Fish and Vultures

We've had a bit of a warm-up. We are still getting some low temps at night and intermittent snow, but it isn't lasting. And the ice on the pond has finally melted. Much to our dismay, this revealed a fish kill.

a largemouth bass, belly-up at our favorite fishing site

a giant grass carp floating in an inlet near the dam

Most of our pond is pretty shallow, and the ice got very thick. So there were hundreds of bluegill killed, and a few big fish too.












There was one gigantic largemouth bass and a humongous grass carp that I photographed, for example.

a turkey vulture soaring over the hay field

This has brought the turkey vultures. My oldest counted 17 around the pond on Thursday. I've enjoyed watching them slowly circle above the trees as I rock with my littlest. They swoop and glide, teeter until they find another updraft, and then veer off.

a few of the turkey vultures perched in a tree above the lake

They decorate our trees like grotesque Christmas baubles when they roost. 

a closer view of a turkey vulture roosting

And they are ominously silent. When you get close to them, you might hear them hiss if they are squabbling over something, and they are said to sometimes emit a nasally sounding whine when they fly, but that's the extent of their vocalizations.

my oldest daughter and middle son standing next to a largemouth bass skeleton (for scale)

They're quite effective as a cleanup crew. They wait until a strong wind causes the fish to drift to shore, then they pull them out and pick them clean. Even this gigantic largemouth bass is almost gone, which is lucky for us, otherwise things would be pretty stinky around here. Maybe they still will be in a few weeks when things really warm up.

a turkey vulture taking one of those rare, slow flaps

But for now, I've got many other things to worry about. (I went through another round of sugaring off. A bathroom sink drain sprung a leak and ruined a cabinet, thereby kicking off a bathroom revamp, etc. etc.) I am content to watch the graceful giants flap slowly with their six foot wingspans until they catch a current on which to circle, swoop, and soar.

Sap Head

stove number two

Saturday I had hoped to get a bunch of sap boiled down. All week the weather had been forecasted to be sunny and in the 50s. We had lots of downed wood in the yard to feed a fire. I had a brick stove constructed near the garage. I thought I was all set. But as luck would have it, Saturday dawned cold, grey, wet, and windy. By late in the day, the high finally reached 42 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of zero. I waffled a bit when I was getting started, as to whether to follow through or not, but then I remembered my fridge full of sap and decided I HAD to get going. So… I moved all the bricks and cement blocks to the patio under the seasonal gazebo frame so that I could rig up a tarp over the stove if I needed to keep rain/wintry mix out of my pan. Then with my oldest son's help, I constructed the stove over again. 

sap that hadn't been boiling too long

It turned out to be a flop. First of all, if I had more cement blocks, I would have built the stove higher off the ground so that I didn't have to kneel or squat with a kid in the "backpack" carrier in order to feed  the fire. Secondly, all the snow had JUST melted or was in the process of melting, so it was a squishy, slippery, muddy mess. We had to scrape two inches of solid ice off of the patio just to build the stove. Once we scraped it off, what was left was a slick mess. Third of all, the sticks and bricks were thoroughly saturated. This meant that the fire was hard to start and hard to keep going. Both the bricks and the sticks let off lots of steam, which gathered under the pan, condensed, and dropped back into the fire. I tended the stove all afternoon, making modifications in brick height, fuel type, exhaust holes and their placement, kind of pan, etc. I really wasn't able to get the sap to boil steadily! The cold air temperature and strong winds, combined with the wetness of everything "did me in".

I filtered the sap through a wire mesh strainer from the
buckets into the pans. When adding
the condensed sap to the final pan for sugaring off, I
filtered through cloth. 

On Sunday afternoon, I broke down and hauled out the portable electric burner. It defeated the frugal nature of the whole endeavor (getting free syrup in exchange for labor and getting rid of downed branches at the same time) but the sap has a limited "shelf life" before it has to be frozen (about seven days), so time was of the essence. The stock pot of sap simmered away, but didn't accomplish much more than I had accomplished the day before. 

This is what the final pan's contents looked
like shortly before it was syrup.

So Monday all bets were off, as the saying goes. I lit the propane side burner on the grill under one stock pot (hemmed in with bricks to retain the heat and make it rise around the pan) heated the other stock pot on the electric burner, and turned my electric roaster pan to "steam". All day I ran in and out of the house changing diapers, checking and emptying sap buckets, facilitating "schooling", filtering more sap into hot pans, doing laundry and dishes, etc. It was still windy, but warmer. I was able to keep the stock pots simmering. And the roaster pan steamed, but it mainly served as a way to preheat the sap before I transferred it into the stock pots. (FYI: the boiling point gets higher and higher the more condensed the sap gets.)

One of the 3 containers of syrup

Today, it reached a shocking 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind wasn't too bad, so it was much easier to maintain a steady boil. I was down to only about 8 or 9 gallons left to boil off. I had to fight off bees and moths today due to the sudden warm spell! I was still in and out of the house. But my treks outdoors were filled with pleasant, spring sounds. The aluminum stockpot made a bubbling roar on the electric coil. The propane made a rippling whoosh. The ducks made a splashing, quacking ruckus in the meltwater down on the frozen pond. The sandhill cranes trilled encouragement to each other every so often as they passed high overhead. The flickers churred. The goats bleated whenever I was in sight. The bluebirds alighted on the fence and darted to the ground for tidbits with a whir of wings. And by dinner time I finally reached the end product: several quarts of golden, sweet maple syrup!

Since it was the first day to reach 70 degrees this year, I gave the kids ice cream after our soup dinner. (We're having soup for dinner every night of Lent, excluding Sundays.) The added bonus was the fresh, warm maple syrup I drizzled on top! As we ate our ice cream, the calls of a few spring peepers drifted in through the open window. It's hard to believe that snow is forecast for tomorrow! Perhaps it will be a sugar snow, and we will get another run of sap.

Running

The tree that has consistently produced the most sap for us sprouted leaf buds yesterday.  (They look like little red bumps on the branches near the crown of the tree.) Once the leaf buds come out, the sap starts to taste funky, so I had to remove the jugs from it this morning so that the taste of our syrup wouldn't be affected. 

It got very warm today- 55 degrees Fahrenheit! Since it was so cold last night and so warm today, the sap was running faster than any other day before, so much so that several jugs ran over today before I had a chance to check them! (We were a few minutes late to First Friday Adoration because of a sap overflow emergency spotted on our way down the drive.) 

On the way home we ran some errands. One of the things we did was to get some casters to put on the bottom of our chicken coop. I'm hoping to wheel it around the yard this summer to help with insect control, and to keep the chooks from decimating the grass.

We also made a detour past a retreat center so as to walk and pray the Stations of the Cross. On our way there we spied a flock of 18 turkey hens. 

It was sunny and I made the walk up the hill in my shirtsleeves. It was exhilarating and beautiful.

As you can see, most of the snow and ice has melted today. The ground is a muddy, soupy mess because the top few inches are saturated and below that the ground is still frozen. Even the ice on our pond was thin near the edges by this afternoon. I imagine that was our last snow of the season. I hope to sugar off tomorrow and assemble the chicken coop with the kids while my husband crams in work before his next trip. He's arriving home tonight at about midnight.

Sappy Squirrels and Hungry 'Coons

Since the sap was running so well Saturday night, I didn't empty the sap jugs (which would have required me heading outside at about 3:30 in the morning after having gone to bed at nearly 2 am.) My rationale at the time was that I was just going to bring the sap in to refrigerate or freeze it anyway, so I might as well let it freeze outside. 

Sunday the predicted storm hit. We got freezing rain, ice pellets, and then a topping of snow, followed by 20 mile an hour winds. So I didn't head out to get sap that day. Branches were falling along with all that precipitation, and the sap was frozen in the jugs anyway. 

On Monday, local schools were closed. The sun slipped through the trees in the woods and set everything a-sparkle. Sledding was perfect! It was still too cold for the sap to rise.

On Tuesday, schools operated on a two hour delay. The temperature was supposed to reach 33 or 34 degrees fahrenheit. There was a good chance the sap would run again, so I hauled all the frozen jugs into the house so as to thaw the frozen sap enough to pour off. I didn't want them to get over-full and spill. I had jugs soaking in hot water baths in the sink and in the electric roaster. It was a pain, and my fridge was beginning to fill up with sap pans. 

Today it was sunny and 34 degrees. The sap was running pretty well by midday. The wounds the trees sustained from having limbs sheared off in the storm were oozing sap too. A pair of squirrels gorged themselves on the sweet liquid all day. 

The driveway was finally getting a bit slushy on our way back from the noon Ash Wednesday Mass. I left the garage door open after we pulled in so that all the snow and slush melting off of our vehicle might evaporate a little bit. It was a bad decision. I figured that it was the middle of the day. There were no leaves to blow in. It was still cold enough that stray dogs shouldn't be a problem. But a small, cheeky raccoon was up and about and decided to rummage through the garage in search of food. This snowy winter is taking its toll on the local fauna. 

When we discovered it later, it startled us as much as we startled it. And it holed up in the back corner under the workbench and wouldn't budge, even with some serious nudges and pushes from a broom handle, etc. So we left it in peace for a long time hoping she would leave.

This evening, when heading out to tend the goats,  my son found that she was still there. I didn't want to scare her into being aggressive. Raccoons can carry rabies, after all. I also didn't want to close her in the garage. And I really didn't want to leave the door open and end up with a raccoon party. So, I resorted to food. I left a trail of bread crumbs, Hansel-and-Gretel-style from where she was to the garage door. I turned off all the lights and took the kids to the other side of the house, so as to not disturb her with noise. Luckily, at dusk, she ate every hunk of bread and made her way back outside again. But unfortunately, she was rewarded for her daring. 

My husband has been gone for seven nights now. He's wheeling and dealing, enjoying west coast weather, a big bed in a quiet hotel room, fancy dinners (or at least meals prepared for him, during which he can actually eat, no one spills a whole gallon of lemonade,  smears food in their hair, or complains that edible food has never once been served.) I, on the other hand, am counting deer, sighting bobcats, clearing our long lane of limbs, lugging sap, and outwitting 'coons- all with a kid strapped to my back and a small army of "helpers" in tow. Who was it who wanted to move here again?! Did I mention that I was up six times last night with the squawker? Or that I have a nasty cold? 

It doesn't matter though. I'm not missing a moment with my kids. This is the stuff that memories are made of. Hopefully the children will look back and remember all this adventure with fondness. I know I probably will… if I'm not dead… or too tired to remember. :)

Taps and Bobcats

On the way home from the vigil Mass tonight, my son counted 35 deer feeding together in the field below the dam and just off the highway! And then, shortly after we turned onto our road and before the crest of the hill, a bobcat quickly crossed the road in front of our vehicle! My son and I were both like, "Did you just see what I saw?!" Those fleeting encounters at dusk are tricky. And we were driving toward the west, so much of what we saw was a silhouette. We talked through it the rest of the way home, most of which was down our driveway.

"Could it have possibly been a fox?" No, the head shape was wrong. There was no pointy snout. There was no long, bushy tail. The legs weren't slender enough.

"Could it have been an oversized barn or feral cat?" No, the legs were too long and too thick. There was no long, skinny tail. The tail was short and fat looking. The head seemed too large and sort of square.

So there's that today. No wonder our chickens were goners shortly after we moved here! Large, contiguous sections of state forest that meet up with the woods surrounding our house means more habitat for large wildlife, and more predators here than at our old place. Building a chicken tractor (moveable chicken run) will be a necessity that I will have to begin working on soon- before the chicks arrive. 

The sap was running really well today too. I got nearly a half gallon from each of the taps by the end of the day. I didn't collect it tonight, because it was still running and it should taper off toward morning as the temps drop.

Speaking of dropping temperatures, we have a winter storm warning in effect from now until Monday. According to the National Weather Service, snowfall, sleet, and ice accumulations of 6 to 8 inches will be possible, hence our attendance at the vigil Mass. Which, by the way, was a rocky affair, given the hour (the 12 month old was tired and everybody was hungry) and the fact that I was "flying solo" with the kids.

I also had the audacity to take the older kids to Reconciliation beforehand, and then since we were already there, we joined in with those who pray the Rosary aloud before Mass. The baby, with much wrestling, made it until about the Gospel reading, and then I took him and the younger two to the back. He's been trying to pull off one short nap a day, but his teething has been disturbing our sleep, so he can't quite do it- at least not gracefully. He gets incredibly fickle, violent, and accident prone. So he was a bit wild tonight. Added to that was the fact that my 4 year old has finally decided to pee standing up. (Of course, when my husband is out of town.) So he insisted on going to the bathroom no less than 3 times during Mass to indulge in this new found manliness.

We rounded out a day that also included stockpiling wood in all of the log racks in the house, picking up even more downed branches, taking down even more Christmas lights, removing leaves & twigs from the gutter-guards & roof, some house tidying, laundry, dishes, activating new credit cards, getting a new backup drive, etc. by staying up late and live-streaming a production of the Opera the H.M.S. Pinafore.  It was another full day!

Cream Cheese "Rangoon"

INGREDIENTS
8 ounces cream cheese or neufchâtel
1 or 2 whole green onions (even tops) trimmed and chopped
1 small clove of garlic
½ to 1 teaspoon Sriracha hot sauce
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 egg
½ cup water
24 wonton wrappers (I used nasoya all natural wonton wraps)
vegetable oil for frying (I used Spectrum Expeller Pressed Organic, high heat canola oil.)

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat 2 or 3 inches of oil in a small electric deep fryer or high-walled frying pan to approximately 350 degrees Fahrenheit. (I used a "fry baby".)
2. Mix together egg and water in a small bowl. This will be your "glue".
3. With a food processor, thoroughly mix together the cream cheese, green onions, garlic, hot sauce, and sugar. This is your filling. (If you don't have a food processor, simply mince the garlic and onions and mix it all together really well by hand.)
4. Place a paper bag, folded flat, onto your counter or work surface. Top it with a layer of paper towels and place it near where you will be frying. This is where you will drain and cool your cream cheese Rangoon.
5. Place a wonton wrapper on a plate or cutting board and cover the waiting wrappers with a wet cloth, paper towel, or in a sealed container so that they do not dry out.
6. Place approximately 1 teaspoon of filling mixture so that it is offset (on one triangular half) but not touching the edges of the wrapper, which will need to be sealed.
7. Use your finger and "paint  " the egg mixture along the edges of the corner on the opposite side of the wrapper from the filling.
8. Fold the wrapper in half and press along the edges where they meet so that they seal. You now have a triangle.
9. Take the sides of the triangle and one-by-one, fold them over each other and paste them down with a dab of egg mixture so that your wonton looks a bit like an overstuffed envelope with the flap open.
10. When all wrappers have been filled and assembled, cook about 8 at a time, laying the folded side down into the oil.

11. After about a minute, flip each wonton over with a tongs, by grabbing the pointed end of the wonton. Cook until light brown. (Remove before golden, as they will continue to cook a little bit while draining.)
12. Place wontons on the paper towel/bag you have prepared and allow to sit for 5 minutes before eating.

ALTERNATE FOLDING METHODS

You might find it easier to spread the "glue" on all four edges, place the filling directly in the center, bring two opposite corners up and together, and then bring the other two corners up, so that you have what looks like a strange hat. (See my example at right.) I had a harder time flipping these, but they are more traditional in appearance, and easier to pick up to eat or dip into sauces. I also made some that had the corner "tails" folded up instead of across. Those are pictured to the right as well. And if none of these folding methods work for you, you can't go wrong by spreading the egg mixture on all edges and then simply wadding the top up. I've even seen them served at restaurants this way.