Maple Sugaring Time!

     The long winter is winding down.  How do I know?  The maples are starting to flow!  This tends to be a tough time of year for many people.  The ground is covered with dirty snow which is not very pretty (besides, most people are probably sick of any kind of snow by now).  As it slowly melts, it creates mud puddles (the sign New England's 5th season, "mud season", is starting).  Even though the days are warming into the 40's, the nights are still very cold.  There is not much to look forward to at this time here in New England.  The skiing season is starting to come to an end, and it is too soggy and muddy for hiking.  Maple sugaring to the rescue!!  What better reason is there to be outside than to tap and collect sap from your maple trees and turn it into delicious syrup.

     Last year was the first time we tapped any of our trees.  It started as an experiment because my husband wanted to make birch beer (not the soda kind, but actual beer).  We tapped 5 birch trees and at the last minute decided to tap a maple.  Apparently, last year was not a good year for sap, but we still got enough sap to make about a pint of syrup.  The birches, by the way, started to flow later than the maple and once they started, they filled our 5 gallon buckets very quickly (one bucket per tree).

     This year, we tapped 9 maples (Red Maples and Sugar Maples).  When we collect sap, we bring it into the house.  Our house is very dry thanks to our wood stove, so the moisture from simmering the sap over a low heat is welcome.  We use a large pot (my canning pot) to simmer the newly collected sap until it is reduced, then we add it to our 2nd pot where we are collecting the first batches of the year.  When we have enough to fill one of our bottles, we will finish simmering this pot to an appropriate sugar level. 

     We are hoping to have enough syrup this season to make it through the year!

Winter Eggs

When I first started keeping chickens, I figured winter would be a problem for me.  Everything I had read said if you don't provide extra light (chickens need about 14 hours a day), they will slow down and probably stop laying for the winter.  My coops do not have electricity, so extra lighting is not an option.  Besides, who am I to fight nature?  It is natural for them to have a break in the winter- after all it is not a good time to hatch chicks (the obvious main reason a chicken lays eggs).

So, my first winter I kept waiting for egg production to continually drop.  I did notice my older hens did slow down, but would still lay an occasional egg (their eggs are bigger than pullet eggs).  However, my pullets continued to lay right through winter.  I kept searching for information on this and couldn't find much.  Finally in an issue of Backyard Poultry someone wrote in about their chickens and asked about their pullets- would they continue to lay through their first winter.  The response was that they very well could! 

This is my trick to continue to have a steady supply of eggs during the winter- I continue to have pullets who start laying in the fall and they continue through the darker winter months.