monday's mountain musings

We have had some beautiful weather over the last week. Some days  pushing the 60 degree mark.A huge difference compared to the couple weeks of frigid we had prior.During the nice we have managed to  pretty much  finish the renovations on the chickens run and boy does it look nice.

We had a broken  water line  resulting in no water for the  last 10 days or so. Manthing repaired that today,an easy fix overall. Was not  that inconvenient to have to  go to the pond and dip out water or fill  pails from the gutter downspout for our needs, we use so little water that with a bit of tweaking we just used a bit less. . We don't have hot water anyway, so that was no loss. I do know the more we cut back our water use or tighten our belts on something the more I realize just how wasteful people really are overall  including myself at one time.

I have been puttering about in the gh doing some rearranging and cleaning .Today I took  some of my  indoor garden plants and planted them in the beds down there.I have made another raised bed in there and tomorrow we will be taking the  wood stove out and the fir proof panel behind it to let in more sunlight  and to  make way for a shelf I removed, a hot compost pit or another raised bed. I dont know which  i will go with yet, guess I will decide in the moment. Now the gh  has cabbage ,carrots, collards, mustard, peas, taters, onions, spinach and chinese cabbage.As soon as the soil in the newest bed  warms a bit more I will plant it out as well.

We tapped a couple maple trees again this year. So far we have about 3 gallons of sap, which would make very little syrup. Last year our first attempt (i have done it  before but in ny) we got a whoppin 1/2 cup of syrup when we were done. We are hoping for a bit better  yield this year   by tapping a bit earlier than  last,  but who knows. Our  late winter months can  fluctuate temperature wise by huge amounts so makes "syrupin" a bit difficult at best.

We did have a couple rainy days this weekend  so  I got a bit bored and threw  together a montage of photos from here on the homestead through a year.