Trading Sticky for Dirty

Our maple syrup season is winding down.  The sap is still flowing but we have passed the torch (or taps as it were) on to the family who owns the maple grove.  Given recent events, they are now home much more than they anticipated and so we thought that it might be a nice distraction for them to fire up their evaporator and finish up the season by making some syrup of their own. 

All that is left for us to do now is to finish boiling the last of the sap we collected and then strain and bottle it.  Once the sap dries up we will return to the maple grove to remove the taps from the trees and collect all our buckets and equipment to bring home for cleaning.

It has been an incredible maple syrup season and I will be sad to see it come to an end.  The forest walks during sap collection have been the high point of our day for weeks now and I will miss them.  We sincerely thank Georgia and her family for sharing their maple grove with us.  We are most grateful.

Thank goodness the warmer weather is on its way and we will soon be back to gardening.  As much as I love mapling, I would trade sticky hands for dirty ones any day.  In fact, I planted my first seeds today in our highest raised box. 

Olympia spinach for the win!

While not yet warm, the soil was definitely workable.  This weekend's chores include covering some of my garden space with hoops and plastic to make mini greenhouses and then transplanting some of my cruciferous vegetable seedlings outside.  And so, when one door closes another one opens...