Manna Milling Moms

Of Birthdays, Gardens and Physical Therapy

Yesterday was the Baby's Birthday. It seems impossible that an entire year has passed since God placed her into our home and lives. She has been an incredible blessing that is indescribable. Before she was ever born, God used her to bring about such wonderful things in our family and that has continued. We have watched God's beautiful miracle of life. It is amazing how much this wee one has changed all of our lives and we are grateful to God for her. This past year has wrought many changes. To God be the Glory, for all things come at His mighty Hand!

This has been a rather busy week. I began Physical Therapy. I went Monday , Wednesday and Friday. It does seem to be helping already. I am not sure how long this will take. My prayer is that I will recover without surgery. I know that my God is capable of doing this, should He so choose. It is in His hands.


Thanks to my sweet Husband, our potato bed is planted. He dug up the beds and the trenches today, which was his day off. Due to my injury, he then did the heavy part of every step we completed in getting them planted. What a Guy! We finished hilling them up just as it was getting too dark to see. We will probably be surprised at how they look when the sun comes up. Hubby said that we would have some finishing work to do on Sunday. We plant by the signs and other methods as directed by my Granny Day. She is a wealth of knowledge and we are grateful to God for her being in our lives. Today was the best day to plant according to the signs and Granny's interpretation of them. I feel blessed that she is teaching me. We planted about 30 feet of Red and 30 feet of white potatos. It got too dark to plant the onions and we observe the Sabbath so we will do that the next best day. This is the sign for root crops. I hope to post pictures tomorrow.

May the Lord keep you in His mighty Hand

Featured Blogger ~ Rosie from Rosie's Country Home

This week's Featured Blogger was also nominated by her fellow bloggers.  Please stop by Rosie's Country Home and congratulate her for being this week's Featured Blogger! 

While you are there, be certain to check out her delicious sounding recipes like: Teriyaki Steak & Quinoa and No Yeast Whole Wheat Bread.

Congratulations Rosie!

Please help me choose the next Featured Blogger.  If you have a blogger you'd like to nominate as our Featured Blogger of the Week, send me an email at senioreditor@homesteadblogger.com .  Keep in mind that Featured Bloggers must be at least 18 years of age and their blog must be encouraging, uplifting, and/or inspiring. 

Who knows, you may be our next featured blogger ! 

Learning New Things :)

Blessings!

   As always, we continue to learn new things :) As promised, I am here to share our experiences and adventures and keep up this blog once again:) Sooooo, here goes!

   Our newest little adventure since coming here is tapping Maple trees! I can tell you, I was nervous about the whole thing. Like anything else we learn for the first time, we began our in depth research to make sure we were doing it all the right way at the right time. We searched and searched and searched but each place we found sites with printable pages only to find that it would make a booklet with no more than 4 pages. Surely there is more to it than this? So we searched more and more and more, always coming up with the same enemic information. Little pictures identifying the bark of Sugar Maples, Red Maples, Silver Maples and Boxelder trees. All tappable and all edible. Drill a hole, tap a spile in until it flows (or drips quickly), hang a bucket with a lid to keep out the debris and rainwater and empty once a day! It CAN'T be that easy!

   After weeks of searching and coming up seemingly empty handed we made a trip out to talk to a fella in BRF that runs a place called Buzz and Brew...he has supplies and information on keeping bees, tapping trees, wine and beer making etc. I asked him what a good book for the information I needed would be and he walks over and picks up a little 4 page pamphlet sized booklet, hands it to me and says..."there ya go!" Huh? I laughed so hard cuz it was exactly the pages I had printed out a few weeks earlier! I asked him if it was really this simple and he said, "yep! It's so easy the trees could do it themselves!" :P He gave me little hints about boiling off the water to make the syrup when we are done and it's simple as that! Soooooo... here's some pictures of our tapping adventure :P I do warn you though...my daughters have teased me ruthlessly about how "girlie" I look when I tapped MY tree :P

   For all their teasing though...my tree is flowing fastest :P

Papa drilling the trunk with a 3/8 inch auger bit to just about 1 1/2 inch depth. The debris is nice and light colored so it's a good tree.

The girls armed and ready for the task.

The buckets were purchased used but  the lids and spiles are new.Miss Mary-Ann tapping her tree (in all fairness if I have to reveal my inept attempt then they have to suffer right along with me:P)Miss Sarah gets hers tapped in.Then girlie me :POnce we got the spiles in just the right place, it starts immediately pouring out. Some faster than others, of course:DJiggle the wire to attach the lids on to keep out rainwater and debris from the trees...bugs get in it anyway but you just strain them out when you pour them into the waiting buckets.And there you have it!I must admit, we do tend to check them every few hours just to see how much we have:P Our first day we must have checked in a couple dozen times to find the next morning that we only got about 1/2 a cup of sap :D

   Since then we have found that it varies by day. The temperatures have a lot to do with it. If it's too warm at night then it won't flow as well in the day. If it's at least 30 at night then the daytime makes a lot more.

   Just yesterday we pulled in over a gallon!

   Oh and don't let it fool you. It sounds like a lot of sap but in reality it will take approximately 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of syrup! There are many more trees on the property that we intend to tap in hopes of speeding up our gathering time.

   According to the experts, a single tree can give you between 15 and 20 gallons of sap and still keep the tree safe for next year:) It is our hope that we will be able to add this to our list of self sufficient and self sustaining life on the farmstead:)

   Hope you enjoyed it as much as we have!

God be with thee!

Sister Lori