The Last (we hope) Throes of Winter

Yesterday, about a third of our yard was snow-free -- the glaciers had officially begun to retreat! -- along with all driveways, sidewalks, and roads. This is the picture this morning, after Mick shoveled 5-6 inches of snow last night and an additional 10 this morning!

So much for our snow-free yard.


Gerard thought he wanted to go exploring, but that didn't last long.


This weekend's storm was reminiscent of the storm last weekend, which dropped 6 inches after a week of beginning-to-melt.


We are tiring of snow, but Roscoe loved it!

He's a lot less courageous about braving the cold when he's indoors though.

We (the humans, that is) have been taking advantage of the last stretches of cold weather to clear out the freezers, particularly the foods that we figured we won't particularly care to eat in the summer, like venison backstrap (thanks, Nick!), which Mickey cooked to perfection!

Now that I have your mouth watering, meet the newest members of our family! They arrived last week in a box from Pennsylvania.

2000 red worms!

We have put them to work as vermicomposters. So far they seem very happy -- we have only found one escape attempt (which, fortunately, Mickey discovered and not me!!) :-)

Cheers!

February Fotos

The cheesemaking continues! Mick is our resident expert cheese-waxer. After making the cheese, we set it in the fridge (a cool, dry place) for a couple of days to let it dry out and begin to form a rind.


Then we melt the cheese wax in a double boiler. (All donations of wax gladly accepted and added to the pot!) :)


Once the wax is melted, Mick dips the cheese in, one half at a time.


He blows on it to cool it off.


Then dips the other half.


He dips it again in the other two directions, so that the whole thing is covered twice.


It'll set in the back room (since it stays quite cool) for a few weeks until we crack it open! In the meantime, the whey is transformed into ricotta, which makes the most delicious pizzas! (This one was a meat-lover's.)


We also made a pizza with leftover ham that we thought turned out rather beautiful.


In other news, Mick made some blackcap wine a few weeks ago (trying to clean out the berries in the freezer). He saved the juice that was left over from the pulp after racking the wine, and it was sitting in a bowl in the fridge. (I was adding it to yogurt.) A few days later, when he sampled the juice, he was surprised by how juicy it was and suggested we make snow-cones! So we went outside and scooped up what we hoped was clean snow :) and poured the juice over it. It was delicious, and very fun!


We did find some surprises in the snow, but none that adversely affected the taste or healthfulness, and they did provide quite a nice garnish. :)

Feeling Sappy

Last Saturday we headed up to the home site.


I took pictures,


Roscoe explored,


and Mickey tapped maple trees.


For each tap, he drilled a hole to the proper depth, indicated by a piece of tape he had wrapped around the drill bit.


He then used the flat end of an ax to gently insert the spile [tap].


We hung a total of fourteen buckets,


and headed home.


We returned on Tuesday afternoon, after UPS delivered the remainder of our supplies.


We now had a total of twenty buckets ready to collect sap.


We came up again later that week to check the progress.


We were quite excited to see (and taste) our buckets beginning to fill with a not-quite-clear, mildly sweet liquid!


Mickey also fit the lids onto the buckets.


Our route to check the taps is not very long at all. We didn't even have to venture into the woods for this year's twenty taps.


The sap has begun to run!