Spring Effects, or maybe Affects

I really have nothing stellar to report today. It is just a beautiful spring day in Maine. I don't know if it's the effect of the beautiful weather or what, but I saw some things that just struck my funny bone, so I thought I'd share.

While I was teaching math this morning, I happened to look out the window and observed that the horses are certainly enjoying the warm weather. They were napping. We knew before we got them that draft horses are not particularly high strung, but I don't think I've ever seen such laid back beasties. Pat seems to have the nap thing down to an art.

I seriously think he was drooling.
I actually walked right up to the fence and talked to him before he came to. (See Mom? He's really not dead this time either. :)

Riss came home early from work this morning, and presumably took charge of Sunny. Apparently, she was on a different wavelength. This is what happens when everyone assumes someone else is watching Sunny.

Some people have a nose for chocolate. Others have a gift for finding lost shoes.
Sunny is a marker magnet. He can find them anywhere you hide them. He really likes magic markers. He found this one hidden in TBear's room. He's a very bad dog, Carl.Yes, Sunny, nice job. Fortunately it was water soluble and came off easily. Fortunately.
That was enough entertainment for one day. Sunny and TBear are outside having wagon races, but they're moving a little too fast for pictures, so you'll have to imagine that.

The Farrier Visits on the First Warm Spring Day

It's been a long winter, but spring has finally sprung here in Maine. It was in the mid-70s here this weekend. Small green leaves have sprouted on my lilacs and the birch trees. My daffodils are up and blooming in the dooryard, the grass is turning green.... and the farrier came to trim our horses' hooves today. We love our farrier, Sandy. He does a great job, and is very patient with our creatures. Our horses, on the other hand, weren't wild about having their feet done this afternoon. They never are, really. We continue to try to work with them a lot to make this a better event, but it can still be a challenge the first time around after a long winter. (Whit keeps them in pretty good shape all winter, until the farrier makes it out again.)

I have mixed feelings about our horses' feet. Take Scooby, for example. This is our most reliable, low-key, steady workhorse. You can walk around behind him, or bend down to hitch up a wagon or logs to the singletree for him to pull, with absolutely no fear of being kicked or even stepped on or backed over. (In fact, we hitch Scooby up to the stock to pull it into the barn for the farrier to use.) Scoob stands patiently waiting for the click of your tongue, and off you go. And yet, this poor boy has an incredibly difficult time standing still in a stock for the farrier to trim his hooves. Sandy doesn't hurt him at all, and certainly makes him feel better by the time he's done! Scooby just doesn't like it, and Pat's not a whole lot better.

Look at the stock below. Scooby, who was first in this time, in all his 1600+ pounds of slightly overweight, winter glory did a tap dance (more than once) until he sheared off six #10 screws holding the 2x2 in. board which supported the 2x6 floor boards. See how the floor lists on the left side? (The photo is actually of Magnum getting his feet done. He's a good boy. He doesn't dance much.) Whit's repair list isn't getting any shorter.
Sandy noticed our sheep, which are both hard to miss, and for sale. He made an offer on two of them, which delighted Whit as we are trying to whittle down our flock some. We raise meat lambs, and although we shear our sheep every spring, we do not get much money for their fleece, at least not nearly enough to support them for the rest of the year, so we need to decrease our flock size.

This is what Sandy is driving today, his wife's car.
These are the sheep Sandy bought. I'm not sure what his wife is going to say about them in the back seat, but there you have it.

The spring day was so lovely, Whit hitched up the horses and we all went for a wagon ride later that afternoon. (Look at those feet. Aren't they lovely? :)
Sunny, Rissie and her friend went along for the ride.

TBear and Sunny seem to be practicing for photos like those early ones where no one smiles, but they had a good time. Don't let them fool you. : )

Spring Cleanup

Just three weeks ago we had about two feet of snow on the ground. Now, most of the snow has melted and the grass is starting to get green in between the patches of mud. Mud season wasn't too bad this year for us, although it's hard to avoid in the horses' field. High muck boots are a must because one does sink up to one's ankles when walking out there. Whit finished burying rubble and stumps and raking out the field on the garden side of our house. Time to move the horses there to let their field finish drying out.

Scooby was brought in to be harnessed so he could help move their hay feeder. Those are two of our new baby goats...escapees.
Scooby was so excited to be working again after a long winter that he could hardly contain his excitement, which is pretty funny looking. He prances. Look at those ears perked up...he is one happy horse.

The hay feeder tends to tip forward when it's being dragged, so TBear is ballast.

Into the newly raked field.

Another small project to finish was dragging some logs out of the woods to be cut up for firewood. Scooby is already harnessed, so now was a good time to do it.

TBear's job was to wrap the chains around the logs and attach them to the singletree.

It wasn't exactly a tough workout today, but Scooby is definitely enjoying the brush down and catching some rays here. Boy was there a lot of hair coming off that horse. The barn swallows will have lots of nesting material when they get here.

Going to the dry field. I brought his buddies over too, shortly after this.

This rocking horse in our barn belonged to Whit when he was Sunny's age. That makes it more than forty-five years old. They just don't make toys like they used to, do they. We love this horse.

Maple Syrup Sunday

After tapping the maple trees last weekend, we had to go around each day and empty the sap buckets before they overflowed. Whit built a sled using some old skis and leftover pieces of wood that fit three Polar water cooler bottles, which we used to collect the sap until this weekend when we started boiling it down. Many people have big, nifty drums on horse or ATV-drawn sleds that they use to transport their sap to the sugar house, but since we only put out 16 buckets this year, our small sled is enough. We like the plastic 5-gallon water bottles with their small necks so the sap doesn't splash out as we pull the sled along.

Leaving one of the bottles near the woodstove, we were able to fit the other two water bottles and our grandson, who liked the ride, in the sled. It sure made it easier for him to keep up with us.

He thought the whole collecting process was great entertainment, and he had a front row seat!

After the sap is collected from all the buckets each day, we transfer it from the water bottles into a clean, new 30-gallon trash can so we can fill the bottles with the next day's sap. By the way, the trash can is only used for collecting sap. When the sap season is done, we store the buckets, hats, and taps in it for the next year.

When we're done making the trip around our small "sugar bush," we leave the sled out by the sugar shack for the next day. Well, okay, so the sugar shack isn't built yet... Rome wasn't built in a day either. : )

There was still quite a bit of snow last week, but slowly, steadily, it's been melting.

Maine actually celebrates Maple Sunday, which was this past weekend. It's the day that all the commercial sugar houses around the state invite people to stop by, sample, and buy their syrup. Our storage containers were all full, so we needed to start boiling our sap down into syrup. Like the rest of Maine, it usually turns into a fun social event for us too.

The bottles are emptied into a bucket that sits higher than the evaporator on the woodstove. The sap is gravity-fed into the evaporator.

The boiling process must be constantly supervised to make sure the evaporator doesn't boil dry. Impurities rise up out of the sap as it boils, collecting in sort of a scum on the top, so someone needs to keep skimming that off. TBear is taking a turn at the job here, while his chum watches.


It takes all day to boil the amount of sap we've collected. Whit starts the fire right after chores in the morning. By lunchtime friends have joined us for some home-made soup, fresh bread, and Sunday worship around the evaporator. It really was a wonderful day of rest and fellowship.


Below is the bucket of sap feeding the evaporator on top of the woodstove. The woodstove is recycled from an old fireplace insert. My talented brother fabricated the nifty copper evaporator for us.

The snow is melting quickly. Hopefully the weather stays below freezing at night and warms up to near 40 degrees during the day for the next few weeks. We need to make enough syrup (before the weather turns too warm) to last us until this time next year, when we'll do it all over again.

Time to Tap the Maple Trees

Sunday afternoon was beautiful, sunny, and warm here. (For my southern friends, warm for us is near 50 degrees. :) Once the temperatures start getting well above freezing during the day, but still fall below freezing at night, it's time to tap the maple trees. Since the snow is still pretty deep, getting to the trees can be a real challenge unless we wear snowshoes. Yet even with snowshoes, the snow was so wet this day that as Whit and I carried the barrel with our taps, buckets and lids, we kept getting the toes of our snowshoes stuck in the heavy snow and then we'd trip, struggling to get back up again in the deep, wet snow. I finally figured out that I really had to walk heel to toe to keep my toes up and on top of the snow. Finally we made it out to where the sled was waiting. We transferred the tapping supplies to the sled so we could pull it around with us.


Whit did something bad to his left shoulder awhile ago, so he wasn't able to help with the drilling much. TBear and I learned just how thankful we are for Whit when his arm doesn't hurt! Drilling the holes wasn't too bad for the first tap or two, but by the time we'd done 16 of them, TBear and I were both glad we didn't have any more buckets!

After we drilled the hole, Whit put the tap in and then the bucket was hung under it to catch the sap.


We put lids on the buckets to keep bugs, bark and other junk out of the sap.

The prints in the snow look like someone was walking on tennis rackets...

We are very thankful for the snowshoes. It's hard to believe that the snow is about two feet deep here still.

The sap is running, and the bucket fills one drop at a time. : )

In addition to the warm day, I was pleased to see signs of spring. This bud is on a maple tree.

When we got back to the barn, I noticed that the baby goat, Nina, was sitting on top of Ruthie's back, while Nina's mother, Kappy, stands nearby.... probably thankful that Ruth was so accommodating. Interestingly enough, my sheep, Ruth, and our goat, Kappy, are the two oldest members of our flerd. Both are about 9 years old.
Hopefully the temperatures will continue to be warm during the day and remain cool at night so the buckets will fill quickly and we can start boiling the sap down into syrup soon. If you'd like to read more about how to tap trees and make your own syrup, here's a link to a University of Maine cooperative extension article.

The New Kid

We had just finished school for the day when Whit walked in to announce there was a new goat in the barn! One of our Toggenburg goats, Kappy, had a doe kid this afternoon! Someone pointed out that today is a square root day: 3-3-09. So we decided to name the little doeling Nina. That's her mama looking over the stall wall making sure she's still there and okay.

This is just the beginning of our kidding season. We still have three more does due in March or April. More pictures to follow, I'm sure, but I'll wait until all the new kids have arrived.