The snow is almost gone. Daisy our border collie got a hair trim because she LOVES mud and gets so filthy, this is the only way to get her clean (sort of) easily. She still has a lot of long hair but the belly and legs are shorter (not shaved just scissor trimmed). She hates it but likes the end result so the trimming is done in stages. I still have more to go.
It’s Sunday evening and I''ve been in the sugar shack all day tending the boiler, adding wood and boilling down sap. I’ve done about 200 gallons of sap today and there’s another 200-300 in the tank to boil tomorrow. We are getting really close to the sap turning and not being useable. But we’ll see how long it holds off. Once the trees start to bud the sap tastes bad and just becomes worthless. There is no sugar in it, it’s gone to carbs as the trees get closer to popping out leaves. HOLD on Maples! Give us a till the weekend!
I’m running out of jars and bottles anyways so it’s time. We started 5 weeks ago and it’s been the usual start and stop cycle. Some days it runs and some days it’s sleeping. Before doing maple syrup I thought I was in tune with spring eb and flow but now I know I really wasn’t. Not till you are tasting spring and looking over trees carefully do you know spring.
I have plants started in the house and will start more this week. By the weekend we will have the greenhouse wood stove fired up and it full of flats full of seeds.
Yesterday, Matt and I went to a small local grazer conference in Cortland. Only about 40 farmers there so way too many missed a good oportunity to learn something new, chat with like minded farmers and have a good day out of cold bitter rain outside. But it was a good day. I met a good farmer friend of mine that I adore- Carrie from Black Willow Pond farm (they have the coolest logo too!). Her, her 2 sons and husband are in Cobleskill raising ALOT of chicken, turkey, plus pigs, lamb, some beef and also sell her family’s dairy farm products. She’s super busy and super smart. I always learn a little and get inspried when I get to chat with her. She’s a little stubborn like me and can really analyze things down to what works and what really matters for the farm (and family). She’ll be doing a session with me at a conference this summer- stay tuned on that. It’ll be about marketing meat. We will have lots of really good info for farmers looking to up their selling or get started. We will share lots.
So that conference? It’s called Grasstravaganza 2023 held July 21-23 at Morrisville College. I’m on the planning committee plus will be doing some presenting and our farm will be hosting a tour also. So if you are a grazing farmer or looking to start I hope you will join us. The website will be going live in the coming week ( I hope) with more info. There is also a FB and IG Page that will be posting more as things are locked in. Grasstravaganaza. 2023 are the pages.
On the way home from the meet up in Cortland we passed by some farms that sure could improve some things in my opinion but then again none of us are perfect.
We’ve had some horendous mud conditions here in the past and worked hard to change it as soon as we could. Cows make mud and poop. We have things changed around and took care of most of that but still March and April are not pretty at times. But our cows have comfy clean areas to sleep and space to roam on firm ground, clean water from a well and not a crap loaded stream.
We are now about 6-7 weeks from grazing once again. I’ll be doing alot more posting on social media chronically our grazing days. Last year I slacked off but this year I’m bringing my A-game and using those fun tools we have to share what we do.
