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

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

Nature's Playground

A little hard to see under my refection but there are fish in there Snowberries! I haven't seen any since we lived in Portland. Searching for Crayfish Baby F wants his turn to walk Nara ...But he isn't old enough yet. Poor guy. Wanting his big sister Blackberry snacks picked by K

When you combine Labor Day weekend with hot weather you get two thing - endless traffic and crowded beaches. So when it got hot today instead of escaping to the beach as we usually do, we decided to something a little different. We packed bathing suits and went to the Salmon River instead. The part of the river that is close to our house is rather peaceful with water shallow enough for Baby F but still deep enough in spots for my older children. There are endless amounts of trees to provide shade and, at the moment, plentiful blackberries to snack on. It really can't get much more perfect. I feel very fortunate to have such a spot nearby.  I have often imagined such a place for my children to play through the years.

Nature's Playground

This little light of mine...

My children and I have been having fun with beeswax the past few weeks (hence the outdated Mother's Day candle photo. We sent that candle to Nana). Too bad computer screens aren't scratch and sniff, our home smells incredible - like honeycomb! I love it when we do crafts with beeswax. Oh what I wouldn't give to have honeybees of our own. I pray someday that will happen but for now I am content with purchasing beeswax from beekeepers who love their bees.

Tomorrow is the girls' last night of AHG until next September. It will be bittersweet as we have grown to love the incredible ladies that put all their heart and soul into this group. Thankfully most of them live walking distance from us and I am sure we will see them over the summer. Speaking of these inspiring women - I need to run and finish wrapping up their candles and bake our snack for the party (our thumbprint cookie recipe - yum!). I hope you all had a beautiful weekend!

This little light of mine...

The sound of sunshine

*Above photos by C* Oh my - spring is here! The bright sunshine is bringing me back to life as it fills every corner of our home. We have been making endless batches of vegan ice cream using the Vice Cream cookbook (made from simple ingredients of cashews, maple syrup, water and whatever flavor we choose). It's incredibly delicious. I can't believe we haven't made it in years. I sort of forgot about the ice cream maker my Mom gifted Kevin back when we lived in Virginia.

 This CD has pretty much become our warm weather soundtrack. I love watching my kiddos dance around and act crazy to it. We pretty much have gone without music in front of the children (via CDs, radio, etc.) since K was born, following the Waldorf way of only having music that is played or sung live by us or other people around us. The thing is, Kevin and I both don't play any instruments and I can't sing to save my life (even though I still do sing all the time throughout the day for my children), so I gave in and am allowing some carefully chosen music into our home.

Our garden should really be ready for planting right now but I am so far behind. The plan is to get everything ready and seeds and/or sprouts into the ground this week. I am hoping that with my little helpers it will actually happen but we'll see what this week brings.

We have been spending the weekend in preparation for Purple Grandma's visit this week. Some days it's hard to keep up on the children to clean up their things as they go, it seems harder when we are trying to clean for guests. As K was cleaning up some things in the front room, she said something that really struck me. She said, "Mama, I wish we didn't have any toys - well, except for Horseshoe. I enjoy cleaning up in Purple Grandma's hotel room because we don't have anything there. Plus I really enjoy using my imagination more without toys." Out of the mouth of babes, right?! I understand that Grandma's hotel room is something new and exciting so of course they might find more pleasure in keeping it clean but there is a lot more to it. All three of my children have said similar things before and K had a lot of wisdom in her words there. Kim John Payne sheds light on the problem with children having too many possessions in Simplicity Parenting. If I could get to my copy right now I would share some great quotes from it, but alas it is with a temporarily sleeping baby. To each her own, of course, and we all have different ideas of what is "too much" for our own families.

But what it boils down to, at least for my children - It's not about children who "won't listen" but rather about having too much stuff.

 I need to work harder on keeping our home simple, I know it. I allow too much to come in some days and then pay for it soon thereafter. I am curious what it is about our culture that makes Americans feels the need to constantly buy things. Is it a need to fill a void in our lives? I know I was guilty of that when we first moved here, and still struggle with it at times. What is really strange to me, too, is that those of us who choose/try to shun this way of life are deemed ungrateful by some. Why is this? I happened to pick up my copy of The Creative Family yesterday as I pondered these questions and I wanted to share with you a little excerpt that jumped out at me:

"When it comes to playthings for our children, I can't emphasize enough that for creative play, less really is more in regard to toys. Between generous gifts from family members, hand-me-downs, and accessible inexpensive toys, it is quite likely that our homes are cluttered and full of play things. A sad product of our modern world is that our children are taught early on to over-consume and to want more, more and more. Chances are that they do not need more toys, but fewer. When there are too many things around, there's little room for imagination."

That quote reminded me that whatever others' views or opinions are on our desire to live with less, we need to stay strong as a family unit and stick with it. Not just for our own sanity but for our children's futures, shaping them to help bring change to our modern society.

The sound of sunshine