Home Made Maple Syrup

Thanks to Sharlene and Jeremy for showing us how to make Maple Syrup at home! We were also privileged to see Maple Syrup being made commercially which is in another blog post :). Here is a step by step tutorial! 

First you need to figure out which trees are suitable for tapping Maple Syrup. I didn't know that there are certain varieties of Maple trees more suited for syrup then others. Also for someone who has little tree knowledge, once the tree loses it leaves, the trees all look alike at least to me! Shar and Jeremy had their trees marked. Clever :)

You drill a hole into the tree and place a tap in it. Voila running maple sap
Well not quite, the sap only runs when it is above 0 C during the day and freezing at night.
Interesting fact that this only happens for a couple of weeks a year! Apparently this year has been an exceptional year!

Grace emptying the buckets

The sap is actually clear, I didn't know that, did you?

The buckets need to be checked regularly to make sure they don't overflow

Albert giving a helping hand :)
(those buckets were heavy!)

Shar and Jeremy kept a wood stove in their shed burning continuously to reduce the sap down to eventually becoming syrup. Not sure how long this took, a couple of days? Shar went to the shed at regular intervals to top up the sap so that it wouldn't boil dry. As the sap progressed it started to take on some of it's brown color.  

Shar did the final boiling on the stove
which took at least a couple of hours.

Do you see the colour change from the photo above
and how much it has reduced?

Last stage, filtering the syrup to make sure
none of the sugar sand gets into the syrup.
(a time consuming project, I know, I watched her :) )

Final Product!

This is us enjoying the Maple Syrup in New Zealand. I didn't pack many extra things because we were so limited on space. Most of our gifts etc went into the container. I especially did some research as to whether I was allowed to take the Maple Syrup back in NZ and it is totally legal as long as you declare it! The suitcase with the Maple Syrup in it was searched and we did declare it at the border but it came through with flying colors! Thank you so much Shar and Jeremy for sharing this with us! 

Next blog post will be the commercial Maple Syrup version :)

Snow Mobile

In Albert's March break we visited Wellandport, ON, Canada one last time before we left for NZ. What an unexpected blessing to visit friends again (most of these friends visited us over the Christmas holidays!). We had an absolute blast catching up and having a break from our busy last semester of seminary. Unbeknownst to us, it was also the last week or so of collecting sap from the maple trees. While we didn't go to Canada to watch Maple syrup being made it was an unexpected bonus! So the next couple of blog posts following are from our time in Ontario, Canada! 

We left after Albert's last class on Friday in order for me to attend a ladies fellowship day in Hamilton Ontario. For some reason the journey took a lot longer than expected, we did hit some snow on the way, and arrived at our friends place very close to midnight. Thanks for staying up, Shar and Jeremy! The next day while Shar and I were at the ladies retreat, Jeremy took the girls and Albert on snowmobile rides! What fun! Albert and the girls took all of the photo's below :). (I made them promise to take photos :)!

Grace

Zara

Kate

Grace

Grace again

Michaela

Albert

Trampoline Fun!!

As you may recall the girls got a trampoline (It was Michaela's brilliant idea) with gift cards the girls received for Christmas from an anonymous donor at Seminary. The boxes arrived by courier in January of this year. Albert had promised the girls that as soon as the snow melted the trampoline could be set up. So one week in March the snow finally disappeared after being on the ground for almost the entire month of February. The girls were excited! Albert is a read-the-manual kind of guy, so with the help of Len our neighbor the trampoline was put up! It sounds like a happily ever after story until it decided to snow again! I mean dump at least 30cm of snow! Oops! So the girls and I spend the morning taking all the snow of the trampoline as we didn't want it to stretch the springs, that snow was heavy! Removing snow through a small opening in the net proved a bit tricky. I did allow snowboots on the trampoline as an exception that day. :).

All of a sudden we now had 'friends' who wanted to come and play at our house! Just kidding of course, we invited our friends to share our trampoline with us, such a great gift deserves to be shared! I do have to mention that until the trampoline went down to be packed again, the novelty had not worn off yet. The girls played on there most days. Some days it was too hot to play on the tramp but most days especially since it was spring, the trampoline got a good workout! What a blessing the tramp was in those couple of months it was up. Unfortunately our place here in Hamilton doesn't have a appropriate place to put the tramp up and so it will have to wait until we are settled permanently to put it up again. Also the thought of un-packing and re-packing doesn't sound that exciting.

I should also mention that Albert took very detailed photos of how the trampoline went into the box as he was planning to put it back the same way as it came out! His friends that helped us put it back in after graduation, doubted him BUT they did come armed with an electric screw driver which made me laugh! So grateful that we all have different talents and even more grateful that we have friends with a bit more practical knowledge! Thanks Roger and Jeremy for taking on the challenge to fit the trampoline back into the box! I am pleased to report that the trampoline did in fact fit back into the box! Quite a feat considering the amount of parts required to build a trampoline! 

(Roger and Jeremy also helped to take apart our bed and bookcases, all of which fitted back into the flat pack Ikea boxes, very impressive boys!)

This is how it came out

Spot the manual :)

Len, supervising the putting up of the tramp.
I'm not sure who was more excited to have it put up, Len or the girls.

Finished!

Our friends :)
( I think the girls made the kids pose for photos
as I found them on my camera! It cracks me up!)

l to r Cademon, Marijke, Josiah, Natalia

Oh and the snow fell VERY quickly

Yay all clear!

Our team effort in taking the tramp down

Roger 

Jeremy

Boys LOVE a challenge!

SUCCESS!

Random March 2015

For our last senior class get together I made this peanut butter
cookie layered dessert! YUM!

One the first times they have gone outside in shorts and T-shirts this year!
The water temperate was 37F (2.7C). 

It's a tropical 51F (10.5C).
Well compared to the average temperate of 14.6F (-9.6C) for February

Running outside! YES!

Auckland here we come!

'cause a girl needs some flowers sometime!