Summer Visitors - 2009

Summer 2009 has been marked by a few notable things. One of them is that it rained for most of the month of June (something like 25 days with rain.....yea!), and the first part of July. Luckily it stopped raining right when the boys went to Scout Camp. In addition to the rain, the spring/summer of 2009 was also a great time for summer visitors. Now, we have had some of these visitors before, but for others it was their first stop, at least as far as we know. The previous post was all about Mr. Turkey, whose family members still regularly stop by. But, we have also had some other visitors.

So with the rain, comes lots of pools and ponds, which are great places for frogs. Frogs galore this spring and summer, like this guy staring right at you.



What? You say you can't see him? Well, he is there, I assure you. Take a closer look and you will see your Prince Charming gazing at you with those hunky eyes!



Here's a smaller version of Mr. Frog, this one a tree frog. Yes, I thought it was just a brown spot in the center of my rose when I first saw it as well. But a closer look showed it to be a cute little tree frog. This little guy really liked that spot. I found him in between the rose petals several times. I have only seen him once since the rose bloomed, but more buds are on the way!






So the frogs are normal summer visitors, as are their reptilian cousins. However, we had a real treat this May with the visit of a type of snake that I had never before seen. We usually see many, many garter snakes, and I try to catch most of them that I find. However, one evening, just at dusk, I was walking by my front flower bed and noticed a really long, thin pattern against my foundation that I had never seen. My heart jumped as I realized it was a snake! With the boys help, we cornered it so that it could not slip away, and I laid my hands on it.......with some leather to protect me in case it was some biting variety (not common in ME, but one never wants to make the news as "the first snake bite death in Maine in over 100 years took place today in Gorham"). What a beaut this snake was! Just look at the beautiful patterning.



Not knowing the variety of snake, I contacted the local Herpetological Society (the "Snake" experts......no worries, I had never heard the word before I googled it either). I had tried matching the pattern to pictures on the web, and narrowed it down to either a corn snake, or a milk snake, or possibly a sneaky snake, which made me want to hide all of our rootbeer (inside joke for all you Tom T. Hall fans). As it turns, it was an Eastern Milk Snake.



After shaking hands with this beautiful neighborhood snake, and measuring it at 32 inches, we let it go. The funny part of the story is that just a little over a week later, I about stepped on this very same snake (or at least its sibling with the exact same length) in my back flower bed. I figured it wanted to shake hands again, so once again I grabbed it, but this time I put it in a bin in the garage for a sleepover. We had church first thing in the morning, so I left it with some water, and a rock to hide under in the bin. After waking it with a big kiss in the morning, and looking it over after church, it decided it had had enough of this visit, so kindly figured its way out of the container in my garage. The door was open, so I am guessing it found its way out. If not, it may still be living in my garage, which is fine by me!

Tom Turkey, Part Deux

Yes, I am a mighty Turkey Hunter! This would be turkey #2, both Toms, that I have bagged in the last 7 months! And this one happened on my Birthday, no less.

As you can see, I have on my finest Carhart coveralls. Only the finest when hunting turkeys.....or working in the yard.

The above photo is a bit out of focus, but I can't be responsible for catching the turkey, holding the turkey and taking the photo too! I am good, but admittedly not that good.

This bird was a bit less than happy to be caught. I am sure that the tipping to get him to fan his tail did not make him much happier either.

Do you want to know my secret? OK, so you dig a hole and build a big fire in it. Then you open a can of peas and carefully stack them around the hole. Wait, no that's not it. Like the last bird, I used the free chicken food angle. The toms in our area get fairly bold at certain times of the year. This guy had been hanging around the yard for a few weeks, looking for a hand out. Well, I walked out my back door to work in the yard on the morning of my birthday, and there he was. He stayed a respectable distance away from me (behind the screen house of the chicken coop, but waited to see if there was any food around. I walked to my garage, and got a scoop full of scratch grains for the chickens and came back out. When I sprinkled some food on the ground, he came running around, and at that point I figured I could catch this bird. He would not take food from my hand, but came to within 6-7 feet from me.

So, with a hungry turkey at hand, I laid my plot and put it in motion. I sprinkled a small amount of food in from of the gate to the chicken run (screen house). Then I opened the gate to let my chickens out and dumped the rest of the grain just inside the screen house. Well my chickens piled out and I backed off and watched. Turns out that my rooster, at less than half the size of a wild Tom, does not take any crap from a turkey. The Tom got right in amongst the hens to eat the grain. But, when he got to close to my rooster, Fred, he was met with a flared hackle and flying spurs, which backed him down quick. It gave me a new found respect for Fred.

Well, I got tired of waiting and could just feel the daylight burning, so I went to work. Periodically I would check back and see what was up. Sure enough, after a bit the hens moved on, but the Tom kept working the free handout. After a while, all the outside grain was gone, so he followed the pile and stepped inside the screen house. I checked on the situation, and seeing him inside the screen house, I rushed him and shut the gate! I had him......but still had to go in and get him. Turns out the "flight" response totally dominates in these situations, or at least it has in 2 out of the 2 turkeys I have caught. I was expecting maybe a challenge by some flying turkey spurs, but really I had to grab him before he flung himself against the chicken wire too many times and hurt himself. After a flurry of flying feathers, I grabbed him, pinned his wings down and brought him out for inspection. After looking him over, showing him to the kids and posing for a photo op, I let him go. He gladly ran off, unhappy with the whole affair.

An even Sappier Tale about a Drip!!

After collecting all the sap, it was time to make Maple syrup. We collected the sap for about 5-6 weeks, with about 2-3 of those weeks generating the most sap. By the end of April, we had filled the 33 gallon barrel over half full, and still had plenty of snow in our snow bank to keep the barrel buried and the contents chilled. All in all, we estimate that we had about 17-18 gallons of prime, Gorham, Maine Maple sap, just waiting to be turned into syrup.

So, I started by lugging the barrel up on to my deck. If you do the math, that is over 150 lbs, including the barrel. Note to self, next year think of a better way than lugging that stupid barrel up the steps.

The next step was to set up my trusty Camp Chef stove, which I use for canning more than anything, and start boiling. I actually started this on a Saturday morning, but ran out of propane about an hour into it. So, we filled up the tank and went to a movie (I know, my dedication to my craft is simply amazing, isn't it?).

The sap-cook continued on Sunday afternoon, after church of course. A spring rain storm had rolled in, making the forest kind of misty and foggy (very pretty out).

Cook, cook, cook. Boil, boil, boil.

Cook, cook, cook. Boil, boil, boil. Wait, are we getting close? I don't know. It is starting to smell a bit like syrup out. Maybe you better check the temperature. Yep, it is boiling and temperature is right at 212 F. Nope it is not close yet. Fill the pan with more sap and keep boiling!

Cook, cook, cook. Boil, boil, boil. Finally after about 6 hours of boiling, things started to happen. I had a minor boil over due to foam. Quickly dropped a little butter in the pot, which immediately broke the surface tension and dissipated the foam. At this point I started watching the temperature very closely. There are two basic ways to determine if you syrup is done: 1) use a hydrometer to measure the solution density, and 2) use a thermometer to measure when the temperature is 7 F above the boiling point. In either case, the sap-to-syrup process is complete once it has reached the right concentration of sugar (67% sugar by weight). If the syrup is left less dense, it can spoil. If it is more dense (higher sugar content), the sugar will crystallize and you will have created maple sugar.

Basically for us here in Gorham, ME, we are essentially at sea level. So for us the finish temperature is 219 F. Once the syrup foamed, and I stopped it, we hit 218-220 F in about 1-2 minutes, and the syrup was done.

Next step was to filter out the chunks with cheese cloth and pour our fine, amber nector into the most attractive, decorative bottle we could find. OK, so we settled for wide-mouth quart jar. The color was a rich amber color, and the taste was totally awesome of course! This picture makes the syrup look slightly cloudy, but it was not.

All in all, we ended up making just over 5 cups of syrup. A normal reduction is about 40-to-1, so either we only started with about 12 gallons of sap, or our sap was a mite weak. I am soooooo ashamed of my trees!

This was such a fun project! BTW, for the record I should state that this was Valerie's idea. We plan to do it again next year, but I bet we will expand the operation some. I already have ideas to switch to tubing, build a sugar house and tap a hundred trees. But, I bet we will probably just buy 4-5 more taps and buckets is all.

A Sappy Tail about a Drip!

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.........and so on, and so on, and so on. So after the taps go in the trees, you wait and check the buckets every day. The temperatures have to work in your favor for the sap to start running well. Days in the 50's with nights with freezing temps is optimal. Apparently the sap runs due to thermal expansion caused by the day time heating.

As with all agricultural endeavors, some years the sap runs really well, and other years not so well. Also, some trees produce a lot some years, and not so much other years. The locals tell me that this year was a good year.

Anyway, we drove the taps in the trees about mid-March and collected sap, drip by drip by drip until near the end of April. There were days during that span where a few of the trees produced over a gallon, and other days where they produced a pint.




About every day, the boys would check the buckets for sap. The sap really just looked like slightly rusty water. Often times, we would check in the morning and find a nice thin layer of ice on top of the sap in the bucket.

The sap buckets were emptied into a big Rubbermaid garbage barrel that we had buried in the snow. I probably should have cleaned the barrel out first, because our syrup tasted a bit like old banana peels, among other things, when it was done. Kidding of course. I bought the barrel brand new and washed and disinfected it. Basically it became a big tupperware container.

It is hard to see, but that is a 33 gallon barrel, buried up to the handles in a snow bank. Great free refrigeration that Mother Nature provides at this time of year.

Valerie's thoughts on my iPhone!

So I was eating breakfast the other day while Valerie was reading the morning paper. Suddenly she says, "Oh this one is for you!" and proceeds to rip out Dilbert and hand it to me.

Sorry for the tiny font, but I can't find a way to enlarge it without it getting wacked. So, let me interpret:

Box 1: Dilbert - "I've fallin love with my phone."

Box 2: Dilbert - "It entertains me. It knows where I am. It responds to my touch. It never judges me."

Box 3: Therapist -"So, it's like a woman to you." Dilbert -"Way better! Are you even listening?"

"Guilty as charged" is my response!

:)

Tapping Maple Trees

This year, we decided to do something very New England, or in our circumstance, very Maine. After talking about wanting to try it for the past several years, this year Valerie finally inspired me to go out and buy some tree tapping stuff so that we can try our hand at making Maple syrup.

So, order of business #1: identify your maple trees. Had we tried to do this within the first few years on our property, I would have been hard pressed to tell a maple from an oak from a beech from a hornbeam (kind of hard when they don't have leaves). But, we found the maples we wanted to tap.

Order of business #2: drill the hole (7/16" bit, drilled to about 1-3/4 inches deep) using the handy-dandy, shiney new, 18V Li-ion Makita that I just got for Christmas to replace my 16 year old Dewalt.

Order of business #3: drive in the tap. The tap is tapped into place with a hammer, deep enough that it can't be pulled out by hand, but not so deep as to split the wood.

Order of business #4: affix the bucket cover, and hand the bucket from the tap. We'll have to get some close up shots of the tap, but you'll just have to trust me that there is a hook to hang the bucket from. Big operations string together all their taps using blue plastic tubing that all runs down to a collection point. I have seen places up north that have miles and miles and miles of tubing, all draining into the sugar house. The sap is pretty much like water, so will easily flow downhill.

We have no real aspirations of making gallons of syrup, but so far it has been a fun project. I'll try to post a follow up on the syrup making process and how many tablespoons we end up with.

JTB

Winter Camping

Thomas and I went on a winter campout with the ward troop (Troop 866).
We went to a pond in Casco named Owl Pond, which is on some private land owned by Hancock Lumber. We had to hike in a bit less than a mile, mostly up hill, but then had the place to ourselves. There was not enough snow to build Quincy's (snow caves), so we just tented it. The temperature got down into the teens that night, but no one complained of the cold.

One of the highlights of the trip was the ice fishing. Here in Maine they mostly use "traps", which are a cross like device that keeps the spool of line under water. When a fish takes the bait and takes out line, a trigger causes a flag to go up so you can see that you have a fish on. In the top photo, you can see Thomas with his monster catch (a Yellow Perch). Each of the boys caught fish, and most of the fish were 12-16 inch Chain Pickerel, with a few small Perch




The adults on the this trip were; Dennis Frappier, Mike Brammer, and me. The scouts were Thomas, Jake Brammer, Andrew Dyer, and Mark Lamonte.


What a great outing! Would have been fun to stretch into a two nighter.