Growing Season

Growing season is officially here. That has a double meaning for us. Our crops and livestock are growing and so is our little homestead.

Oinkers

We got 2 little piglets in early June. The boys named them Gassy and Moe and they gave us a run for our money the first day. Literally. The first night we housed them temporarily in our chicken coop run (which is fenced with chicken wire). The next morning, Ryan was off working and I was running errands. When we arrived back mid morning, little piggies were gone. After searching for a while, somehow by the grace of God, one of our boys spotted them at the end of our dead end road, lying under pine trees (pine trees are in the first picture above and continue for another 1/8 mile). Finding them turned out to be the easy part. After a 3 hour chase through the overgrown pines, they were contained. (This was not the best marriage bonding experience just to keep it real... but we can laugh about it now). I now believe there should be a sports team named "Piggies". They're fast, can turn on a dime, strong, and get a little scrappy by biting you when they've been caught.

Their snouts amaze us with their ability to dig and rut.

Now our pigs are happy and healthy in their pasture. They are contained by an electric fence which they respect. They are really fun animals to have part of our farm.

Chicks

The beginning of June, 78 chicks arrived. Last year was our first time raising meat chickens, in which we learned a few lessons with the first batch of 30 all dying on us. After we realized they were lacking minerals in their feed, the second batch was much better. This year we wanted to try a different breed called Red Ranger. They are good foragers but will take a few more weeks to get to butchering weight.

Instead of moving their house every day, we are trying out a new system of letting them free range during the day, and enclosing them at night. So far so good, we've only lost 2.

Bees

 

The honeybee hive is thriving and growing. They are amazing creatures. This has been an exciting addition to Glory Acres.

Mouser

We added some much needed rodent control, her name is Fern. I can't say we are big cat people, no offense to cat people, but Fern has really stolen our hearts with her sweet, friendly personality, and her playfulness and tolerability with our boys, especially little Tuck man. And she's proven herself to be a good mouser already.

Wood Shed

This is the beginning stage of our wood shed. The frame is constructed with cedar logs.

Teepee

I peeled all the bark off the cedar logs from the wood shed. They came off in such nice strips I thought there has to be a purpose for this... what would the Native American's have done? After affectionately getting the name "Dream Weaver", our teepee was born. This is a start of the boy's playground.

Garden

This was last summer's garden area:

 

 Quite a transformation to this year:

I'm trying add companion planting and beneficial flowers/herbs to help reduce diseases and unwanted pests/insects.

cabbage and tomatoes are companions :)

lettuce find it's home under the shade of the pea trellis

We have raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grafted apple trees, asparagus, in the rows and a couple pear, plum and cherry trees in the back. Unfortunately the deer have found these (of course they like ours more than the wild ones that are everywhere right now), so we're figuring out a fencing solution.

 Happy growing season to you all!

Sappin' 2014

This winter was truly brutal but look, we survived! And the Good Lord has a sweet reward for us at the (near) end. Making maple syrup seems to be a way of life for people living around us in northern WI. Whether you have 4 or 400 maple trees, it's a privilege to tap into the resources that surround us. We started our sapping journey about 7 years ago with tapping a couple trees, cooking on just a single camping stove and made a couple pints of syrup. Every year we have grown a little more. Last year we invested in a cooker that will help make cooking the sap more efficient for years to come. This year we tapped 105 trees, cooked for 2 weeks, and made about 15 gallons of syrup. It was a lot of work (and our season was shortened due to leaving for Easter). Here are some photos of our season and the process:

Drill hole for the tap.

Hammer in the tap.

Hang the bag over the tap.

Let the trees do their work and make sap.

Enjoy a moment of sunshine.

Collect the sap. (We collect nearly everyday).

Our collection equipment, thank you to Ryan's parents for letting us borrow these!

Sap gets pumped to our holding tank. A hose is connected from the holding tank to the sap pan and is regulated by a little box that continually drips sap into the pan.

Cooking.

Inside view.

It snows some more, and we cook some more.

Maple Syrup!

Enjoying the bounty with some friends!

Not only is maple syrup super-sweetly delicious, but 100% pure maple syrup offers huge nutritional benefits. (Sidenote: read the label to make sure it is 100% maple syrup, many major brands just include a small percentage of maple syrup to market it as maple syrup, but really is mainly corn syrup, artificial flavoring, and other preservatives)

"Health benefits of real maple syrup are far more comprehensive than you might expect. The only product in our diet coming directly from a plant’s sap, this natural sweetener features over 54 antioxidants that can help delay or prevent diseases caused by free radicals, such as cancer or diabetes. In addition, maple syrup features high levels of zinc and manganese, keeping the heart healthy and boosting the immune system." Excerpt from http://www.purecanadamaple.com/benefits-of-maple-syrup.

Some of our favorite ways to add maple syrup into our diet (besides pancakes):

• In and On Homemade Granola (I use the recipe in Homemade Pantry)
• On Vanilla Ice Cream
• Salad Vinaigrette 
• Try this recipe: 2Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil,  1Tbsp. Apple Cider Vinegar (Bragg's With the Mother), 2 tsp. Maple Syrup, 1Tbsp. Dijon Mustard. - Tweak to suit your taste
• Homemade Chocolate (recipe from a friend):
• 1 Cup Coconut Oil
• 1/3-1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
• 3 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 Cup natural or raw cocoa powder
• melt coconut oil in saucepan, stir in the rest of the ingredients, pour into silicone molds, pop into the freezer and they're ready to eat when hardened. You can also pour this recipe when it's melted over ice cream and it has the same hardening effect as the chocolate magic shell. Enjoy!

I break the chunk of chocolate into pieces. For more uniform pieces, you can buy smaller silicone molds.

Do you have a great recipe using maple syrup? I'd love to hear!

Barn Raising part 2

Phase 1 of the barn-raising is now complete. All of the lumber for the building was either reclaimed or harvested from fallen hemlock on the family land nearby. The deadline for finishing was to enclose our maple syrup operation (upcoming post), and we made it! Below is a little highlight video of the process. The big boys got to help take bark off the logs. We are still trying to come up with a name for this building. It is referred to as the "Sugar Shack" right now, which is the typical name for a maple syrup building, but is also the name of a gentleman's club where we previously lived. Good, bad, humorous? We're open to suggestions!

And to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. 

1 Thess. 4:11-12

Music Credit: "Rise" by Eddie Vedder

The Still Shots

Barn-Raising

Despite the cold, cold winter we're having, Ryan has been hard at work on an exciting project for Glory Acres. The project began a couple weeks ago when Ryan stumbled upon a local barn being taken down by an Amish man. We bought a couple of the hand-hewn timbers with the intention of making a timber frame garden shed. Ryan spent many hours hard at work fitting the timbers together with his hand tools. We put it up and decided it's way too big for a garden shed, so this little barn will hold many purposes: First, it will hold our maple syrup production, one side will be my garden shed, a greenhouse off the back, and the boys will get their very own fort up top. Here's a little slideshow of the progress so far. (Ryan's favorite song credit: "Coyotes" by Don Edwards -- and now I have little boys running around singing "who yip, who yip, who0o0" all the time!)

For those of you who can't see the video, here's the still shots. Enjoy!