Seeds!

It's amazing how well you can feed yourself and your family with a few dollars worth of seeds.  

It's seed planting time!  In fact I'm a bit behind on getting my transplants started - maple season consumed my time - but better late than never. 

Do you ever feel like you're doing something kind of futile when you put those hard little seeds into a planter?  You think, "they're not going to grow."  Then, doesn't it make the miracle of them coming up out of the ground just that much better!?!

Florida

I'm in Florida for a few days. I'll be back on Friday!

Chicken Fencing

It's happened.  We finally have decided to build a fence to contain the chickens.  

They have developed a nasty habit of hanging out around the house, pooping all over the walks, coming through the dog door into the garage to eat dog food (and pooping in the garage!), dig up my flower beds, and with a whole world of beautiful green grass and clover to munch on they decide they'd rather eat the newly sprouting hostas and daylilies.

We decided that the cost of fencing in the chickens is much less than the cost of fencing in all of the gardens.  I find that chickens are very destructive to a garden!

We're planning a very large enclosed area so they can scratch and peck and do their chicken things and we'll bring them all the weeds from the gardens for fresh greens.  

The end result is that I can actually have nice landscaping, I don't have to fence around every single garden (that's a lot of fencing), and the kids will be able play outside with bare feet!

... one other bonus is that the chickens will be more protected from predators.  Red-tailed hawks are a big  problem for my chickens (that's what killed our beloved rooster, Pants On The Ground) and I plan to run strands of fish line across the top of the enclosure to discourage the hawks.

Pulling Taps And Battling "Red Brush"

Most of the maple taps have been pulled.  I just had one area to finish in a more remote part of the forest.  As I worked I became reacquainted with a fiendish shrub for which I just learned a new name.  

I've always simply called it "pricker bushes" but in this area, and maybe this is the correct term, it's called red brush.  When the weather is too hot to wear heavy canvas clothing (78-degrees yesterday!), and you're wearing jeans and a t-shirt, it can make pulling taps a misery!

Credit: www.dreamtime.com

It some areas it grows taller than my head.  I have a scratch across my forehead to attest to that!  As it grabs you it breaks off it's stickers into your clothing so that even if you pull yourself free, you still get a sharp point poking into you.  

By the time I finished yesterday (and I couldn't finish pulling the taps - I called my husband and told him we needed to get in with a weed whacker to clear some paths) I looked like I'd been in a fight with a bobcat!

Red brush.... I think pricker bush is much more accurate.

Spring Is Here - For Now Anyway!

Odds and ends....

This morning, while the children got ready for school, I stepped out on the front porch and listened to the birds.  One can't help but smile when listening to the music!

The maple sap run is over. Now we've moved on to cleaning the sugar house and pulling taps.  It seems like we barely started and it's already over!  But there were a lot of full days of work tending the evaporator and collecting sap.  Maple sap almost consumes your life for the short period that it's here.  According to my husband we finished with almost 100 gallons of maple syrup.  A lot of it, though, is quite dark.  Personally, I'm partial to the dark maple syrup, I feel like it has a richer maple flavor.  I just hope that it will sell!

So now, planting has begun.  I'm a bit behind the ball on getting my seeds for transplanting started, but better late than never!

I entered a Grow It Forward Heirloom Garden Contest.  The contest encourages gardeners to grow heirloom, non-GMO vegetables.  They want to Grow It Forward for the benefit of future generations.  I love their logo:

Grow Heirlooms. Grow Diversity. Grow Community. Grow It Forward.

I entered the contest and was sent five packs of seeds.  It's kind of funny that I was already growing three of the packets they sent me!  The packs I received were: 

Artichoke, Gobbo di nizzia cardoon (You eat the stalks and they're supposed to taste like artichokes - I'm growing them in the high tunnel because they like a lot of heat and have a loong growing season 

Beans, Royalty purple pod (I had these) 

Peppers, Lemon Drop (Interesting, a tiny, hot, yellow pepper) 

Tomato, Striped green bell ( I had these)

Beet, Mammoth Red Mangel (Ironic, because I had ordered these - and paid too much money - from eBay!  They're supposed to be a good winter feed for livestock - including chickens) 

In the contest, I can win prizes related to gardening.  So it would be nice if you occasionally clicked on the Grow It Forward widget to the right of my blog posts and left a comments for Fitzgerald's Family Farm.  

The quickest way to find me is to go to the Gardens tab along the top and click on it.  Then go to "All Grow It Foward Heirloom Gardens" tab near the top and after you click on that you go down along the right, to where it says "Find Gardens in Your Area." Put in Coudersport, PA.  Hopefully I'll show up! (They didn't make this easy!)  

My camera is AWOL.  As soon as I find it I'll be posting lots and lots of pictures!  

I need to go out and enjoy these beautiful days!  Some cooler weather is on it's way!

Spring, Almost

The sunshine gleams so bright and warm,

The sky is blue and clear.

I run outdoors without a coat,

And spring is almost here.

Then before I know it,

Small clouds have blown together,

Till the sun just can't get through them,

And again, it's mitten weather.

Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

We've Boiled Down All The Sap

All the sap we collected is finally boiled down with a grand total of about 80 gallons of maple syrup made! A lot of it is quite dark.  

The maple taps get pulled today.