Galloway Farm

Hubbard, now that he’s seven years old and nearly a man, talked me into giving him some driving lessons around the farm in our six passenger farm cart.  Not bad for his first time!

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I recently found Hubbard making a “country craft” out of whatever he could find within arm’s reach.  A little mud for glue and he enjoyed making his first abstract farm art.  : )

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We filtered our three liters of sugar maple sap, and put it into the pot to boil.  It’d be more fun to do this over an open fire outside; but we couldn’t wait that long.  The sap is almost all water.  In fact, it takes about 40 parts sap to boil down to 1 part syrup.  Basically, you just boil away the water and what’s left is the sugary, syrup.  We boiled, and boiled, and boiled…this takes a while.  As it gets near the bottom, it changes consistency a  little (still pretty watery) and it begins to change from clear in color to more of a golden syrup color.  Another thing I learned is that real maple syrup is much thinner than the store bought brand name syrups we normally use.  We finally got down to the best syrup and I could not believe just how sweet it was!  This was a great experience and something we will definitely do again. 

The boys, enjoying the fruits of our labor.

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 I recently purchased a “tree tapping kit” from TapMyTrees.com.  The starter kit has everything we needed to tap 3 of our biggest sugar maple trees.  That’s right, we’re going to make our own maple syrup!  This was a family affair, everyone was excited.  It’s actually very easy to do.  You drill a hole in the tree, and the sap just starts dripping out!  I expected the sap to be…well, syrupy.  But it really just looks like water with a slightly sweet taste.  What I didn’t know was that sap spoils like milk if out in the heat too long.  So we lost 2 of our 3 inital batches.  From the 3rd bucket, we got about 3 liters of sap within a few days.  I’ll post again when we attempt to boil it down to syrup.

Tree tap with bucket for sap collection

Sap just starts dripping out!

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It’s always fun to work side by side with Daddy.

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This is what happens when you get lazy and leave a trash bag in a barn…it’s like an all you can buffet for varmints.  Looks like this was the work most likely of a ‘coon, maybe a possum.  Might be fun to get a wildlife cam and catch him in action next time.

Adding insult to injury...my varmint coon rummaged through my trash right underneath the fake owl I bought to scare away varmints.

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"Puff" the sheep

We are hopeful that one or both of our Southdown Babydoll Sheep are expecting lambs this spring.  It only takes 5 months for a sheep to carry lambs before they deliver.  But sheep are so naturally wide and covered in four inches of wool that it’s hard to tell sometimes.  There’s just not many animals any cuter than Babydoll lambs.

See if you can tell she's looking "wider" than normal.

"Pearl" the sheep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There’s just not much that Jack Boone & Hubbard would rather do that lock arms and legs, trying out their latest new moves on each other in a good spirited wrestling match!

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Winter never keeps us from having fun on the farm, but we are starting to look forward to some warmer days soon… : )

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After a few hours outside in February, it’s always fun to come inside for a hot lunch and a cozy fire.

Still cold outside!

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