Port Potager

This turned out to be a really strange maple sugaring season.  We tapped the tree back in February when we had a bit of a warm-up, and at first things went really well. Afternoons were warm, and we started out with a strong run of sap. Then it got too  hot, and the sap stopped running because the temperatures didn’t drop below freezing for several nights in a row. And then   temperatures plunged , and it didn’t get above  freezing for almost a week. So still not much sap, but for the opposite reason. Then on our final weekend of boiling, this happened: It started as rain but turned to snow while we had the fire going. Not that big of a deal, but not exactly pleasant. But since we weren’t exactly keeping a keen eye on things, we also ended up burning a batch that boiled down more quickly than we expected. And by last weekend, the sap had turned: Once it runs yellow, the season is over. This sap isn’t sweet at all, so I’ve been using...

What's the price of maple syrup? I'm not sure how much we're talking about in USD, since we haven't bought any in a few years , but we just traded some for four (!!) live lobsters (okay, so one was missing a claw, but still). One of the doctors Kirk works with has a boat, and this spring he took a pint of this year's maple syrup in trade for the promise of summer fish. We were hoping for some blue fish, but with the season coming to an end, he hadn't gotten much of anything. So a couple nights ago he came to the door with a cooler full of lobsters from his traps. We kept them in a bowl in the mini fridge on the porch (no need to terrify the children), and tonight Kirk steamed them up: I will admit that I have no interest in cracking open a lobster and fighting to dig out the meat, and Kirk did yeoman's work on picking all four of these. After putting the shells and legs into a pot with celery, carrots, onion and parsley to make some lobster stock ...

Today marks a major transition. It was our last day of maple sugaring, and tomorrow we will dismantle the fire pit  that we've used for the past month for evaporating sap and use the cinder block as the base for our rain barrels. Now that nighttime temperatures aren't dipping below freezing (much) any more, the sap isn't running. It's also safe to get the rain barrels set up, since any rain we collect won't have a chance to freeze solid and burst the barrels. This is perfect timing, as we were able to set out a lot of seeds and transplants now that the weather is has finally taken a turn for the better. In honor of the close of our second maple sugaring season, I'm sharing a great recipe that Kirk made last weekend for Easter breakfast. It's a riff off of his dad's Philadelphia cinnamon bun recipe, but made with our homemade maple syrup. Maple Walnut Sticky Buns 1/4 warm water 1 package yeast 1 tsp. sugar 3 to 3/12 cups flour 2...

With just a few warm(ish) days, the snow pack has melted significantly since Kirk first dug out a place for the fire pit on the patio back in February : And, as you can see, Kirk set up the fire pit and our evaporator system to start boiling sap today. Last year we used any old bricks we had lying around for the floor, but today Kirk bought some fire bricks for an upgrade: Now the cinderblock box has a fireproof floor to protect the patio and  an inner wall to protect the cinderblocks. It makes the area for firewood smaller, but I think it's better insulated, so it produces just as much heat. This is normally a weekend project, but Kirk had off today, so he decided to get a jump on boiling our first 7 gallons of sap before more sleet and snow arrive over the weekend. We cannot catch a break on the weather. Despite the fact that it is still most definitely winter, we're slowly but surely getting our spring projects underway. As I write this, the ...

Last night we had a pretty excellent Sunday supper. It was all delicious, but can you spot the star ingredient? Our colorful wintertime plate included herbed mashed potatoes and gravy, a really tasty rosemary roast dressed with horseradish, roasted carrots and parsnips, and (drumroll) Brussels sprouts! If you have been following this blog for some time, you know that growing Brussels sprouts has been an ongoing challenge for us. This year we finally had some worth harvesting, and last night we enjoyed them sautéed with just a touch of maple syrup. They were sweet and tender after spending a good month out in the cold, and I will give a full accounting of the successes and failures of the Brussels sprout crop later this week. For dessert we opened up the spiced peaches that Jonas made back in the summer: True to their name, they were very, very spicy. Luckily, these were very ripe and very sweet peaches that could stand up to the powerful amount of cinnamon we ...

As of this weekend, our maple sugaring season is over. The trees haven't budded out yet, but the sap has slowed way down now that we aren't getting below freezing temperatures at nighttime any more. We boiled down our last three pints of syrup over the weekend, and next weekend we will be dismantling the fire pit , taking out the spiles , and cleaning everything up to pack away for next year. 2014 maple sugaring stats: 4 taps (3 in our sugar maple and 1 in our Norway maple) 32 days of collecting sap 80-90 gallons of sap 17 1/2 pints of maple syrup The one thing I didn't keep records of was the obscene amount of firewood we burned through to make this happen. I do now that we spent a lot of money on it, because we were getting it at the hardware store by the bag. In the future, we plan to build a small woodshed behind the garage and order a half-cord or cord in the fall, which will see us through any emergency fires we'd need to light due to a power ...

Since we're not planning to sell our maple syrup, we are perfectly content to keep it in mason jars until we need it. It's very easy to "can" maple syrup: 1. Dry sterilize the jars. We do this by putting them in a square cake pan in the oven as it heats to 220. Then we turn off the oven but keep them in it so they stay warm until we need them. (The pan just makes it easy to get them in and out of the oven.) 2. When the maple syrup is done boiling and off the heat, funnel it directly into the hot jars. Because the syrup is so hot, you can use it to sterilize the lid. Put the lid in place and screw on the ring very tightly , then (with oven mitts!) tip the jar upside down before placing it on a towel to cool on a countertop. 3. The syrup is so hot that you don't need to worry about a water bath to seal them, either. The vacuum action will happen to seal the jars up, and then you can keep them on the shelf instead of in the fridge. The one drawback...

Winter is finally (technically) over! I know that tonight it will probably snow again before all's said and done, and it will still be cold and windy for some time yet, but still. By this time tomorrow we will at least be reveling in the knowledge that the daylight has finally overcome the darkness, and will increase each day. The cold can't hold out much longer against those odds. Ahhh. Time to start thing about some seasonal eats. We have just eaten our last parsnips, and are down to our last couple leeks and squashes. I think we have a handful or two of potatoes, and a decent amount of garlic, plus some frozen beans. That's not a whole lot to get us through until the greens come up in the garden in force, considering that we were only able to sow the first round of them this past weekend . Spring has been so long in coming that we won't be having salads any time soon, thanks to the well-below average temperatures this month. So what kind of seasonal goodies ca...

It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel...

Now that the maples are tapped and we've been collecting sap for several days, it's time to turn that sap into syrup!  We decided to do this the old-fashioned way, over a fire: First we had to dig out a hole in the snow on our patio to make a place to set our fire bowl. You could also do this on your grill in a pinch, but our fire bowl is bigger. It's not an ideal set-up, but we're too poor for a fancy evaporator , and we don't have any cinder blocks on hand to build a temporary fire pit . The drawback with using the fire bowl is that you have to remove the grate and pans of boiling syrup to re-stoke the fire every so often. That's not hard, but it does slow things down because the pans have to get back up to temperature after they've cooled a little. If we built a cinder block contraption to contain the fire but give us access to add wood on the side, that would be more efficient. Maybe next time! Anyway, here is our actual fire getting ...