A cluck cluck here...

Back in the early spring, the farm stores filled with tiny, cute baby chickens and ducks. Growing up I always wanted to take some home. In 5th grade we did a class project where we got to hatch chicks and then parent permitting we got to take them home. My parents were not permitting at the time. No cute little chick for me. 

In general, I have not been excited about the whole becoming an adult thing, but sometimes it works out in my favor. Tyler and I started thinking about getting a small brood of chicks and when we decided to go for it, there was no one to tell us no. It was our adult decision to make!

Mid March, Alesha came to visit and she got to be a part of our chicken adoption process. We got a chicken magazine (from Barnes and Noble, because when we asked where they were at Home Depot they looked at us like we had two heads. We know we've seen them there before, also Lowes has them.) and did a little research as to what kind we wanted. 

The Ameraucanas chicken is what we decided on. Pullets only (baby girls only). They are medium/small chickens and they are often called Easter-Eggers because their eggs are often tinted blue and green. 

My sister Erin was still working at Buchheit at the time, so she did some scouting for us when she got to work over the weekend, sure enough they had a new batch of Ameraucanas pullets.  So we headed to Buchheits. 

{ Alesha and a duckling }

We picked out five little ladies because you cannot legally buy chickens in quantities less than five in Illinois. We got a variety of colors. Tyler and I each picked two and Alesha picked one. We bought food, a water dish, and a heat lamp and we were set. We took them straight over to my parents house as we were going up for dinner, so they got to meet their grand-chicks right away. 

We named them with Greek god insiration. From left to right: Hades, Artemis, Nyx, Aura, and Athena

Nyx was an early lover of perching, sitting on the side of their bin. 

Tyler and Alesha started building a stylish A-frame when I was at work. The bottom is open to the ground and there is a second floor where they can go to get away from the elements and nest.  We finished it off with some waterproof roofing and a nice coat of yellow paint. By the end of April the ladies (as we call them) were ready to inhabit their coop.

{ They grow so fast! }

We learned the hard way that chicken wire works great to keep the chickens in, but not so great to keep other animals out. One day when we got home from work our neighbors dog Jessie was laying out back. I didn't think much of it and called her over and told Tyler to come say Hi to Jessie. As I was telling him that she was out back, it started dawning on me. I hadn't checked the chickens, and Jessie is  border collie... we looked at the coop and sure enough the upstairs window was pushed in and one side of the coop was busted out. No chickens in sight. 

She got three of them. Athena, Aura, and Artemis. It was gruesome. 

Two survived. They somehow escaped and hid under the house. Once Tyler was down walking around, they came out to say hi. Hades and Nyx.

We reinforced the coop. It now has chicken wire and a wire mesh covering the sides. One other day we came home and all the roofing materials were ripped off and there were some gnawing marks on the wood, but our chickens were safe!

Tyler had made them nesting boxes and we set out a couple golf balls to set an example. Then, in early September we got a surprise. Our first egg!

And then the next day, another! One lays blue eggs and the other slightly greenish. Ever since we've been getting a steady supply of Easter eggs, one to two a day. We keep them in a bowl on our counter (you don't have to refrigerate eggs fresh from the chicken) and once we get over eight we generally make a quiche. So far we've been keeping up with them okay, but the flow of eggs from two chickens is a lot and I can't imagine how many we would have if we still had all five ladies. Come Easter I'm sure we could sell them as pre-decorated eggs...

And speaking of eggs, we've been gone for the last two days so I'm sure there are quite a few waiting to be collected and turned into a late breakfast. We're off for our regular egg hunt!

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Comeback Time

Whew!... It's been a long time. Life has been happening. A lot of it. I definitely have a lot of blogging to do to catch up on all that has happened since we made maple syrup. To name a few:

• We got chickens
• We adopted a dog
• Tyler got a new job
• We planned a wedding
• We bought a house
• We got married

There was lot of living between all those major things as well. It's been a very busy time and also a very stressful time. We are looking forward to this giant chapter called Marriage: The Rest of Our Lives and all the sub-chapters that will come along too. 

{ New House }

{ Wedding Day : Photo Cred }

More blogging to come! I'm excited to be back writing in this space. Cheers to life being Lightly (and wonderfully) Dappled!

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Getting Sticky

The morning after we tapped our tree we woke to find our bucket 3/4 full. It was a cold Sunday not getting above 32 degrees, but we got down to the business of making our sap into syrup.

The sap comes out like a slightly sweetened water,  so as you can imagine it takes a lot of boiling to get it to become a sticky, syrupy consistency. In fact they say that 40 gallons of sap boils down into 1 gallon of syrup. Since so much water gets boiled out, the directions we read said that it's not good to boil in the house because there's too much moisture. Especially if there is wall paper in the house.

Soooooo we made a fire in the backyard.

We stacked cinder blocks on either side of our fire pit so we could stretch a camping grill grate across them.

We dug out our existing pit a little bit so we could get our fire low enough under the grate. We got our fire going first thing so it could heat up.

Tyler took our bucket of sap down and hung a new one up.

We first filtered our sap through Tyler's Toddy, a cold brew coffee system, to get out any debris that ended up in our bucket. Our lid system was not perfect but it did a decent job.

Then, we poured it into a cast iron pot with a lid to put over the fire.

We decided to use a combination of a lid and a mesh strainer to cover the top of our pot. We wanted to keep ash from getting into our pot but we didn't want to keep the lid on the whole time because it would prevent the steam from getting out as quickly. We ended up setting the mesh over the whole pot and kept the lid off center to allow the steam to escape.

Our sap came to a boil surprisingly quick, but the whole boiling process took most of the day. When the sap would boil down partially, we would add a little bit more. And then when that boiled down, a little more. And the process continued...

Until we had it boiled down to the point that it was a bit amber in color and basically all fit into the same pot. Then we moved inside to the stove. We turned our vent on high and used a candy thermometer to keep an eye on the sap. By this point it tasted very maple-y but it was still extremely thin.

The temperature of syrup is supposed to be 7 degrees over boiling point, so for our area we boiled it until it was 217 degrees Fahrenheit. It was still very thin while hot but we weren't sure if it would thicken as it cooled. We took it off and strained it through the Toddy once again. It didn't thicken. We hadn't boiled it quite hot enough and needed to put it on for a little bit longer. It didn't take too much longer and we had REAL MAPLE SYRUP from our own backyard.

We got two more buckets of sap. But they were partially tainted with rain water. Tyler convinced me we shouldn't dump them and he made more syrup on his days off (he quit his job). This time he did the whole boiling process in the house (since we don't have any wallpaper). The result is that we have two distinctly different flavored maple syrups. The first is lighter and very smoky flavored, the second is darker and tainted very maple-y tasting.

We've had fresh pancakes but our freezer is also stocked with waffles and french toast sticks to give us plenty of excuses to eat our syrup. I have actually been eating more of the second batch of syrup myself.

We also went to a Maple Syrup Festival in Eureka, Missouri. We felt like old pros looking at all the "how to" information but the best part was the syrup on snow candy. I remember trying to make maple on snow after reading Little House on the Prairie, but to no avail. But at the festival we got free samples. They boil the syrup even more  and then pour it on the snow and it assumes a taffy consistency and it is delicious!

 

We still want to go to Vermont someday to have the Northeastern maple syruping experience but I'd say the Midwest experience was totally cool and maybe something we will do year after year.  So friends and family, if you want to come visit in the next month or two we'll make you breakfast and let you try some of Amy & Tyler's Maple Syrup. Bon Appetit!

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