But are they Norway maples, silver maples, or sugar maples?  That is the question...