Good morning! I'm still catching up after Typepad's outage last week. Sharing just a few pics from our recent trip up north to visit my parents on Easter. 

This last photo was taken from my parents' deck.

To get to my folks' house, you drive forever north on the highway, get off and drive two more hours, then you are there. Two hours from the highway. That is unheard of around here (and most places).  Aroostook County feels like the most set-apart place I've ever set foot on. A different culture altogether.  If you ever get the chance, and you are someone that loves a quiet, slow pace (and an early bedtime), you should go. Bring a book, some knitting, a canoe, your fishing pole, and a camera... there isn't much use for anything else. 

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“The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave, — a vital spot on the lake's surface, — laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.” 

- Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

Guess what!? Sunday was spent entirely in the garden! 

We overturned another 400 square feet to expand our back garden and will retire the front garden this year. Keeping all the veggies in one place will make life easier on the weeks we don't receive an inch of rainfall and a little hand watering is in order (especially in the early seed stage). Lugging 200 feet of hose to multiple points on the property is a task I'm happy to let go of. Now the hose can stay put in one spot, close to this garden.

In the fall we transplanted 80% of our raspberries from behind the house to the back field so they could take up residence with the vegetables, blueberries and strawberries. I left a small patch near the house "just in case" the transfer was an epic failure. These raspberries are quite special to us as they are an old variety that were brought down from Adam's grandmother's homestead in Vermont - canes from a patch she has been tending for decades. I gave my neighbor a pint from our harvest last year and she declared they were the best raspberries she'd ever tasted. I agree! I'm sure this will be a transition year for our raspberry patch but I do hope it takes hold in the new location, there's something kind of sweet about having a berry patch within the vegetable garden. Literally. 

Not much is happening in the way of things greening up out there just yet (except for the garlic!), but the soil is soft and welcoming to early spring plantings. On Sunday I planted radish, onion, shallots, kale, collard greens, swiss chard, peas, carrots, three kinds of lettuce and spinach. I forgot to get beet seeds! I'm hoping there are still some left at the co-op when I go grocery shopping later today. Adam temporarily fenced in the area I planted and the rest remains open as we need to amend the soil over the next few weeks to prepare for late spring plantings. 

I'm trying to be better about keeping a garden journal. Recording a few photos and thoughts on the blog is wonderful, but I need to keep a few extra notes that may seem a little tedious to share here. Last year I finally mapped out our blueberry patch in this notebook (we have about four varieties and the identification tags they came with will fade over time), and now I am adding a map of this year's spring garden. New sketches will replace this come summer and fall as succession crops are planted, but this record should be quite helpful through the season and years to come. 

Last autumn, Adam stumbled upon a roadside find of several free screen doors. Wisely knowing I would dream up something to do with them, he threw them in the back of his truck and made his way home. 

Kale cages! I believe were the very words that sprang from my mouth the moment he pulled up the driveway. (He knows me well, of course I'd have a use for them!) Last year we tried floating row covers in order to keep the dreaded cabbage moths away from the kale and collards, which served the purpose nicely, but were a little cumbersome to get in and out of... I knew there had to be a better idea. 

Well, if all goes well that better idea is now sitting in my garden (one of them at least, there is one more cage to build still). Adam designed it so one of the sides swings up for easy harvesting, weeding, and direct watering if needed. The height and width are perfect for a bed of kale and collards (probably will try bok choy and arugula under cover as well as they suffer the same cabbage moth fate).

It was a perfect, much needed day in the garden. Here are a few more moments from the day...

{All hands on decks for coop cleaning!}

Turning dirt, planting seeds, happy foraging chickens... we're all waking up, and it feels amazing.

Capturing my love of whole foods, combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

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Each day I find myself snapping a picture or two in the kitchen - a pile of ingredients, a table waiting for us to gather around, a sink full of soapy dishes, a cup of tea, dinner as it comes out of the oven - simple, everyday moments in the kitchen. These photos serve as a reminder of days gone by and as encouragement to carry on in this busy kitchen of ours when inspiration is lacking.

Every Thursday morning I'll post my photos from the week, no words or recipes needed, just glimpses into my kitchen and you're invited to do the same! 

It's simple to join in:

• On your blog, post photos taken in your kitchen throughout the week. 
• No words are necessary, your photos will tell the the story. (Although feel free to grab the brief description at the top of this post, or add a few words of your own to explain the project.)
• Link back to this post so your readers can visit This Week In My Kitchen and join in. 
• Come back here and link up your current post (not your main blog) so we can all visit your kitchen!
• Join me every Thursday or the occasional Thursday if that works better for you. (Feel Free to post on another weekday if that works better for you and just link up with us on Thursdays.)

I look forward to visiting your kitchens! 

Much of my husband's day to day work life involves juggling many details of critical importance that require careful attention and great intellect. It seems reasonable, given that people should be able to depend on their attorney to accomplish the job correctly and efficiently. There is not much room for letting things unfold organically or going with the flow. Though his office has an incredibly healthy attitude toward maintaining a low stress approach to law, there is still a certain protocol that needs to be followed and it requires an awful lot of  mental energy and responsibility.

But... I married a Gemini. Nothing exemplifies the expression "there are two sides to one coin" like a Gemini. 

Sugaring has been the perfect vacation for Adam. Some lawyers golf, Adam is all about the woods. Sugaring has proven to be a wonderful way to enjoy the outdoors in late winter while producing a much needed, valuable resource for our home.

Every few days for the month of March, Adam would come home after a long day of contracts and courtrooms, hang up his suit, and head down the street to boil sap in my uncle's sugar house until 1am... a few times he fit it into the weekend. Sugaring has all the elements that speak to him - trees, hours and hours spent outdoors, physical exertion, fire, the smell of woodsmoke, moments of solitude. What more could a guy (or gal) ask for? There is also a flexibility within the sugaring process (once you move past the highly perishable sap phase) that provided a much needed balance to his day job.

Adam used the small evaporator while my uncle boiled his thousands of gallons of sap in an evaporator the size of a car (it's a beauty). In the end we collected and boiled a little over 200 gallons of sap which yielded a little over five gallons of maple syrup. I numbered the batches so we could appreciate the unique grade and flavor that comes from different collections throughout the season. In total we had six boils. 

We finished off the syrup here at home on our kitchen stove (my tiny contribution to the effort). This worked out really well and wasn't overly steamy or sticky at all. I wouldn't have attempted it but my uncle assured me boiling indoors for the finishing stretch was a relatively short process and wouldn't overwhelm our house (or my father's custom oak cabinets) with sticky humidity. Each batch took about an hour or so to finish on the stove before one final straining and bottling.

We set out thirty taps for our first year of sugaring. Surprisingly, we could at least double that number if we wanted to on this modest four acre property. This land is all about sugar maples and we just might up our game next year to help it show off to its potential. We could have squeezed another week out of collection and quite possibly produced another gallon of syrup, but Adam had a busy end of the month coming up at work and we had a few weekend commitments the last couple of weeks so our schedule looked a little tight. We decided to call it and feel abundantly blessed with the five plus gallons of liquid gold that is now in our pantry.

When we set out to try our hand at sugaring this year, I had envisioned boiling here at home. The hours spent boiling are long and of course it would have been convenient to bounce in and out of our own house and throw Scout his frisbee over and over throughout the day. But really, the wisdom that my uncle shared with Adam could never be found in a book or through a google search. I'm not really sure how to pay back his generosity... loaning us all the equipment from tapping to gathering to boiling to straining... insisting we use his already chopped, seasoned and stacked firewood... the hours and hours he hung out with Adam sharing stories and experiences of nearly every major sugaring operation in the Northeast... how do you repay that? I'm not really sure yet, but who knows, maybe he'll need a good lawyer someday... I know a guy that can hook him up with that.  

Capturing my love of whole foods, combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

*     *     *     *     *

Each day I find myself snapping a picture or two in the kitchen - a pile of ingredients, a table waiting for us to gather around, a sink full of soapy dishes, a cup of tea, dinner as it comes out of the oven - simple, everyday moments in the kitchen. These photos serve as a reminder of days gone by and as encouragement to carry on in this busy kitchen of ours when inspiration is lacking.

Every Thursday morning I'll post my photos from the week, no words or recipes needed, just glimpses into my kitchen and you're invited to do the same! 

It's simple to join in:

• On your blog, post photos taken in your kitchen throughout the week.
• No words are necessary, your photos will tell the the story. (Although feel free to grab the brief description at the top of this post, or add a few words of your own to explain the project.)
• Link back to this post so your readers can visit This Week In My Kitchen and join in. 
• Come back here and link up your current post (not your main blog) so we can all visit your kitchen!
• Join me every Thursday or the occasional Thursday if that works better for you.

I look forward to visiting your kitchens!