Happy Birthday Steve!!

Happy Birthday Steve!! 61!!  

A family dinner party. Fried chicken and all the fixings. 

Sauk Update...

 Found trees cut on our side of the property by the neighbors. Celina and Don were up camping this weekend and saw our new neighbors decided to cut into our side by at least 10 feet. Not sure why? Not sure why they didn't figure out where the property lines were before. 

They cleared out all the brush and pine trees. That were on the property line. Cleared out our huge pile of branches which I'm not mad about. Plus cleared 10 ft on our side all the way down. Which is where we want the electrical to go anyway. So guess they kind of did us a favor without asking. 

We do need to ask them a question. Did you get a property line servey? Nothing can be done right now. 

The property line pin by the road was removed by the contractor the neighbors hired. This is not good as you can read the consequences. 

Also trees cut down..

Tulips!!

 Look what is coming up in the front yard. After a surprise last spring of 9 red tulips coming up, I bought more in the fall and planted them. I some how forgot about planting any again and was super surprised to see all that has come up. I've counted at least 32 and their might be more. 

It was too cold and not sunny yesteday so they never opened up, but I'm hoping today a few more will pop open. I do want to plant even more in the front garden. 

For the longest time, I was only getting greens coming up and maybe 1 o r 2 light pink small tulips. I'm not sure why I waited years to plant more. Glad I finally did! Now to get even more and fill the garden. 

88 Years Young!

Happy 88th Birthday Claudette! 

88 years young on April 6th. 

I made her as requested a lemon pie. Turned out super creamy and delicious. 

Here's the recipie. 

The crust I used vanilla wafers, a table spoon sugar and 4 tbsp of butter with some lemon rind. 

Added 3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice. Baked at I think 350 for 18 min crust and another 10 min pie. Everyone raved about how creamy the pie tasted and it was 100% gone. No leftovers on anyone's plate! 

Happy Birthday Claudette 88!

 Wayne and Claudette both got t-shirt for their birthday with Zoey on it. I think they liked it? 

More photos to come after dinner tonight. We are having breakfast for dinner since Claudette loves her waffels. 

Easter

I should have taken a bunch of Easter Photos, but I kind of forgot. 

My fruit tart. It turned out good, just a little messy. I added too much milk to the filling. Added fresh whipped cream on top before serving, which was also messy. 

Easter egg hunt with madelyn. I didn't get a photo of Evan. He is getting sooo tall! A few more inches and he will be taller then me! 

 

Maple Syrup making!!

 My 2nd try at Maple Syrup making! It was a sucess! Wow, lots of time involved in making syrup. I think over 8 hours total. 

The first step was purchasing the taps and buckets to collect the sap, $63 dollars for that set up. 

The easy part was collecting the sap. It's just where to put it, if it's not cold or there is snow on the groud. We had an empty frig and a few large pots to store the sap. We have 2 maple trees that are 27 years old and on each tree we could do 2 or 3 taps but we started out with the supplies for just 1 tap per tree. I think we had at least 70 liters of sap in all after I disposed of at least 40 more liters of sap from other tries at making the syrup. 

My first attemp to make maple syrup, I used a hot plate and our camping stove. Neither got up hot enough 200*F to keep it at a boil. It was hot enough to reduce the liquid but not hot enough to make sap. At the end, I brough in the sap and finished it off, cooking it above the 219*F and the syrup turned to rock candy. I only made a tiny amount on the bottom of a gravy boat. 

We decided this round to speand another $70 and purchae a turkey frier set up. 

We hooked up the propane tank and strated to boil off all the liquid which took from noon to 9pm. The only issue with the turkey frier, is that it turns off every 10 to 15 minutes and you have to restart for safey reasons. People used to burn down their houses with the hot oil and turkeys catching fire. Its a pain to get up and have to relight it, but at least its safer in that you have to watch it. Good thing it was a nice day, so I sat outside to tend to my pot. 

It started to turn darker amber color the longer it boiled... Once the sap water mostly was boiled off, I brought it inside to finish the process of making sap, reaching 219*F. That was a long wait too becuse I still had to boild off water. 

 

Logan made some labels

With all that sap it made 4 jars, which I boiled  to clean and filled hot, tipped over to seal. 

We did a pancake taste, test when it was hot and yum! Good. It turned out dark, thin, and hazy but very sweet and good tasting syrup. 

There will be sugar crystals that settle to the bottom because we skipped the filer process. I didn't want to lose any syrup because we hardly made any. Plus, I dont have the correct filter system. 

 

I still have another 5 gal pail to make another small batch of Syrup. I'll give myself a week break and try it again next weekend. In all, not a cheap set up initally, but now that we have all the equipment it will be a spring/ yearly project.