Maple Sugar Season

This little homestead of ours made another dream of mine (and my family) come true - harvesting our own maple syrup. Last fall the children and I identified 3 large sugar maple trees on our property (and apparently we have a lot more! I'll share more on that later on). I told my mom about them and then for Christmas she got us this tree tapping kit. About mid-March we tapped our trees. We decided to do a trial run. We didn't have all the supplies (like buckets and boiling pans) so we thought it best to start small and only collect 10 gallons of sap. That took us about one week. Once we had the full ten gallons we made a make-shift set up to boil it outside. We spent the whole day outside watching the sap boil and adding more as it got low. You can see in the photos that one of the pans got too low (the dark one) and the sap started turning into syrup too soon - we are still learning. Once it was all down to about 1/4 of what we started with, we filtered it and in I brought it inside to finish the process. I watched numerous videos on how to tell when the sap has turned into syrup, each one saying it is pretty impossible and you need a special thermometer. Even so, our syrup boiled a bit too longer and was slightly on the sugar side. We weren't discouraged though. It was our first try and besides, it tasted better than any syrup we had ever had. We ended up with a pint of syrup after all was said and done and we enjoyed it that night over waffles and pancakes. I don't think we'll ever forget that experience and are already making plans for a real sugar season next winter - hopefully with gallons upon gallons of syrup to put away for the following year.

p.s. - When we were tapping our trees an older neighbor drove by our house and noticed our tapped sugar maple trees. He turned his truck around and knocked on our door. You should have seen the smile on his face when I answered. He was blown away that we were tapping our trees. It is rather unheard of out here for younger families to be homesteading or really doing anything besides watching tv and playing video games. He proceeded to show us all the other sugar maples we could tap on our property (and oh my do we have a lot!) followed by all the tips he could think of. He has lived in this area since the 1980s and used to tap his trees all the time. He shared stories about the sugar shack he found on his property and how all the boys on our street used to tap their maples and bring the sap to the sugar shack to be boiled into syrup to bring home to their mothers. I wish that little shack still stood. Can you imagine what a community they must have had here? How they loved thy neighbor? I would love to bring that back.
After he shared all of his wisdom and stories, he left he telling us he would go searching for any maple tapping supplies he had left in his barn and bring them down.He has since given them to us and we can't wait to use them next year. They are treasures to us, for sure!

Maple Sugar Season

Snippets

Our school year begins Monday and I am still doing last minute preparations so this blog post is just little snippets of our lives the past couple of weeks. I have to thrown in here just how excited I am for this school year. I have been a rather reluctant homeschooler up til now (I am not saying I am head over heels still, but I am getting there). There is something about this year that has me so enthusiastic about schooling. Maybe because it is Little L's first real year, or how much I planned out, or maybe even the crazy strict homeschooling laws here that will keep me in line (somewhat joking there). I don't know, but I am going to embrace it! We'll start our day off with a special back to school surprise breakfast treat - waffles with whipped cream. 😋



Little L has been having fun digging for treasures on the banks of our creek. There is one special place her calls his mine where most of the treasures are found, especially after the flooding. He has quite a stash of old glass bottles from that mine but the ones you see above I just can not get clean. The top photo shows how they were when he dug them up and the bottom one is after I scrubbed them with baking soda, vinegar and thieves soap. I got them mostly clean but as you can see in the one bottle there is something stuck inside. Kevin thinks it might be old hardened stove polish (that is what the bottle once held). Any thoughts on how to get it out?



Made my first ever sauerkraut thanks to a great group of ladies I joined at our local library. It was very Home Fires-esque. I look forward to the next meeting. I was the youngest one there which was a bit funny but eh, that's okay. This is from the group's flyer:  "FULL CIRCLE FUTURE HARVEST is a group of like minded people that meet throughout the year to discuss what WE CAN DO to improve our lives as well as those around us. The programs are presented by the group and community members, including Master Gardeners and healthcare professionals. The group promotes the importance of having healthy soil and growing non-genetically modified seeds to produce nutritious fruits and vegetables, as well as explores the use of functional medicine. Applying these practices to our lives help us attain and maintain a higher quality of life."



Little L's latest creation out of Kevin's old construx - a helicopter. It has already been taken apart and made into a corn combine. He is obsessed with those right now. In September he gets to go visits one of Purple Grandma's friends and ride in one as he harvest the corn. That will be quite the big day for him.



There is a big possibility one of our chickens might be a rooster. This is Egger, one of Little L's chickens. We are a bit nervous about the outcome of this if Egger really is a rooster. Thankfully we live out in the country where we are zoned for roosters so either way we won't have to find him a new home. Phew!!

Snippets

Real Food on a Budget

Most of you already know of my love for real, organic food. I have been carrying on and on about it in this space for years now. I am also pretty sure you know of the importance of budgeting in my family - more people means more love but also more money spent on food. Let's face it - eating healthy, real food and saving money don't exactly go together, unless you think about the money you'll save in the future on doctor's bills. However I am talking about the present. The time when we only have X amount of money to spend on groceries that need to last us Y amount of days.

I confess as hard as I try to budget (and believe me I put a lot into it - hours each week), there are weeks where we'll eat like kings for a few days only to find out we are short on money towards the end of the week and end up having to eat ramen noodles to get by. We are essentially undoing all the good of the real food we previously ate with the processed junk. Ridiculous, right?! I just find myself confused and thinking something's gotta give.

With that in mind, you can imagine my excitement when I saw that one of my favorite authors is coming out with a book all about eating real food on a budget. 😍 Lisa Leake's new book 100 Days of Real Food on a Budget is available for pre-order now and will be released on Tuesday August 14th. I had the pleasure of getting an advance copy in the mail just the other day (I may or may not have jumped up and down and squealed like a schoolgirl when it arrived). I have been reading through it every chance I get. The recipes all look incredibly scrumptious and I look forward to trying them as soon as possible - the Southwest Salad is calling my name. For my fellow vegan and vegetarian friends this cookbook has quite a few recipes to meet our needs and most can easily be adapted (ie. use homemade sprouted almond milk in place of the cow's milk). It contains recipes for other dietary restrictions as well. Equally exciting though is the entire first chapter. Lisa shares her budgeting tricks, ways to lower your grocery bill, and meal plans that even include average costs as well as a meal plan template. She also has a supermarket coast comparison chart that really opened my eyes. Granted prices vary depending on where you are living but it still gives you a good idea of where to shop for particular items. Every family that wants to eat healthy but feels like they never could due to expense needs a copy of this book. It really can be done!

Here is a sample recipe from 100 Days of Real Food on a Budget. Click on it to see a bigger version.




For once I look forward to sitting down and planning our meal plan and budget for the upcoming week. I feel like perhaps now I can finally conquer the beast that is eating healthy while staying within our means.

I am giving away a copy of Lisa Leake's first book (a big game changer and personal favorite of my family) 100 Days of Real Food on my Instagram account. Be sure to check it out!

Real Food on a Budget

Our Wild Garden of Eatin'

Blurry but such a sweet moment Blackberry leaves Blackberries Blackberry flower Salmonberry Thimbleberries hiding in the rhododendron Thimbleberries Chickweed

It is funny how sometimes the things that you are wanting are literally right under your nose, but you don't even notice they are there. The children and I were lamenting over the loss of our little Idaho garden. Sure, we grew a tomato plant in a pot here so we would have something but that doesn't quite fit the bill now does it? We knew there would be at least one summer without a garden as we found our home so we were prepared for it, but that still doesn't take the desire away. We all missed our garden snacking and getting our hands in the earth. Then one by one we all started to see our backyard here in new light. It seemed as if each day a new edible plant appeared. First it was the salmonberries and plantain then thimbleberries started to appear and now blackberries are taking over a small corner. We harvested some chickweed from the forest and starting growing it in a pot, too. Well, what do you know? We have our own little wild garden of eatin'. Can't wait for blackberry season. Bring on the jam, cobblers and pie! Any other blackberry ideas?

p.s. - That was C's first time wearing her baby brother in the Tula. As you can see they both loved it. Also, you may have seen on IG that Baby F is now refusing naps. However he does enjoy tricking me by running into our bedroom, climbing into bed and tucking himself in. Then he just sits there giggling like crazy. Silly boy!

Our Wild Garden of Eatin'

Foraging

A couple of weekends back my family and I traveled to Pine, Idaho. Kevin and the girls had been there many times before, camping with AHG, but Little L, Baby F and I had never been. They knew I would love it there with its abundance of trees, endless amounts of foraging, and Steller's Jays (one of my favorite birds) so they took me on a day trip. I mentioned the trip to one of my neighbors before we left and she said that she found elderberries in that area (She knew I had been searching for them but wasn't willing to drive on the "cliff of death" to get to them in a location nearby. I named it the cliff of death because it seriously had me in tears the one and only time we drove on it three years ago). With that knowledge in mind, I made it my mission to search for the berries while we were there and teach my children how to find them.

They were not hard to find at all. I actually kept spotting them on the side of the road on our drive up. At first, in my excitement, I wanted to make Kevin pull over the van so I could start gathering some but then I realized that wouldn't be the best idea. Plants right next to the road are coated in exhaust fumes. So I tried my best to exercise some self control each time we passed another shrub. However, I did keep pointing and blurting out, "Elderberries!" like a little kid. Small steps. 

When we arrived at the campsite that AHG used I couldn't believe my eyes. We were surrounded by beautiful coniferous trees covered in moss, just like back home in Oregon. I could hear the sound of water rushing, squirrels chattering and chickadees chirping. Misty rain kissed my face as it fell all around us. Oh yes, my family knows me well - Pine was just what this Oregonian heart needed.

After I got Baby F in the carrier on me, the girls were running about excited to show me all the wild herbs they spotted there on their last camping trip. On a side note - I am so thankful we got the Herb Fairies set last year. The girls knew how to search for and identify the herbs all on their own. They found curly dock, chamomile, spearmint, blue spruce, lemon balm...and I know there was more but now I have forgotten. I am sure if we had more time to spend there we would find even more. As we climbed down to the river bank I started spying elderberry shrubs. I walked over to examine them and once I knew for certain they were elderberries I showed the children. K told me that she was playing with the berries last camping trip but didn't realize they were edible (I taught her when she was young to never eat wild berries without checking with me first. I have this fear of wild berries and mushrooms). We started filling our bags with the berries, going from shrub to shrub making sure to leave plenty for the wildlife. In the end we had three overflowing grocery bags filled with elderberries. Plenty to last my family of six through the winter of this year and possibly the next! Once we did some more foraging, soaked in the beauty, played with Kaze in the river and carried a soaking wet Little L back to the van we headed home.

My house has become an elderberry processing plant since then. Would you believe that I am still processing them? I don't like to work with them around Baby F (choking hazards with poisonous stems) and since he doesn't seem to want to take naps lately I am slowly moving along. I also discovered that the bloom (white coating) on the elderberries can be tricky and hide the actual color of the berry. They look ripe but when you rub the bloom off you will see they are red or green (poisonous) instead. You can see in the photograph below what I mean. All the berries on that tray looked ripe when I put them in the oven but once the bloom came off there were quite a few green and red ones for me to discard.



I am currently dehydrating batches of them, freezing others as well as making elderberry syrup. I normally use Rosemary Gladstar's recipe for the syrup (from this book) but this time I decided to try something different and went with this one. The children all agree they like this version better with the cinnamon in it. I think I will try my friend Stephinie's recipe for our next batch (we'll even have echinacea root from our own garden to use).



I also went a little elderberry crazy and decided to try my hand at dyeing a skein of wool yarn with help from this book. Of course I didn't decide this until after I put them in the freezer, which distorts the color a bit. Oh well. I think it came out pretty, still. It was hard to capture but the purple has so much depth to it. C claimed this yarn along with her pink amaranth yarn.

And on that note, I think you probably already know what I am off to do - more processing! 

Foraging