Port Potager

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 ...

Now that our trees are tapped, we need to check the buckets every day. Otherwise, they'll be overflowing on warm afternoons when the sap is really flowing fast. It's easy to do. First, slide the pin out to remove the lid:  Of course, you can lift the lid to take a peek first. This bucket is getting full, so we need to empty it into our storage containers: This photo was from the weekend, when it was cold enough over night for some of the sap to freeze (you can see the ice on the surface above). When this happens, you just throw the ice away. Here's a big chunk I picked out of another bucket: It may seem wasteful, but if it is frozen, that part doesn't have much sugar in it anyway. Think of it this way: Have you ever tried to freeze fruit juice for a toothpick popsicle, only to be disappointed in how soft it was? That's because sugar lowers the freezing point of water. Therefore you can be pretty sure that the frozen part is just water, a...

I don't want to jinx it, but I think our time in the Polar Vortex might be coming to a close. As far as the eye can see on the weather forecast (okay, so about 10 days), the daytime temperatures will be above freezing.  Woo hoo! This is exciting not just because it's warm enough to be outside without freezing your face off — it's also maple sugaring season! That means it's above freezing during the day (probably around 40 degrees) and below freezing at night (probably back in the 20s). We're finally having a stretch of weather like that, and this year we got the tools we needed to give it a try. Here's what you need and how to do it: First, you need a maple tree. We have two:  a great big one in the front yard , and a much smaller one in the back. You can tap any old maple you like, but a sugar maple is best (obviously — the name doesn't come outta nowhere!)  I'm fairly confident that the tree we have in the front is, in fact, a sugar ...

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, Is far beyond a prince's delicates... ~Henry VI, Part III, Act 4, scene 5 So today we had a consult with some company that wants to sign up everyone in Newburyport for solar. This is something we've always been interested in but haven't managed to get around to, so when a couple of college kids came knocking on our door because our house was on the list of good, sunny prospects, I signed up for a consult. Our southwest-facing roof was deemed ideal by the consultant, who was planning to check out the roof and electric panel to make sure our house could support the system.  "Just one question before we start. How do you feel about that tree?" Um, we love this tree. Non-negotiable. And that was the end of that. No solar for us.  Unless, as the consultant helpfully suggested, a storm ever knocks out that tree — then we should give him a call b...

During our vacation to Mexico earlier this month, we were surrounded by all kinds of plants we can't grow. We've resigned ourselves to having to buy our citrus, bananas, and avocados, but then we discovered something else: coconuts. On the beach in Tulum, a Mayan vendor and his son walked the beach selling freshly harvested coconuts. We bought a small bag filled with a bunch of slices, as you can see in the photo above.  Fresh coconut is nothing like the shredded, dried stuff you get in the grocery store to make macaroons. Although I like that too, the fresh slices are much more nutty in flavor. The texture is kind of like a water chestnut, although not quite that moist. It's really good, and feels like somehow eating a cool, refreshing protein. Too bad there's no way to recreate that here at home. It was also a main ingredient in this mole dish I had for dinner that night: None of the white ingredients you are looking at is the coconut. What y...

At long last, two scary and dying spruce trees at the front corner of the house are gone. You can check out a recent "before" photo here . We tried to have this work done before the hurricane, but since it involved a massive coordination of utility companies – National Grid, Verizon, and Comcast –  to come take down and then reattach wires so the crane could get in and out, the work was postponed until Election Day. Seems the utilities were a little busy last week. Speaking of the crane, it just barely fit in the driveway, and the kids and I spent some time mesmerized by the swaying pendulum of the giant hook in the front yard: Getting Verizon and Comcast to do this was unbelievably frustrating. (National Grid, you guys were great.) Between the two of us, Kirk and I spent hours on the phone, and we lost several days' morale to sheer frustration in dealing and re-dealing with their scheduling errors and utter incompetence. I don't have the energy to go into a...

We've been taking some time this holiday weekend to rest from the physical work, spend time doing fun stuff with the kids, and clean house. A lot of that stone dust we were laying bricks on got tracked into the house, and after a couple weeks of ignoring the toys and the laundry and the clutter, it took a whole day to set things right. But on the Fourth, in between the beach in the morning and the burgers, beer, and sparklers in the evening, we spent some time in the garden fixing up a part of the design we knew we would have to change. It's kind of windy here in Newburyport. On our second day in the house, for example, this happened: That is a 60 foot tree that came down right over Atlantis , breaking the fountain and stripping the side of an oak that used to be in that awful raised bed in the middle of the yard. This literal windfall actually helped our design by reminding us that, yes indeedy, that stuff had to go. And I suppose it saved us a few hundred bucks on tre...