Maple Syrup days!

The reason for the exclamation point is what I observed during the hours of tending the fire and the pots of sap as they cooked down on our makeshift stove. We bought sixteen cinder blocks, and two boxes of fire brick, used the grids from our big grill, and cooked in three pots for five days. That sounds like a lot! Guess what, even when you spend half a day reloading your pats with sap as it cooks down, what you end up with at the evening cook down is somewhere between 30 and 45 ounces of pure maple syrup. Back to the observations: We still have at least two feet of packed snow everywhere. In the morning when it is crispy, you think it is safer to walk, but there is always a weak spot where you sink in past your boots. Later when you know it is soft and you think you are smart to walk in the places you have previously stepped, there is a good chance you will fall because it is mushy, slippery, and will surprise you even if you are concentrating on every step. Second: looking up above the white mass of snow and the bare maple trees the sky is such a deep blue, it doesnt look like a "sky" at all. It looks like you can see right out into deep space, it gets so dark when you stare at it. Another thing, later in the day when you are staring up into the deep blue, the branches of the trees make a golden lace that reaches into the blue. I tried, but my camera could not capture that image. Third: It is now April, and it was eleven degrees this morning. I as always, jumped out of bed after the sun was up, and pulled on my clothes to go out to lay out a little corn for the deer. It is really getting hard on them, this late cold and deep snow. There were twenty this morning, waiting for their bite of corn. Their faces are so dear to me, and I hope they can hang on for a while longer for the bite of green that will come. Some of the little ones are getting so bold now, almost following me as I make little piles of corn on the crispy surface of the snow so that they can munch on a clean surface. The turkeys have been in, and they really leave a mess where they are...if you know what I mean. Deer are more like dogs, they dont mess where they eat. They so politely take a few steps into the woods and leave their mess there. They wag their tail when they are happy to see the food coming. They look carefully into your face to see if you mean them harm or are bringing only peace. I was convinced that one of them is mongoloid, his face shape and set of his eyes is so different than the others. He has very little fear, and dives in first, even when the others hang back. He is so fuzzy, and even though he has no markings of being a boy, it just is obvious. Our friend Richard says he looks like he is a cross between a donkey and a deer. Duke and Angel (my little spotted deer from last summer) have grown bigger and stronger, and Duke has the spots that will become horns on his head. Angel is a smaller version of her mother. They live in the back now in the cedar woods, and they come in in the morning before the others. When I put out the corn, if no deer are present I call out very loudly "Ma-Mahh" and they arrive just as I get back to the garage to put the corn bucket away. Just one comment: life now is so far away from the life in Naperville and Plano. I understand why I was on auto pilot in Texas. What a monstrous mess of filling your days doing and doing and doing without the reward and joy of just living. Why doctors can build entire practices of prescribing pills to teens and their parents to cope. I am grateful now for each morning, full of squirrels trying to steal the seeds from the bird feeders, birds flying in flocks hungry for the offering, deer and turkey the constant companion in my view out my window. The hundreds of trees, twenty that are now offering me their sap to cook down into unrivaled deliciousness. For the big field that I garden, even though I have to fight for the return with the locals.(animals) I am amzed to see a porcupine on my walk to the mailbox, sometimes a giant owl peers down at me from a high perch. Around the corner a roadkill deer is feeding a pair of eagles as well as a flock of ravens. I cant wait for late spring, when I cna venture out into the woods on my four wheeler and see a wolf hunting in the woods, apple blossoms and later apples that will feed my deer friends, wild raspberries and blueberries for all of us. I feel like it all has led to this place, this joy. Thank you.

Thursday

Ususally Thursday starts at 4:30 am with Rotary Breakfast. This week was Spring Break for the Rotary and I got to sleep in until 7:01 a.m. I packed my husband is usual lunch of fruit, plain Greek yogurt, more fruit, walnuts and dried fruit, and granola. This lunch he eats at short intervals all day and has lost 50 pounds in just over a year. He didn't lose just from the lunch, we made a total commitment to his health in January last year. We work out, and eat right. Breakfast today was a bowl of cereal (mostly unsweetened) a vitamin and health juice, coffee and our muffin. Those recipes will be found here on the next day I make them. Dinner last night: We had leftover round steak. I gave the bone to Manny, and cooked soup out of 6 cups water, 1/4 cup pearled barley, round steak cut to 1/2 in. dice, 1/2 sweet onion, 2 stalks of celery, about one cup leftover green beans, 1 medium carrot, sliced to 1/8 in, and about one cup of roasted red pepper soup added for color and flavor. I also put in some beef soup base (Tones, at Sams club). That simmered for a couple of hours, while we walked about two miles on the bike path and in the neighborhood. We paired the soup for dinner with a whole grain wrap sandwich filled with a shmear of roasted pine nut hummus, a slice of turkey sandwich meat, a piece of havarti cheese, tomato slices and baby field greens with cilantro and dill. It was yummy. Later on we each had a chocolate from the box of good chocolate. After this year of eating "clean" and more healthfully, we have discovered the joy of eating at home and are ever more wary of eating out. When you eat out, do you know what is in your food? Or, even more scary, where is the origin of that food? How do you really feel about food that may be caught, grown, or packaged in China or Vietnam? I know how I feel, and that is why I started yesterday getting dirt under my fingernails. I have been worm farming about a year now, and this is the first time I get to plant my seeds in a compost of worm castings, seed starter and coco fiber. I started to fill my starter pots yesterday, and put in my first seeds of this year. I also dug about 1/3 of my home garden and planted the radishes and beets in the garden. I was pleased to see that the oregano, cilantro, chives, and parsley have made it through the winter and are green out there already. I will probably go to my big garden this weekend and start turning over the dirt and cleaning out from last fall. It is still a couple of months until real planting starts there, and we have a wedding and reception to complete and compete with our time. Yesterday, I painted the basement bathroom. It is a lovely cream color, in a nice semi gloss. The color is Evermore Vernon, and I am pretty sure it is a $5 gallon of mismix that I got at the Home Depot. I saw some lovely paint at Lowes the other day for $5 and $2.50. It is so hard not to buy paint but I have already had enough for this year. We are freshening up the big family room in the basement and the bath down there, soon will paint the kitchen too. (The basement kitchen. ) Today is Friday, so it is a no meat day. I will have the yogurt/fruit combo for lunch, and peanut butter on crackers for a snack, as well as more fruit. Tonight I will make grilled fish with some nice grilled veggies and some brown rice. Tomorrow I am going to make another soup.