I got lucky last winter

Over Memorial day weekend Ella, Maya and I went out to the big woods by our house with my Samuel Thayer foraging books to see what kind of plants we could identify and eat.  I need more foraging practice because we would have died of starvation or poisoning if dependent on my foraging skills to eat.  We also surveyed the woods I got my maple sap out of early this spring.  The survey goal was to identify maple trees to tap next year and to figure out how I did last winter trying to identify sugar maples without leaves.

Out in the woods I have to refer to the girls as deer.  If it gets them out learning in the woods I will call them anything they want.  

After searching every big tree in the woods over a couple hours Ella got surprisingly good at telling ash, elm, oak and Maple trees apart.  Ash and elm were still confusing until we talked to Heath and he pointed out an alternating leave on the elm versus the opposite pattern on the ash.   The tree on the left above is a big sugar maple and is the same tree in the pic just below.  It is in this group of four other big trees about 75 feet south and a little west of big sweetie on the south side of the wet part of that section of woods.  I know descriptions of where trees are is not great blogging but part of what I use this blog for is remembering things and by next spring I will not remember these trees if I don't write it down.    

The Maple below is called the arm wrestler and is on the west side in about 50 feet between the two little meadows by the big bone pile (Edit not sure of this location see next post).

Next is big sweetie.  She is found by going in on the North side in the middle with the neighborhood to your back.  When you see the widow tree holding her dead husband go left about 50 feet to big sweetie. 

 I am amazed that I happened to tap this tree because after all of our survey  efforts last weekend we only found these three sugar maples in the large portion of the forest we searched.  Lots of little ones but of the big trees this was it.  The trees I was sure were sugar maples with my winter identification efforts were all ash trees.  No wonder I didn't get any sap from them.  I taped big sweetie in a fit of desparation after weeks of no sap from my other trees.  What are the chances I would find one of the three?

  The girls spontaneously ran up to her and gave her a big hug.  I guess that makes them tree huggers.

 For some reason Ella and Maya  kept laughing when we discovered this tree .

A Maya kind of Weekend

The rain kept us mostly inside this weekend.   Bluff Creek got a bit bigger.  Wetlands are a good thing.

Ella was with  friends much of the weekend so Maya made most of my pics.  Here she is drying some dill.  

She got a stuffed dog from her grandparents.  Named it Loona and sets it facing her room door to keep her safe at night from things like a fox.  

With a dog who loves to scratch at sheet rock and 5 years in our house we had a bunch of dog damage, small dents, holes and a few screw heads to take care of with joint compound.  Maya was surprisingly good at this somewhat tricky task and filled a bunch of holes by herself not to mention all of the sanding after it dried.  I am a big fan of my Maya.

I found a new home for the Wei Wu Wei bike

 I have not had need or been riding this bike for a few years and have been wanting to give this bike to a person who will use it, love it and need it.  This is much more appealing than keeping it (which means storing it) or selling it for a small amount of money.

 I have a 5'7" female coworker who is both car free and in need of a ride for her urban pursuits.

 Lao Tzu has the answer.  I wasn't sure if I could scrunch the bike down to her size but it fits her great and with the fenders, light and upright position I think it will be a great tool to get her around town.

 Conti Top touring 2000 tires make it roll super fast.

 This was my first real bike back in 1989 or was it 1990.  It started as a Specialized Stumpjumper.  Only original part on it is the frame itself.  Even the fork got changed out in the early 90's after a failed attempt to ride down the Highland park ski jump landing hill.  Most of the places I ride off road in the twin cities area were first discovered and explored on this bike.

I will miss it and at the same time am very happy to find a good home where it will likely be ridden often.  

Moonlander's summer clothes

Ruins near Louisville swamp tonight. New Moonlander highlights include a 36 tooth 29r cassette, EA 70 90mm 17deg rise stem, Easton Haven carbon bar, esi grips and xt pedals.

  Other switches from winter include 65mm Marge lite rims rather than 100mm clown shoe rims, husker du rather than bud and lou tires, bags taken off for now.

Tarptent

First blog post from my phone in a while.   Hope it helps increase how often I do it.   Playing around with some tarptent ideas. Started with the 7 foot per side pentagon like the mld trailstar.   

Chanhassen Syrup

 Chanhassen is a Dakota Sioux name meaning "the tree with the sweet sap" in other words the sugar maple tree.   I have been meaning to tap some sweet trees ever since moving to Chanhassen.  This year by chance I found some Maple Syrup making supplies at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and decided this was the year.     After getting the spiles, a book on how to do it and the bags and holders I spent a ton of time trying to figure out how to identify a Sugar Maple tree in in the winter when you have no leaves.   An education session about taping sugar maples at the Landscape Arboretum gave me the confidence to give it a shot.

 Around March 24 I went out and did my best to identify and tap 4 sugar maple trees in a near by forest.  The bag holder things were cheap and work well.

 My trusty Duluth pack has worked great to carry the large items for my trips to the woods each day.

 Mazy has had a great time sprinting both to the woods and around the woods while I work.

 After a couple of weeks of no sap I tapped another big tree and monkey rigged a bucket collection system.  I was pretty sad with some crushed hope after going to see empty bags for two weeks straight.   The season was ending and my brother Heath had long ago gotten sap from his South St. Paul trees.

 Then we got that weird late snow on about 4-5-13 and I found three and a half gallons of sap from the big tree in my monkey rigged bucket.  I have since gotten about 6 more gallons from this one tree and none from the others I tapped so long ago.

 To get a cup of syrup you need about 30 cups of sap.  That is a lot of boiling down.  I tried boiling down this first three and a half gallons on the stove, in various shaped pans, on the grill and on my propane turkey fryer kind of set up in the picture above.  The big pot on the turkey fryer set up worked the best.  Tons of power to evaporate fast.   Maya says the boiling sap "smells like pancakes!"

 Once I got it down to about 4 cups I filtered it with a coffee filter and finished it inside the house on the stove ending with about 2 1/2 cups of syrup.   Not sure why the pic above looks a little cloudy but in person it was clear and beautiful.    It is syrup at 7 degrees above what pure water boils at on that day and location.  I went 9 degrees over and still think it could be a little more thick.  Things change fast at the end however and I didn't want to end up with maple sugar so I killed the boil and am very happy with the results.  Compared to store bought grade A pure Anderson brand maple syrup mine not surprisingly has a more fresh and full maple flavor.   Not to get sappy but almost a floral hint.  Since it all came from one big tree I like to think of it as "single origin" maple syrup.   My girls and I have named this tree big sweetie because I got a 20/1 sap to syrup ratio rather than a more standard 30/1.

The pancakes we used this first batch of syrup on have never tasted better.   Definitely worth the $50 or so in start up gear and 2 and a half weeks of trips to the woods.  

The last month or so

 Made Julia Childs French onion soup recipe again.  Takes much of a day but is so so good.    

 A patch of woods I often drive by that reminds me of a Charles Beck painting.  

 I raced with Steve in the Frozen Fat Forty.

 Jesse Lalonde here won the whole thing on a moonlander.  Why didn't I win the whole thing? I have a moonlander.

 We did win our division.  We also got last place and middle place in our division.
Because we showed up.

 For the win we each got a Surly T-shirt of a blood puking clown.

 Spent a few weekends looking at furniture and drapes.  Another win or was it a loss?

 Did an overnight in Afton State Park with Heath.  Pulk worked great even though there was a lot of up and down hill stuff.  Trekking poles are in my future after using Heath's to help motor up the hills.  Backpack is faster but the pulk really was nice for some of the larger sized winter gear items.

 Made french bread.

 Made Yogurt.

 Replaced this Pin on my coffee roasting drum with my new rivet tool.  How did I manage before?  Pretty much any two thin materials like metal, plastic, wood? that I can drill a hole into I can now connect with a rivet.  I always thought riveting was for "other" more fixety people.  It was both a cheap tool and is super easy to use.  

 I tapped some trees to get sap to make maple syrup.  I still don't have any sap after a week and a half and am feeling like I am the sap for thinking I could get maple syrup from a tree.  Hopefully it is just too cold still in the forest where my trees are located and it will start to flow soon.

 Made some chitterlings   This time in the pressure cooker.  Only one batch of water and 45 minutes later they were done.  Browned them up with some butter and olive oil.

Interestingly image search Chittelings on Google and I think my chitlin pics from a blog post years ago are some of the first pics.  

A few things

Ride last night with Heath along the Minnesota on the North side from 35W to Cedar.  Temp was likely just above freezing since we had a mix of snow and sleet.  Trails were fantastic.  Fast, twisty and fun.  The picks make it look much darker than it actually is with our big boy lights.  1000 lumen is more light than I needed and used less much of the time.

 I love the rapidly changing shadows of the trees as you ride at night.   The white snow gives a perfect contrast to these moving and changing shadows that often have me thinking I saw an creature.   Trails in winter change and evolve with each snow and with each riders chosen line.   I much prefer this organic development to the some of the overly managed trails in summer.

 A friendly LED on the back of my Magicshine light turns from green to blue to yellow to red telling me how much juice I have in the battery.

 On a completely unrelated note.  It is valentines day.  A few days ago Maya and I assembled the valentines day cards for her Chan Elementary preschool class.  Maya wrote her name and "friend" on about 30 cards. We then attached candy and either pencils or little bracelets.  Maya was extremely proud that she could spell friend by the end of the card making.  I continue to mix up the i and e.

 Big annual book fare thing at the Chan high school.  Maya loves to hug characters like this one.  I can only assume it is an awkward looking cousin of Grover.