The Old Folks Home

[maddysmamaw]

Y'all send healing prayers and vibes Maddy's way. Poor thing has the flu and strep. She's in good spirits, but feels "ucky" so she's piled up in mamaws bed with some soup and sprite.

 

[Beer can]

your sap is running????


We still have multi feet of snow. The driveway is all ice and snow...no dirt.


I wanna try tapping this year. Birch obviously, not maple.


Edited to add: they even still have cars out on the ice of the town float plane lake.

We had spurt of very warm weather a few weeks ago and I tapped. Didn't get much boiled down to maybe a pint. And then the buds did start to come out so I figured I was too late. Been single digits teens and low twenties ever since. The sun warms the trees just enough that it ran a little. I have about 30gals of sap now. I figure that should get three qts maybe a gallon if it keeps running.
Wait till you see the makeshift setup, going to use a barrel stove to boil the sap connected to with stove pipe a metal old boiler I've been using for a cold smoker. I usually just cold smoke for a few hrs to a day and then finish them off in the oven at 180 with a meat probe till they reach 165 and the alarm goes off.
I tried to hot smoke with it putting the barrel stove closer but the smoker uninsulated was just too hard to regulate temp and was constantly getting to hot or cold. Almost ruined 25lbs of venison Landjägers. Might have helped if I didn't dry them for ten days like I did before and just hung them for a day or two. They were still good just not as good as previous batches.
This will be my first attempt at pepperoni. Have 20lbs of venison bologna to do next. Place I got the seasoning from 'Waltons' had 2' long 10lbs each casings the deli style one's. Pepperoni I got 1lb summer sausage style casings to stuff.

 

[Alaskan]

We have the same issue with our smoker/bbq .... we just cold smoke and then finish in the oven. Especially when we are doing stuff in the winter.




I think the slow warm up you are having is supposed to give you the longest run of sap.

So good luck.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

I have no idea what is going on with the formatting. Here, too, with the snow/ice. I still can't get out around the side of my house and forget about opening the front door. It will be august. It is snowing now, has been all day, it's maybe an inch or so so far, and we're getting another 1-3 inches on Sunday. MAKE. IT. STOP.

 

[Beer can]

Y'all send healing prayers and vibes Maddy's way. Poor thing has the flu and strep. She's in good spirits, but feels "ucky" so she's piled up in mamaws bed with some soup and sprite.

Aww man..nothing worse than a sick kid.
Prayers and good vibes.
We had a household of the stomach bug a couple weeks ago, bad. Kids that go to school are disease ridden vermin Lol!
Get better send them back to school and they're sick again, never ending cycle...

 

[Alaskan]

Your snow....






Condolences.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Your snow....

Condolences.

I was supposed to get the names off the gravestones that I want to fix and get them to my town for the next meeting... well... there's so much snow there's no getting into the cemetery let alone seeing most of the graves and even assessing which ones could/should be fixed. The ground is still like concrete, I can't probe for bases or additional broken pieces of stone...

So today I managed to get my car up and over the snow hump in the entrance of one of the graveyards and I walked carefully, sinking only a few inches into the top of the snow, and got a few names of stones I had seen and remembered from the fall. Most were still not visible.

I'm going stir crazy here. I need to see green.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Y'all send healing prayers and vibes Maddy's way. Poor thing has the flu and strep. She's in good spirits, but feels "ucky" so she's piled up in mamaws bed with some soup and sprite.

no fun for her there Always willing for healthy prayers to go your way
they also make a green apple gatorade if she get feeling any better for something
different

 

[Alaskan]

GREEN

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Thank you. I feel much better.

I just finished scaling Mount Snow, through the Pass of Caradhras, to fill the wild bird feeders.

The cats and the birds should be pleased.


Under the giant pile of snow in front of my house is my kitchen garden.



I think I'll wait another week to start my tomato seeds.