Maple Grove Farm

Passover, Resurrection, and Other Updates

Saturday night we celebrated Passover with a Seder Meal.  It was a good opportunity for the kids to experience something we just read about.  They were very curious and excited but they were mixing up different Biblical items, so perhaps a visual will help them remember some of the details.  We began with a lighting of the candles and a prayer.  We then reviewed the symbolism of the items on the Seder plate.  We are blessed to have a Seder plate from Israel that some missionary friends gave us.  After the review of Passover we read from Mark about Jesus sending out two disciples to find a place for them for Passover and read through the Last Supper and took communion with them.  It was good.

We have had the most bizzare weather around here - snow.  Now I have lived in this area almost my whole life and I don't ever remember is snowing this late.  The garden faired fine, but we brought in all the plants that we had outside in pots waiting to be planted.  Everything we started is looking really great.  Next year I think I will start the lettuce and spinach in pots that I had to buy starts of this year.  I think my garden planted seeds of spinach have finally sprouted.  I saw our first little asparagus is up when I visited the garden today and the rhubarb I moved is looking fine.  Everything else seems to be fine.  We still have a lot to plant and I am not sure we have enough room, but that is always my concern.

All weekend we worked on putting our bacon in the freezer.  Early numbers show 40 packages of bacon (1 pound each) from the 6 sides of bacon from our 3 hogs.  We used a dry cure of salt and rapadura this time and then smoked them with apple wood.  After freezing, for easier slicing, we gave our new meat slicer and real work out.  The bacon turned out great and we are extremely pleased with the results.