We zipped down to the Kings Landing sugar bush this past weekend. I should be tapping my own trees right now, but with the amount of snow on our property, it's challenging enough just feeding the chickens and rabbit every morning. We still have some syrup left from last year's run, so I might skip it until next year.
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It's the beginning of summer and I can't believe just how quickly spring has gone by. It's been a very busy one for us all. It started with sap gathering and making maple syrup from our own trees. This is our first year doing so and we were happy to be able to gather enough sap from our five maple trees to make 1 gallon of syrup.
This was also the first year that we started our own seedlings inside. Bob and Erik put up three shelves across my south facing window and I started sets of onions, tomatoes, herbs and peppers.
We also hatched out our first brood of layers (Chanticleers). They are a nice multipurpose bird that do well in our Northern climate.
The garden is in, and my first cutting of rhubarb is in the freezer. Can't wait for the strawberries to grow so I can make some strawberry-rhubarb pies for Bob.
Most importantly was my daughter's graduation from St. Thomas University. She graduated with her Bachelors in Arts with an Honours in History. (That is her on the left). We are so proud of her!
I have been really blessed this past year, when it comes to fiber arts. I finally found a spinning wheel at an affordable price, I was gifted with an inkle loom and also I was gifted with a small tabletop loom that has string heddles.
I am almost ready to start weaving...once I get some cotton or linen thread...and there's that whole "learning to warp my loom" bit. Good thing I have lots of intelligent and knowledgeable friends. Oh, Kelly... Oh, Liz....
*(I do have books, but I'm a tactile/visual learner)
I've been thinking about electricity lately...or rather the lack of electricity. I've been gathering together winter emergency supplies, like I do every fall. When you life in a rural area, winter storms can do more than prevent you from going anywhere. They can knock out power, which in our case means no pump, thus no water, no toilet flushing and no heat. I've been perusing different emergency preparedness websites in order to double check my preps. So far, so good. Some easily prepared and heated foods that we cook on our camp stove, extra water, and blankets. If there is a power outage that lasts more than a day or so, we are out of our element because we still have no source of secondary heat. It really makes me think about what we would do in a real power grid emergency.
We lived for a year with no electricty, back in the year 2000. We lived in an Amish built house with a handpump, an outhouse, oil lamps, and a pioneer built woodstove. It was hard, it nearly broke us, and I am supremely glad that I did it. It certainly makes me appreciate the ease of turning on lights, or having water poor out of a spout at the twist of a tap, in our currrent home. However, I do fear that in general, society is loosing a skill set that once gone, will be difficult to regain. How many of us out there can start a fire without a match or lighter? Who knows how to fell a tree with an axe? Who knows how to build sturdy and long lasting items using only handtools. How many of us know how to preserve food in a root cellar?
Thankfully, I have a lot of resilient and knowlegable friends who, through our mutual love of history and/or self-sufficiancy, have mastered many of these past skills. I have friends who are weavers, spinsters, rug hookers, basket makers, garderners, brewers, seamstresses (by hand, not sewing machine), blacksmiths, carpenters (using hand tools), etc...
I am working on learning to spin, basket weave and sew by hand. What skills are you learning?
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"We must not only become reliable, progressive, skillful and intelligent, but we must keep the idea constantly before our youths that all forms of labor, whether with the hand or head, are honorable."
~Booker T. Washington
