Tapping Our Maple Trees

fresh maple syrup

Several years ago Sunshine and I read the Little House books, and the first one, Little House in the Big Woods, talks about maple sugaring. At the time, it reminded me of when I was in first grade and we lived in New York state for a year. That winter we tapped some of the trees on the property we were renting and boiled the sap into maple syrup. I don't remember much of the tapping itself, but I do remember my dad boiling down the sap on top of the wood-burning stove in the scary cellar of the old Victorian we were living in.

Last spring I realized that we have maple trees and we should try tapping them. I wasn't sure how many we had, but I knew we had some. When we were visiting my parents for Sunshine's baptism I mentioned it to my dad and he dug out their old spiles and collecting bags so we could borrow them. Yes, my dad has hung onto them for 30 years. Have I mentioned that he likes to hang on to things "just in case"? Though in this case, I do appreciate his pack rat tendencies :)

the obsolete 12" floppy disk (with a drive to go with it) "just in case"

At the end of October Sunshine and I tramped around our property, looking for maple trees. You could do this in the winter by looking at the bark, but we did it when the leaves were still on the trees since leaves are easier to identify. We found lots of baby trees, but only four that were of a decent size. I have a terrible memory, so I sprayed each with a small circle of orange spray paint and wrote a description of where to find each.

Our winters are usually on the mild side, but this winter was supposed to be hard, so I wanted to be prepared if the weather cooperated and got the sap running. It's been cold, but I don't think it's been colder than usual, and we've gotten less snow than past winters. Until the middle of February, when all that changed.

In the middle of February, I realized I needed to figure out when to tap the trees. From what I could find, it seems like we could have started in January since we live in a milder climate. Oops. Next year we'll start in January. But waiting worked in our favor this year. Just after I pulled the bags and spiles out of storage in the basement we got hit with a cold snap and lots of snow, so we ended up waiting two weeks before heading out to tap our trees.

Actually, I think waiting until after the cold snap was a good idea. We had about a week of temps in the low teens at night and in the twenties during the day, and then day time temperatures warmed up. Perfect tapping weather.

Tapping time is when the temperature gets above freezing during the day, but stays below freezing at night. You have to stop collecting sap when the trees bud out, so if spring comes early, it cuts your tapping season short, which is why starting earlier is usually a good idea in milder climates like ours.

Monday the temperatures were forecast to reach the low 50's, so I decided to move forward with our project. Below are our bags, spiles, mallet, drill, and extra bit since I wasn't sure what size I'd need. I only cleaned four bags and spiles, but ended up going back inside to clean the other two bags and spiles. We only have four trees, but two of them are forked, so I decided to tap both forks of those trees.

After drilling a shallow hole, the sap immediately started flowing. I hadn't expected such an immediate reaction, so this was quite cool.

I used the mallet to tap the spile in, then waited for a minute for the sap to run clear (the wood bits from drilling needed to be flushed out).

First bag hung and ready to collect sap.

These bags and spiles have been in storage for 30 years, but they're still in great condition. It's nice to be able to experiment without having to spend a lot (or any) money. Below you can see the sap is already dripping into the bag.

The rigid plastic portion of the bag rests behind the hook on the top of the spile. The flap covers the top to keep debris out and also acts as a funnel when emptying the bag into a larger bucket. The way the bag attaches to the spile makes it hard to get it off, especially when it's got sap in it. I don't take the bag off the hook, I just rotate it sideways to empty it.

This tree has two good-sized forks, so I tapped both of them. This tree has been our best producer so far, after two days of collecting.

When we tapped the trees on Monday, there was still snow on the ground. When we collected sap Thursday evening, most of it had melted.

When we went back to finish tapping the trees after cleaning the last two bags and spiles, we found a good amount of sap already filling our bags. So cool! Sunshine thinks the whole thing is quite interesting, so I think we're going to do a small unit study on trees and sap.

1st day- temps in low 50's.  We collected 17.5 cups of sap (plus some lost to spillage).
                 16 cups = 1 gallon, so just over 1 gallon of sap
2nd day- temps below freezing, so we didn't bother collecting sap.
3rd day- temps back up to low 50's. We collected 28.25 cups of sap.
4th day- temps back below freezing with ice followed by 4-5 inches of snow, so we took the time to boil down the collected sap.

there's ice under all that snow- glad we don't have to go anywhere for a few days

I filtered the sap as I put it in the pots since I didn't filter before storing in the frig. I used a coffee filter from a package I bought years ago for a project. The coffee filter works, but it's slow. If we do this again I'll get a sap-specific filter. 17.5 cups + 28.25 cups = 45.75 cups = 2.86 gallons

glad I filtered those bark bits out

Almost 3 gallons of sap filled my two stock pots, so it's a good thing I didn't wait to collect more sap before boiling it down. Sap is mostly water, so 3 gallons of sap doesn't yield very much maple syrup.

After two and a half hours the sap had boiled down enough for me to combine the sap into the larger pot. I didn't take the pots to a rolling boil, which probably would have made the process go faster. I kept the pots just below a rolling boil since I wasn't keeping a super close eye on them. I ended up filtering the syrup several more times with coffee filters (I poured the sap from one pot to the other) to eliminate random floaties and scum that floated to the top. The hot sap went through the filters much quicker than the cold sap.

becoming more concentrated and darker in color

It took about 5 hours to boil down almost 3 gallons of sap to about 1.25 cups of syrup.  I used the directions here to know when the syrup was done.

now I need to make some gluten free pancakes to pour our syrup on

I found this post in January about tapping other trees. It was too late to mark our black walnut trees, but it's definitely something to try next year, especially since we have so few maples.

I also found a post about building an outdoor wood-burning evaporator to boil down sap. If we were to collect larger amounts of sap, we would totally do this. Since we're dealing with smaller amounts, I didn't worry about it this year, especially since the moisture generated while boiling down the sap helps rehydrate our super-dry house (I do not like heat pumps- they are very inefficient and drying in colder weather).

We will continue to collect sap as long as the weather cooperates- I'll post an update later with how much syrup we end up with. If we're still here next winter I'll need to purchase more spiles and a filter so we can tap our black walnut trees also.

The weather is supposed to be warmer this weekend, so we'll be able to collect sap again. I'm thinking of cooking the sap a little further to make maple candy. Yum!

Have you made your own maple syrup?

Celiac and Children's Growth

I recently read an article about a study done in children with celiac disease. The researchers were able to track the children's growth (or lack thereof) and identify those who had celiac.

When I read this, I thought "of course growth is related to celiac." I've known this for years- Sunshine stopped growing for a couple years before we figured out that she also had celiac. Even after she started a gluten free diet she didn't start growing until after she'd done GAPS for awhile and healed some of the damage done to her intestines.

The study touts growth measurements as a non-invasive and inexpensive screening tool, which is great. The only issue I have with it is that it only works on kids with active celiac disease, not just the potential for celiac. This is a concern for us right now since River is getting older and will be in situations where we have to determine how he will eat (nursery at church and so on). Will he be gluten free just in case? Will we allow him to eat gluten and then just wait and see if he develops it (and the host of other problems that inevitably go with celiac)?

We've spent the last couple months trying to get the needed referrals and appointments to get a genetic test done to see if he has the markers for celiac. We finally got in, but the pediatric geneticist said the HLA marker test isn't very accurate and did a different test instead. Unfortunately, it's one that tests to see if you have full-blown celiac (the doctor didn't actually know much about celiac). Since River doesn't currently have celiac, the test didn't show anything. We were offered a referral to a pediatric gastroenterologist who actually treats a number of children with celiac (and therefor presumable knows what they're doing) We'll take him up on the referral in the hopes that the pediatric gastroenterologist has other ideas or is more supportive of the HLA marker test.

Why am I so hung up on the HLA marker test? The HLA marker test is a genetic test that shows if you have the markers for celiac disease. If you don't have the markers, you won't get celiac disease. If you do have the markers, there is a chance you could develop celiac at some point in your life. This may seem rather nebulous, but for Mr M and I, it means we could better determine what our children should eat.

If they don't have the markers, they could eat gluten when hanging out with daddy and not Sunshine and me. I'm past the point of caring if someone's eating a sandwich or something in front of me, but there's no need to rub it in Sunshine's face that she can't eat gluten, since she does still miss gluten.

If River or the baby have the markers, we would play it safe and not feed them gluten and when they get older, they can choose for themselves if they want to eat gluten. This would at least give them a good start on life with less chances of developing celiac as a child. I think it's safe to say that Sunshine has not enjoyed dealing with it, and I don't want our other kids to go through the same thing at a young age.

Sure we could just say we don't eat gluten, but people don't always understand just how important it is that they not feed gluten to our kiddos. I blame the fad-dieters and celebrities who have given gluten free people a bad rap. Having a medical reason to back things up underlines how serious we are and makes it more "official".

February 5k Recap

I mentioned last week that I was switching my planned 8 mile race for a 5k. I'm really glad I did, since the 8 mile race got postponed till next week. If I was depending on that for my February race I would have been out of luck. I now have the option of running two races in March- the 8 mile and a 5k, both of which I'm registered for. We'll see what the weather's like next weekend before I commit to the 8 mile race. It would still be a good tune-up for the half, but I don't know that I want to do it if the temps are as low as they were on Saturday or if the ground is muddy and sloppy.

Back to Saturday's 5k. This was a small fundraiser organized by the cross country and track teams of the local university, and the majority of the runners were college students. The girls were all wearing black running tights and dark jackets and actually have runner's bodies (I don't). There were 2 or 3 ladies older than me, but everyone else was almost half my age (eek- what a thought!).

While I had on black running tights too, I also had a silver sparkle skirt and a bright pink jacket :) The skirt is a new one that I purchased to be part of my half marathon outfit. I made my last one, and it was way easier to just buy one on etsy. The pink jacket is my Christmas present from the kiddos- Sunshine picked it out for me.

The temps were in the low 20's, which wasn't quite as problematic as I'd expected. The last snow we received was early Thursday morning, so the roads and sidewalks were clear and dry. Decent running conditions, if a bit (ok, more than a bit) cold. Once we started running it wasn't too bad though.

The first mile pretty much sucked- cold air, two weeks of minimal training, and still recovering from a cold all combined to make my legs feel tired and sluggish and my chest feel heavy and tight. Even on the treadmill the first mile always sucks, so I wasn't caught off guard. It just sucked in a different way. The rest of the race I felt a lot better, but I did struggle a bit with the hills in the second mile.

I've been slacking off on my hill work and speed work in favor of my long runs, and it was obvious. I've got five weeks till the half and I think I'll be focusing more on my hills and speed while backing off a bit on the length of my long runs.

One thing I noticed: my lungs felt ok right up until I got into the car and started breathing the slightly warmer air. Then my "cold air" cough started up. I think it's interesting that it didn't actually start till the warmer air mixed with the colder air. Not a connection I'd made before.

3.02 miles in 33:55, overall pace of 11:14 min/mile
mile 1: 10:56 min
mile 2: 12:17 min
mile 3: 10:30 min

I'm happy with my time. 33:55 is only 30 seconds slower than my January 5k and faster than all but one of my 5ks from last year. Even accounting for the race being a little short I still finished in a very good time. If I'd kept a consistent 11:14 min/mile pace I would have finished 3.1 miles in 34:49, which is still faster than all but three of last year's 5ks. And I did this while 20 weeks pregnant. So yay me! Guess all that mileage really is paying off. My half marathon pace needs to be 13:39 or faster, so even allowing for a slower pace over a longer distance I should be ok. And the temperatures should also be a lot better five weeks from now.

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The week's workouts:
Mon- treadmill walk
Tues- busy and needed a rest
Wed- treadmill walk
Thurs- treadmill run
Fri- treadmill walk
Sat- February 5k race ("long" run)

My total mileage was 10.25 miles. I'm still recovering from my cold, so I took it easy and didn't try to do too much and my "long" run was only 3 miles. While I want to improve my workouts, I also don't want to be so worn out that I don't have energy to do anything else like continue healing. It's a fine line to balance.

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One more thought about my January and February races: my January race was on the 1st, and my February race was on the 28th, which means they were two months apart. While that gave me a nice long period to increase my mileage, I do think it's a bit too long between races. Most of the time they're only 3 or 4 weeks apart, not 8.

Sunday Funny

notice the location of the stools?

Apparently we're raising a family of fort builders. 

Some time ago, Sunshine changed her name to Sunshine Fort Keeper.

Before and after that she has built many forts, even involving River.

Now River has started building his own little forts. They don't involve blankets (yet), but he does like to rearrange the kitchen stools and "hide" behind them. He's not quite 17 months old, but he's got a good start on the fort building.

Ironwork Wall Art

After living with my DIY painted canvas on the wall of our bedroom for the last week or so, I decided it just couldn't stay there. I had worried about it being too large for the space, and it was continuing to bother me, so I took it down and hung it in River's room, where it looks a lot better.

fuzzy nap time picture of the painting in River's room

I thought about buying a smaller canvas and painting it, but then decided to see what I already had that might work. Well, to be more accurate, I was reorganizing the basement bedroom closet and found some ironwork pieces that I've bought at various times over the last few years from Hobby Lobby. I'd forgotten I had them, so it's nice to be able to put one of them to use finally.

I hung one scrolly one that I liked on the wall, but it looked a little plain all by itself. I forgot to take a picture of it on the wall, but here it is on the dining table.

I went to the shed and dug through my piles of wood and scraps and found just what I needed. I found a panel that used to be part of a filing cabinet or printer table years and years ago. They didn't survive one of our moves, but I was able to salvage some of the solid panels and have saved them for various projects (I used another for our Christmas tree crate).

I also found enough trim of some sort to frame the panel.

I forgot to take a picture of the front of the panel, but here's a picture of the rougher backside- 

you can see the blah and uninspiring blond wood

I lightly sanded the top of the panel so the wood would take some stain and paint and then cut the trim pieces to size. I managed to do both of these outside on a day when the temps were above freezing (barely), so I counted it as a win since it wasn't below freezing with a below-zero wind chill. A garage sure would be nice....

Anyway, the first thing I did was stain the trim and panel with Kona stain. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going with the panel, so I just decided to layer things on and see how it turned out. After the stain dried, I did two coats of chalk paint in Aubusson. I think that's the color- it was actually what was leftover from another project and was in an unmarked jar (oops!). I may have mixed another color in when I used it the first time. In any case, it's a nice dark blue.

After the paint dried I sanded it a bit, and then rubbed on a little more Kona stain, keeping to the edges for the most part. I thought the stain was a bit heavy, so I did a little more sanding till I liked how it looked. I wiped it down and gave it a coat of dark furniture wax, which gave the panel a nice smooth finish and darkened the paint a smidge.

I glued and nailed the frame pieces to the panel and each other. The last step was to use some small nails to hold the scrolly piece in place. And I was finished!

Well, almost. I put some screws in the back and attached some wire so I could hang the piece from the screws in the wall in our bedroom. I hung it on the wall and I then I was really done. Though I may need to lower it a little on the wall.

I'm really happy with how this turned out. What makes it even better is that we had everything sitting around already, so it didn't cost me anything.

Irish Music Session

crappy phone pic in low light

notice how Sunshine has turned herself so she's not facing the patrons

When Irish musicians get together to play, it's called a session. I have no idea why, but it is.

Sunshine's fiddle teacher organized a session for the kids last spring as an alternative to the traditional recital, and she'll be doing the same thing this spring.

The Irish music school we're involved with holds weekly adult sessions (Mr M has attended once or twice, but his skills aren't quite up to speed, literally), but there hasn't been anything for the kiddos.

One of the teachers (my whistle teacher, among other things) decided that needed to change, and has organized a monthly kids' session.

Last week was the first meeting, and despite the cold temps and piles of snow everywhere, we went (though I did contemplate staying home in our warm house). Others were more easily swayed by the bad weather, and only one other girl and the teacher showed up. Despite the small group, they were able to play several songs together and have a good time.

I could tell Sunshine was nervous (she hasn't had a lot of experience playing in front of others), but she did a good job and soldiered on. The advantage of these sessions is that they're held at an Irish pub, so everyone's busy eating and the music is just in the background. Some patrons pay attention, but it's not like the performers are being stared at on a stage.

One elderly couple who knew the other family that participated were kind enough to give the girls a tip, which they thought was so cool. Their first paying gig! Ok, barely paying, but still :) It left them with an upbeat memory of the experience. Sunshine can be a bit negative about experiences that she's not completely comfortable with, and those few dollars pushed her to the positive side of things. We're looking forward to next month to see who shows up and who knows which songs.

Snow Days!

after Monday's storm

We had a snow storm last Monday and instead of melting that day or the next (like it usually does), the temperatures dropped and stayed cold (frigid) all week. We got another snow storm Saturday, and while the temperatures rose a little Sunday, it wasn't enough to melt the foot or so of snow we'd received. It did leave a nice crust on top that Sunshine has had fun with. Temperatures are still lower than normal here and we're supposed to get more snow tonight or tomorrow morning.

Sunshine couldn't resist playing outside during Saturday's storm and came in looking like a frosted cupcake

Everyone who's from around here is bemoaning the snow and cold, but we're loving it! Well, maybe not the below-zero wind chills, but having snow that actually hangs around is great.

cold weather + actual snow = real winter!

Monday's snow was dry, but Saturday's snow ended with some sleet and a little melting on Sunday, which made for much better sledding conditions.

Sunshine loves the snow and will play in it for hours. River is not nearly as enthralled at this point.

We bundled River up, and he was very much underwhelmed. He's worn leather soft shoes his whole life and can't stand the heavy, non-flexible snow boots we forced onto his feet. He was afraid to move and acted like he was going to fall over at any second. We took him outside, and he just stood there. We tried to get him to sled with Sunshine, and he cried the whole time. Not a successful venture, but hilarious to watch his over-reactions.

Printer's Tray into Souvenir Pin Display

oops, just noticed the dirty vent- guess I need to clean that off!

and that ugly chair will not be staying ugly for too much longer

We tend to buy pins when we go places- they're small, inexpensive, and have the name of the place we visited, so we can remember where we visited. Much better than t-shirts or mugs or something :)

My sister put some felt in a large picture frame to display pins from her travels. I thought about doing the same, but decided to use a printer tray I found at a yard sale years ago.

I thought I took a picture of the tray on the wall before I got started, but I can't find it, and this is the best I could find

The tray has a wood bottom with wood dividers. I didn't want to stick pins into the wood, so I came up with a process that works well for holding the pins and looks nice.

I started by cutting rectangles of thick (6mm) craft foam for each little opening. I made sure that each piece of foam was cut just a little larger than the space so that the foam would stay in place because of the snug fit.

I then cut matching pieces of thin, sticky-back foam, and laid those pieces out on sheets of gray craft felt. I found it was easiest to cut the felt around the foam, rather than cut them separately and try to match them up.

the space with the two pins already in it was my test space where I made sure this would work before I cut all those pieces of foam

The last steps were to put double-stick tape on the front of the sticky-back foam and then fit the foam/felt piece into the space, pressing firmly so the tape would stick to the foam already in the space.

foam + felt; felt on the foam; tape on one side of the foam with felt on the other

Below I've added pins from our various trips. Some would fit better if the tray was oriented horizontally instead of vertically, but then some of the challenge coins wouldn't fit. I'll leave it alone for now.

I then added Mr M's challenge coins to the lower section. I need to figure out how to make them stay in place. Right now they're just setting on the dividers and the slightest bump will send them flying to the floor.

I'm missing some of the pins and coins we've collected, but I'm sure I'll find them as I sort through our bins of stuff to be scrapbooked. I'm super behind on our scrapbooks (I haven't done anything since Sunshine was tiny), but I'm determined to get caught up.

I'm happy with how this project turned out. It was a bit repetitious and tedious, but the end results look nice and we now have a way to display our souvenirs. And I'm finally using that printer's tray...

The 11 Mile Long Run That Wasn't

yay for lots of snow! 

Sunshine was very disappointed that it was too dry for good sledding and snowmen

I spoke too soon last Monday about feeling better. I felt crummy all week, and Friday I felt worse than I had the rest of the week. I had thought I could at least walk a few miles Friday, but even that wasn't happening. In fact, I stayed in my pj's all day and took it easy in the hope that all the rest would help me heal faster. I'm not sure if it was enough. I still have the sore throat I've had for the last week and a half, and I'm feeling bad enough that if I don't feel better tomorrow I'll be going to the doctor to make sure it's not strep or something.

Monday- still dealing with my cold, so decided to rest
Tuesday- feeling better (though not 100%), treadmill walk
Wednesday- treadmill walk
Thursday- treadmill walk
Friday- rest
Saturday- rest

When I went to bed Friday night, I still wasn't feeling great, but I figured I could manage to walk 7 or 8 miles the next day. While I did feel a little better, and I did think about hitting the treadmill, I ultimately decided another rest day was in order. I could have pushed through my sore throat and cold, but being perpetually tired because of my training and pregnancy is not conducive to healing. So as much as I wanted to increase my mileage, I didn't want to do it at the expense of my health.

Total mileage for the week: a paltry 5.19 miles.  Way lower than last week, but given how I feel, I'm ok with that.

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My race calendar had me scheduled for an 8 mile race this Saturday, but about two weeks ago I had some serious concerns about the scheduling. Mr M can't watch the kiddos that day and the race is far enough away that I'd have to leave at 6:30 am. Finding childcare at that hour of the morning was not going to be easy.

Coincidentally, I was looking through the local race calendars for a race to run in May when I noticed that a local 5k had been added for the same day I was supposed to run my 8 mile race. When I had looked originally, the only races I could find in February were the mud run I've done in the past (the first time I ran it I was about 10 weeks pregnant with River and it's not something I want to do while 20 weeks pregnant) and the 8 mile race an hour and a half away. I had intended the 8 mile race as a tune-up for the half marathon, but in the interest of scheduling I decided a 5k speed workout would be just as beneficial.

And then last week we had about a foot of snow and temps in the teens and twenties with wind chills in the negatives. This week is supposed to be a smidge warmer, but I'm not holding my breath on that. I've been training exclusively inside, so I'm not acclimated to the colder temps, and I'm still sick. So this race may end up being a 5k I do just to keep my body moving so I can try to keep up my training.

Sunday Funny

having fun with the couch cushions

River randomly bit Mr M's big toe awhile ago. We're not sure why his face was down by Mr M's feet or why he thought it would be a good idea, and it definitely caught Mr M unawares.

The other day I was sitting cross-legged on the bed with River, and he moved his face slow-motion (with his mouth wide open) down towards my toes. I had socks on, but he knew my toes were in there and he thought it would be funny to bite them. The mischievous look on his face said he knew exactly what he was doing, and was waiting to see how I'd react. He's definitely testing us :)