Happy Trails

Last summer we got our property logged, so the woods are a big mess right now. Before the logging, we made several different trails through our 20 acres of woods and loved to take walks together each evening. Logging ruined our trails, and we were pretty depressed about that and avoided the woods altogether for a while. It was just too painful to see our property in shambles. But recently we decided to begin work on constructing new trails, and I'm happy to say that we just finished up one trail!

I say we loosely, because David did all the work, I was just along for moral support. Last night he was with his band at their first parade of the season (they won 1st place, woohoo!) so he didn't make it home until after dark. I decided to walk the trail after dinner to unwind and get a little exercise. Since David wasn't home to walk it with me, my faithful companion Sylvester joined in for the hike.

I decided to take my time during this walk and focus on my surroundings. I noticed a few things I hadn't seen before. Funny how that happens, when we take the time to slow down and be present in the moment.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to slow down and just live in the moment?

~Tammy

PS - Don't forget to visit Daisy, Staci and Amber today for their posts in the Homemade Living series. Next week I will share my post along with Mary and Jackie.

How We Homestead: Our Future Goals

It's hard to believe, but this is the final installment in our five-week series called How We Homestead. I have really enjoyed writing each post for this series and I hope you have enjoyed reading! For the final installment, I'd like to talk about our future plans and goals we have for the homestead. Looking back on the past two years, I've realized that we have accomplished a lot so far, but of course we still have more we'd like to achieve. Here is our vision for the future.

Animals
I am a huge animal lover, and that was a big part of our reason for moving out to the country. I didn't want to be restricted by city ordinances on the types of livestock I could keep, and I also wanted plenty of room for my animals to roam and enjoy their lives. I told David a while back that one of my goals was to have some of each type of fowl, and so far we only have chickens and guineas, so we have a ways to go! Our next addition will be ducks to help with garden pests, and we are hoping to add them next year.

A little further out into the future, we want to get some sheep or goats. To me, there are few things cuter than a tiny goat kid jumping and bouncing around, so I really want to experience that firsthand. And of course it would be wonderful to have goat milk to make my own goat cheese. Yum!

Just visiting with this sweetie, but hopefully I can have one of my own in the future!

Garden
We have adopted a "learn as we go" mentality with gardening, and we still have so much to learn! Each year we are discovering more about our land and soil to help us maximize the efficiency and productivity of our garden. We recently expanded the garden and added lots of raised beds, and we are still working on enclosing the entire area to keep thieves from our harvest.

Gathering fresh lettuce for a salad.

In the future, I hope to keep adding new veggies to our garden each year and grow as much as I can from seed. One of our big long-term goals is to grow enough food each summer to last us year round. I think we are quite a few years out from realizing that goal, but we are working towards it. I need to learn more about food preservation as well so that we can safely store food to get us through the winter months.

House
We love houses with lots of charm (like our first home, a 1914 bungalow in the city) but our current house is really lacking. It is a newer house which is wonderful, but there isn't much in the way of the architectural detail or character we typically go for. We have been saving up our money for a while now, and today just purchased new flooring to go down in our living room and kitchen area (currently there is a commercial style carpet and linoleum). In July, David's mom and stepdad are coming to help us install the floor so we are very excited for that! We want to build bookshelves and make a new mantle for the electric fireplace as well to give the living room some more interest and charm.

A few more years down the road after we have saved up enough money, we'd like to change the outside of the house a bit. On the bottom part, we want to add a natural stone facade to make it look a little more cozy and woodsy. The previous owner was a big John Deere fan, so everything is green! It does fit in well with the landscape of the property, but we prefer brown tones, so we may also look into painting the roof to fit in with the stone on the bottom of the house.

Land
The thing we wish for the most on our property is to have a pond dug behind the house. So far, we've had local conservation agents come out to map and flag the best location for a pond and got several quotes for the work ($18,000 - yikes!). Since it is so pricey, we are looking at other options and trying to figure out how to best make this become a reality.

Back here is where the pond will go (looking out from our back porch).

We had the property logged last summer and it is still a mess (the photo above is pre-logging). Shortly after we moved out here, David made several trails in the woods and we really enjoyed walking on them with Duchess whenever we could. Logging destroyed our trails, so over the next several years we hope to clean some of it up and make some new trails. Right now it seems daunting to tackle a 20 acre pile of sticks and downed trees, but somehow we will make it work!

Of course all of these goals require money, so we would like to be able to do something from the homestead to earn some extra income. Not sure what that will be just yet, but we are always thinking and open to new ideas. In our ultimate dream, we would both be working on the homestead each day and making a living somehow off our land. For now we still have our day jobs, but we are always dreaming for the future.

Four other awesome bloggers are participating in this series as well, so don't forget to check out their posts to read more about where they are in their homesteading journey. You can find them here -

Staci at Life At Cobble Hill Farm
Meg at Little Homestead
Daisy at Maple Hill 101
Amber at Making A Home

Thanks so much for reading and please do let me know if you have any questions or comments. I'd love to hear from you!

~Tammy

Making Your Own Maple Syrup: Part 2 - From Sap To Syrup

Last week we wrote about tapping our trees to make our own maple syrup. This week we wanted to share our process for turning the sap into syrup!

Supplies
Outdoor burner or fryer with thermometer
Propane tank
5-gallon bucket of sap
Fine mesh sieve/strainer
1 quart measuring cup
Pot for finishing syrup inside
Cheesecloth or coffee filters
Bottle(s) for finished syrup

Process
1) Gather your supplies.
Place your bucket of sap where it is easily accessible. Light your outdoor burner and get it going. Grab your strainer and measuring cup for transferring the sap from the bucket to the pot to boil and keep them handy.

2) Begin boiling down the sap.
Start with 1 quart of sap (it's best to keep the sap shallow in the pan so it boils and evaporates quicker). Pour the sap through the strainer into the pot on the burner. Bring it up to a rolling boil and maintain the heat. While the first batch is boiling away, pour another quart of sap and get it hot (we just used the microwave) so it doesn't bring the temperature down too much when you add it in.

In just a short amount of time, you will notice a lot of the water evaporating. When the sap level has reduced quite a bit, add in another quart. We let one batch go for about 20 minutes before putting in another quart.

Follow this process until you have used all of the sap. We were putting in 1 quart every 20 minutes, and it took us nearly 5 hours to boil down 5 gallons of sap!

3) Finish the syrup. 
After all of your sap has been boiled down to about a quart remaining (basically the same level you started out with), you can finish it off indoors. Nearly all of the water has been evaporated off at this point so you won't make a sticky mess of your kitchen. Before you get started indoors, run the sap through a filter once again to make sure there is nothing in the sap you don't want in there. You will notice that having been boiled down quite a bit, the sap has turned from clear to a lovely amber color. It really starts to look like syrup! But it's not there just yet.

Finished syrup boils at 7.1 degrees above the boiling temperature of water, so you need to bring it up to the right temperature for it to be transformed into syrup (the boiling point of water is usually 212 degrees, but it can vary depending on your weather and altitude so test your thermometer with some rapidly boiling water to see where it registers). If you plan to store the syrup for a while before using, at this point you can pour it into a mason jar then turn the jar upside down and the heat from the syrup will seal the lid. Otherwise, let the syrup cool to room temperature then place in the refrigerator.

And there you have it! Your very own handmade maple syrup. If you've never had fresh, homemade maple syrup, let me tell you - it is out of this world delicious! It doesn't taste like any syrup I've had before. It is more like liquid candy! We did notice that our syrup is a little bit thinner than what we're normally used to, but that didn't bother us too much because the taste more than made up for the consistency.

After 5 hours of babysitting the sap we were pooped! We had more sap to go, but were honestly getting tired of the process. We were wondering if there was anything else we could do with the sap other than going through the whole process to make finished syrup. David got creative and put some sap on to boil for a few minutes just to sort of sanitize it, then put it in a cup with a tea bag and made some tea! It was pretty good, but needed a bit more sweetness for our taste buds, so we added a little honey and it was perfect.

All in all, we are very happy that we did this ourselves and learned firsthand how maple syrup is made. We definitely have a much deeper appreciation for it now! That being said, I don't know if we'll continue to make our own syrup in the future. We both agreed that it was A LOT of work for such a small amount of syrup (the ratio of sap to syrup is a staggering 40:1 after all) and we didn't really feel that it was the best use of our time. We don't use maple syrup all that much, so to be quite honest I'd rather shell out $7 for a bottle of pure maple syrup at the store than going through the long process of making our own (and spending much more than $7!). I know that's not very homesteady of me, but that's the truth. We are still learning which activities interest us and are good uses of our time and money, and for us, maple syrup just isn't one of them.

I would recommend that everyone try this at least once and see how much work it is for yourself. It is neat to see the process and have an understanding of all that goes into a tiny bottle of syrup. Who knows, maybe you'll love it and find a new passion! But for us, I think one time was enough.

~Tammy

Shared with Down Home Blog Hop, Wildcrafting Wednesday, Country Homemaker Hop, Farm Girl Blog Fest, Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop, Explorers Blog Hop, Sunny Simple Sunday, Eco-Kids Tuesday, The HomeAcre Hop, Backyard Farming Connection Homesteading Skills     

Making Your Own Maple Syrup: Part 1 - Collecting The Sap

Last year we really wanted to tap our maple trees to make our own syrup, but I procrastinated so we missed our window of opportunity. We decided about a month ago to get serious about it this year so we started watching the weather and planned our time to collect the sap. Last weekend conditions were favorable, so we made a trip to Lowe's for some supplies and set up our taps.

Since this is our very first attempt at collecting sap, we looked online for an easy way to tap maple trees and found this video to be helpful in planning out the process. We are total newbies and have already made several mistakes, but I thought sharing our experiences might help others who are wanting to tap their maple trees for the first time as well. If you are experienced and have suggestions on how we could improve our process, please let us know. We'd be happy to hear any advice you'd like to share!

Supplies
Screwdriver with 5/16" and 1/2" bits
1/2" metal (not plastic) taps
3/8" clear plastic tubing
5 gallon buckets with lids

Process
1) Find your maple trees.
This is kind of a given obviously, but if you don't know how to identify trees without their leaves, you could be searching your woods forever. We called our local resource forester with the MDC who we worked with for our logging this past summer. Marty has been such an invaluable (and free) resource. I called him last week and he came right out and marked all of our maple trees for us so we'd know which ones to tap (it is advised to tap a tree only when it is healthy and the diameter of the tree is at least 12").

2) Watch your weather patterns to know when it is the optimal time to tap.
The tree sap starts to flow the best when nighttime temperatures are below freezing and daytime temperatures are above freezing. The sap will usually flow for about 3-4 weeks, but the best sap is produced early in the season.

3) Gather your supplies.
You can buy tapping kits online which I'm sure work really well, but we didn't want to wait for anything to come in the mail and tried to keep things as cheap as possible by making a quick trip to Lowe's.

4) Let the tapping begin.
Using your 5/16" bit, drill a hole at a slight upward angle 1.5" deep at chest height on the tree (this is the hole the sap will flow out of). In the same spot, using your 1/2" bit, drill a hole 1/2" deep (this is the hole that you insert the tap into). David put blue tape on each tap as a guide to know when he hit the correct depth.

Insert the tap by "tapping" it in with a hammer. (This is where we made our first mistake. We wanted to go as cheap as possible, so we bought plastic taps and 3 of the 5 broke while trying to insert into the tree, so we went back and purchased the metal variety which worked like a charm.) You may see the sap begin dripping out immediately at this point, depending on the time of day.

Attach tubing to the spigot on the tap and feed it into the bucket at the base of the tree (we drilled a hole in the lid the exact size of the tube). Secure the lid on the bucket to keep out any debris. Our lid did not fasten tight on the bucket, so we had to put a rock on top to keep it in place.

And that's it! Now the waiting game begins. We had a pretty cold day yesterday and temperatures stayed in the 20s, so the sap froze and did not flow. The next few days should get above freezing, so hopefully we will  be able to collect more sap. We have read that the ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1, so if we are able to fill one 5-gallon bucket with sap, we should get about 16 oz of syrup once all is said and done. For our first year, I'd be happy with that. If it works out well, next year we will expand the operation, but this year we are focusing on just learning the process and working out all the kinks. Stay tuned for part 2 to hear about our method for turning the sap into syrup!

Have you ever made your own maple syrup? Did you find it harder or easier than you thought it would be?

~Tammy


Shared with Down Home Blog Hop, Wildcrafting Wednesday, The Country Homemaker Hop, The HomeAcre Hop, Farmgirl Blog Fest, What I Am Eating, Country Homemaker Hop, Backyard Farming Connection Homesteading Skills, Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop

Trimming The Tree Frugally

This year we continued our tradition of cutting down a Christmas tree from our woods (go here to see last year's tree). We had one evergreen tree in the middle of the back yard that was really out of place so David gave it the ax this year and brought it inside.

Of course it's not a perfect frasier fir, but I think that makes it all the more charming. This year's tree was quite a bit smaller than last year's so that made it easier to handle and decorate.

Last year at a local antique store we found three boxes of old ornaments for only $0.25 per box, so we snatched them up. We like to go with lots of the same ball ornaments on our tree and wanted to switch it up from the red that we normally do, so these were perfect. They were gold originally, but due to their age (maybe 15 years old?) some of the gold had rubbed off and left a nice patina effect.

I wanted to use a different tree skirt this year, too, as our white glittered skirt didn't really fit the theme I was going for. I remembered a couple of burlap bags I bought at the feed store a few months back just because I love burlap sacks and they were only $1.50 each. I tried them out on the base of the tree and decided it was a go. We normally use colorful retro bulb lights on our tree, but I wanted to go with plain white this year. I got a couple boxes of lights for only $2.50 each and strung them up to complete this year's tree.

The cats like to be around the tree (luckily they don't try to pull off the ornaments or lights) and have been smart enough to figure out how to move the burlap bags to get some drinks of the tree's water.

A couple more shots just for fun...

When added all up, the total cost of this year's tree came out to a whopping $8.75! I love a good deal, especially during the holidays.

Do you decorate your tree the same way every year, or do you like to switch it up?

~Tammy

Shared with Handmade Christmas 2013, Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop, Rural Thursday, Repurposed Ideas Weekly, Old Time Party, Lavender Garden Cottage, Barn Hop Holiday Edition, Wildcrafting Wednesday,  Farm Girl Blog Fest

Year In Review

Today marks the one year anniversary of Our Neck of the Woods! I'm really excited and thought it would be fun to look back over the past year and see what all we've accomplished. I was hesitant to start this blog, but my sweet friend Heather gave me the push I needed to put myself out there and I'm so glad she did. I've never been one for attention, so it was hard for me to express myself for the whole world to see. But now I can't imagine NOT doing it. Sharing bits and pieces of rural living through photos and words has become a passion for me and I am so glad I took the plunge one year ago. Here's what we've been up to this past year.

1) Discovered how much we enjoy exploring our woods and feeling like kids again when we discover amazing bugs and critters we've never seen before.

2) Learned more about foraging and went mushroom hunting in our woods for the first time. Figured out how to identify and cook puffballs!

3) Realized that it's important to take time every once in a while to treat yo self.

4) Made the discovery of a lifetime - banana ice cream!

5) Started a new tradition of Christmas tree shopping in our own back yard.

6) Waged a war on ticks with the help of a new flock of guineas.

7) Dealt with the worst heartbreak we'd ever experienced as homesteaders and learned to let our bad experiences strengthen us.

8) Eight new little pullets were added to our flock; one of which turned out to be a rooster!

9) Started a new series on the blog called Feathered Friend Friday.

10) Lots of progress was made with Duchess. She's so playful and happy now!

11) Started a facebook page for the blog and also registered a custom domain name for the blog.

12) For the first time ever, we witnessed eggs hatching and became proud grandparents!

13) Successfully completed the logging process on our 20 acres of woods. Still working on clean up, though!

14) Perhaps my favorite change over the past year - finally upgraded to a new camera!

15) Learned so much about gardening this past year and plan to use what we've learned to help us out with next year's garden.

This past year has been a wild ride. Can't wait to see what the next year brings!

~Tammy

Timber!

I woke up this morning to the sound of huge trees falling in the woods because we are finally moving forward with our logging plans! After about five months of researching and getting several bids, we hired a logging company, signed a contract, and before the crack of dawn this morning they got to work.

About a month ago, our local resource forester with the Missouri Department of Conservation came out and helped us determine the best approach to logging for our own forestry management goals. He walked all 20 acres of our property with David and marked each individual tree to be cut down. This ensures that it is very clear for the loggers to see which trees to harvest and which to leave alone.

Certain types of trees are worth more than others based upon the species or the condition of the tree. Those that are not worth much at all but need to be removed are marked with a slash, and those that are marketable get a solid dot.

All in all, we have over 200 trees to be cut down, and it should take about a week or two for the whole process to be complete. When I got home tonight, I saw they made quite a bit of progress today.

They have to make paths in the woods to get their equipment in and get the trees out, but it was kind of a shock to see how big of a path they made today. Our resource forester assured us that everything should bounce back fairly quickly after the logging, so I hope he's right!

~Tammy

Bee Tree

I first wrote about our plans to have the property logged back in February. Since then we have learned a lot and realized it's not nearly as simple of a process as we previously thought. We were just marking trees that we thought looked good and wanted to keep, but there is WAY more behind it!

A couple months ago I called our regional Missouri Department of Conservation office to get in touch with the resource forester in our area. He has been out to our property twice now, and most recently marked all our trees that we will get cut down (more on this in a future post!). He is such a smart guy, and pointed out lots of cool things to David about the types of trees we have out here. In particular, he found one very interesting thing on our property...

A bee tree!

We never noticed it before, but a colony of bees has set up shop in this old, hollowed out tree.

David has been talking about wanting bees for some time now, so he was pretty excited when they found this. We are going to talk to a local beekeeper tomorrow, but from what we understand, it is possible to move the colony from the tree to a different location. We can't harvest their honey as it is now, but if we move the colony to a beehive we can eventually collect the honey. I can't imagine anything better than having my own honey!

~Tammy

Cleaning Up

We've had some really bad weather around this area over the past week or so. Luckily, we didn't get hit very hard. We did have some pretty strong winds that blew a lot of limbs out of our trees, so this weekend when we had the time, we played clean up.

Yes, that is ME driving the 4-wheeler! I have been pretty scared of these types of things ever since I was a kid and burned my leg pretty badly on the motor of a 3-wheeler while riding with my brother (still not exactly sure how it happened!). I was even scared to ride this with David driving it, but finally decided it was high time to get over my fear.

Of course, as most fears are, it was pretty silly because it's really easy to drive (and dare I say, fun!). My job was to gather all the limbs from the front and back yard while David worked on making a big pile to burn.

We're also working on clearing out what we have dubbed "Section A" which is basically around the chicken area over to the creek.

David gets the joy of cutting down small trees and cutting up larger ones that have already fallen down. He loves that chainsaw :)

The guineas were having fun playing in the piles of sticks!

I worked hard for about 2 hours, loading and unloading limbs and then I got tired. It was fun for awhile, but after a few hours I was so done! David was still hard at it, so I went to say hi to the chickens.

Tubs always jumps up on my back when I squat down! Mostly to escape the romantic advances of Cam I think, but I tell myself it's because she really likes me. :) She normally just stands on my back for a while, but this time she kind of nested in my hair and made herself comfortable! It was pretty cute.

~Tammy

Forestry Management and Big Plans

We've been thinking a lot lately about what we want to do with the land out here. Of course the woods are beautiful and we love all the trees, but the fact is, we can't do what we want with all the trees out there. So, we are getting the property logged.

Sometime this week we are getting an estimate for what one company will pay us for the timber. After that if we give them the go ahead, it should only take another couple weeks for the job to be done. Before getting the estimate, we had to mark the trees we do not want them to take.

We want to save most of the bigger trees around the house to keep a cozy, woodsy feel. But just about everything else is fair game. Eventually we want to dig a pond in the back yard so we figure they can take all those trees since they'll have to be gone anyway.

 

These trees are keepers, but some of the other trees we had wood stacked in between will be cut down, so we had to move a BUNCH of wood.

 We made about 4 or 5 trips after marking all the trees, so we were pretty worn out by that point!

It was really good to get some work done outside. It had been a while, so it was fun and a good reminder of why we bought this property in the first place.

Our ultimate goal is to be self-sufficient and be able to grow ourselves most of what we eat. We moved out here towards the end of summer last year, so we didn't get a chance to plant a garden. But this year, we're going all out! As it is now, there's really no good place to have a garden because the trees won't let the sunlight through. But after we get the property logged, we'll have plenty of places for vegetable gardens.

Our long-term plans include a big pond, fruit orchards, vineyards, corn fields, Christmas tree farms, wheat fields, and places for more animals like goats and ducks. Of course it will take us a while to get there, but logging is the first step towards making all that happen. So excited we're getting the ball rolling!

~Tammy