We're Jamming

We are lucky to have a giant wild raspberry patch in the woods behind us.

The scratches, bug bites and purple fingers are a small price to pay.

The kids aren't as dedicated to picking as their mother.

They trudged home while the farm pup and i kept going.

(farm pup picks his own)

We're smashing.

We're Jamming.

We're Canning.

We're rubbing our tummies in anticipation.

Hand picked homemade jam and home made bread.

We hope you like jamming too.

It's a party!

Tomorrow my baby turns 13. I know what you are thinking, "How can such a vibrant YOUNG woman be the mother of 2 teenagers?" I know, me too! Snirt.

I asked if she wanted a dinner out at a restaurant (rare treat) or a party. She picked party. So that means I need to clean and cook, she's worth it.

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Speaking of party, this Sunday with be the circle of art auction.

My bag I donated is in

this video from last years auction at about 14 seconds in. Don't blink or you'll miss it!

Maybe next week I'll have time to put my feet up.

all work and no (well some) play

I noticed I only had 5 posts on my poor neglected blog this month. With this one its 6, wahoo!
What have I been up to? Well thanks for asking.

I got that job I was shooting for back in January. They originally wanted 10 bags, then 15, now 20! I am thankful they chose me and grateful for the work.

I am also grateful hubby is the bread winner, I'm just the breadcrumb winner but this makes my crumbs a little more substantial.

I also needed to finish a bag for the Circle of Art auction. They need it by Friday so I'm squeaking in just in time.

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It hasn't been all work. On Fridays, the boy has soccer so I dropped him off and went fishing.

I have been chomping at the bit to re-stock our pond. It's worse than we thought, all the little fish are gone too.

I caught this small large mouth. Ok, that sentence makes sense to fishing people.

(hubbys hands, mine aren't that large)

I'm not sure what exactly this one is, it looks like a bluegill but has a very large mouth. Sort of like a rock bass but it doesn't have the red eye. I caught a couple more that were smaller but beggars cant be choosers right?

I had to go back and pick up the boy, so while I was away I let the girl use my pole and tackle.

AND THIS IS WHAT SHE CAUGHT!! The little shit.

A 22 1/2" striped bass. I guess the important thing is that we are slowly stocking the pond back up, not important which one of us does the catching. It sure would have been fun to reel this one in though. She was grinning from ear to ear when I showed back up. That's my girl!

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Speaking of the girl, you all know how she likes to take my camera and surprise me with photos.

Here is just a couple of the dozens she took of her troll doll collection.




Cute little baby troll.

Well thats my quick little update. I'll try to do better next month.

Spring Break fun

We had a good week, a break from school and hubby had the week off too!

We did go to the .50 movie and had cousins over to play.

The snow melted by Wednesday.

We got a tiny egg.

(sorry ladies, no weight taken)

We went to the UMMA.

This is the model of the museum.

It was great.

We saw Tiffany glass,

and Picasso,

I love Picasso, but according to the literature, he was quite the perv.

The UMMA had a great mix of old and new.

But the best part of our Museum visit was...

WHERE I LUCKED OUT PARKING!!!

Ann Arbor is not the easiest town to find a place to park, so imagine how thrilled I was to find an open meter right out front! And I was driving the Neon! Parallel parking was a breeze!

Here is my car from the front door.

I'm a cheap thrills kind of gal.

We colored eggs.

Some think you cant dye brown eggs, not true.

We went to 2 Easter Parties, one was a bonfire/egg hunt.

The other was a egg hunt/kite flying day.


Just enough breeze.






Kites and cousins in a corn field.


I didn't get any quilting done but I did pull tons of nails from some slightly used free lumber.
We have a couple of building projects in the near future and this is going to save us $$$.

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I am STILL SICK! I was hoping to be better by now, at least I'm not bed ridden and I'm hoping the end is near. I'm longing for the day that i can breath properly from my nostrils and not have the cough that brings up things from the deep. At least it has been a few days without a fever.

Other than that it was a great week.

How was yours?

We now are starting tennis (the girl) and Drivers Ed (the boy). Yikes!

muskrat love

Sunday morning I let out the chickens and T-Bone and I went for a walk about. We noticed a muskrat on the opposite end of the pond. Not good news.

Muskrats dig burrows into the edges of the pond and as you are walking around the pond your foot and leg will suddenly disappear into the earth, deep deep down into a mucky hole past your kneecap. (Don't ask me how I know this)

T-Bone was after that muskrat like a shot but the little destructive beast had just a short distance to the water.

T-Bone let me know about 2 holes the muskrat already dug and I blocked them.

We had our boat on one edge for less than a week and it had already had an impressive hole started underneath.

Every time the muskrat popped up, the hard working farm dog chased him back in.

This lasted the whole day.

The chickens came to check out what was happening.

Some got drinks.

Refreshing.

Even the dog worked up a thirst.

The dedicated farm dog never did get that muskrat but we believe he packed his bags that night and moved on to another pond.

I love having such a handy helper keeping my legs safe from harm.

T-Bone is now out in the rain trying to rid us of a family of chipmunks wreaking havoc behind the chicken coop.

Thank you pup!

A tale of two syrups.

I usually make my own syrup.

Boil 2 cups of water, add 4 cups of sugar, stir till clear, add a splash of maple flavor.

Its usually cheaper than store bought and I don't care for the butter flavor most syrups add.

It's easy and I always have those ingredients on hand.

Hubby has been wanting to tap our maple trees for quite some time. Last year he bought some old syrup taps on ebay. Don't you love a guy who does stuff like that?

You tap trees right before the temps get in the 40's, so last Sunday he drilled and tapped 7 of our maples and rigged some milk jugs to collect the sap.

And we waited.

The chickens scratched.

I took a self portrait.

It got warmer and the daffodils peeked out.

We didn't have to wait long.

In a day and a half we collected about 12 gallons of sap. (it's really like water)



You have to boil it down outside unless you like your walls and ceiling to be sticky in your home.



I manned the pot.

The guys worked on the dock.

It boiled into the night.


Our first batch was thin, but tasted amazing. Our next batch, we boiled down more and was thicker.
I filtered it through t-shirt material to get out the bits and bugs.
In total we got about a quart of syrup.




Words can't describe how good this is, all I can say it was well worth the effort.
It turned cold again and the trees have stopped producing, we hope the next warm up brings more sap but since this is our first year we don't know what to expect.
We've read that some trees like silver maples don't work well for flavor, apparently we have the good sugar maples. <3>