As a teenager growing up in Dunstable Massachusetts, I remember my Mom used to walk down the road to a spot where she would harvest wild asparagus.   How she ever came to find that asparagus patch, hidden amongst tall meadow grasses, I don't know.   I guess it was just another of those mystical mother kind of skills she has.  

All my life, as a fan of asparagus, I don't think I've ever eaten it without thinking about Mom collecting asparagus in that grassy knoll along the road.   It's a pleasant image recalled often.

Yesterday evening, during a short spell of completely fabulous weather, (and a nice change from all the muggy heat and downpours), I finally got around to planting my own Martha Washington Asparagus, some purchased via Burpee and the rest at the local Henniker Country Farm & Feed store.

Growing asparagus is a longterm investment.   It's not like going to the garden center, picking up a few plants, plugging them into the ground, harvesting in 2 or 3 months, and then pulling the plants out before winter.   Nope, asparagus lives a long time...   10 to 15 years, in fact.   And because of that, the asparagus bed location needs to be reserved...   longterm.

The question of "Where?" posed a few problems for me.   Near the house was not going to work as we are having the house painted this summer.   In the kitchen garden would not work as I'm not convinced it will remain as a garden longterm.   In a pasture or field would not work as we are still doing a lot of pasture management work.   And, of course, I have this dream about the asparagus going a bit wild...   growing along side a road where someday, someone else will "discover" it.

Yesterday, I found the spot.   Along one section of the driveway, on the verge between the hardpack and a stonewall. Protected from the westerly winds and facing south for lots of sunshine.   It looked ideal.

So, after a couple hours of hard labour, several dozen asparagus roots are in the ground, some which are already sending up soft ferns.   And floating above them are some lamb lettuces and other shortterm vegetable garden delights.

Vegetable gardening each year is enjoyable...   But planting vegetables for 2010...   That's a whole 'nother thing.

April 21, 11:09 pm.   Marja delivered a massive 44 inch tall baby boy!

April is often the time when our team at work gets cranking on the financial & goal planning for the next fiscal year.   This seems to be around the time when we start thinking about finetuning business processes and goals, revamping some bits, and brand new fresh starts.

At home, April is also the time of year when the warmer weather, longer hours, and appearance of gardening merchandise in the stores gets me highly motivated to start planning my next garden.

With more than enough space to grow veggies, which have been my favourite since my Dad taught me to grow radishes, tomatoes, and corn when I was a kid, the question is "How much can I manage?".   All too easily, I can end up starting too many plants and later having to find homes for them.   Or I end up planting everything and never finding the time to properly fertilise, weed, and harvest the crops.

But, it's mid April and the itch to plant veggies is very strong.   So, planning is now underway.   Hundreds of seedlings are starting to pop up in my greenhouse, gardening goals are being dreamed up, and fantasies of hugely wild gardening success are well developed in my little blonde head.   Yes, I'm already over stretched in the gardening department.

Hopefully as FY07 planning proceeds at work, my fellow managers and I will manage to be more realistic than Ms. Farmer Brown.

This past weekend, knowing we were going to venture into trying to turn watery tree sap into a breakfast syrup, Marissa was keen to pitch in.   So she ventured up for the weekend and did just that.

Marissa's family has a rubber plantation.   So, while she helped work our maple trees, collecting sap, and boiling down our first batch of home brewed maple syrup, she was able to compare this to the process of making rubber.

Bangalore may not have Sugar Maples.   But they now can claim to have a real, New Hampshire trained, maple sugar expert!

Thanks, Marissa!

Central New Hampshire is once again enjoying warmer days.   Nights are still chilly, often well below freezing, but the temperatures during the day are creeping up towards the 40's and 50's.

This approach of spring means that the sap in the maple trees is starting to flow!   So, as planned, we now have a few of our shiny new sap collection buckets in place.

We have one bucket hanging on a tree right next to the driveway.   It's the one we can get to quickly throughout the day, check, and get back to "the office" without missing a beat.   Other buckets are dotted across the property.

The first day we tapped our first Maple Sugar tree, we were quite amazed to see the clear sap roll off the end of the little Grimms spout.   Then, there's that wonderful sound!   ... A crisp "Drip, Drip, Drip" as the sap hits the bottom of the bucket.

For novice sugarers like ourselves, checking the buckets is a really fun chore.   Going outside every couple hours, spying on the progress, guestimating how much sap we've collected so far....   Definitely good fun.

For the pros, however, checking progress is a day long chore, driving and walking around the maple orchards, checking lines & buckets, and keeping the moose & deer out of the area.   On a big scale, sugaring is hard work.

This weekend, Saturday is supposed to provide nice weather. We're going to take advantage of the weather (and, of course, the break from work) and start boiling...

Boiling will be done outdoors, next to the driveway.   Friends and family will be visiting, helping out with the day long process of stirring the boiling sap, watching it reduce down to maple syrup.   Our nephews, Michael Brown and David Brown, will also be helping us put up additional buckets.

So, how much Kearsarge Meadows Maple Syrup will we be producing in our first year?   Well, as we understand it, the ratio of maple sugar tree sap to maple syrup ranges from 30:1 to 40:1.

How much sap are we collecting?   So far, we are approaching the 5 gallon mark.   And we have just started....   However, Mother Nature decides how many good collection days we'll have.

So, if we manage to collect 10 gallons of sap, we are hoping to finish with one quart of syrup....

.... Yes, One Quart.   The next time you happen to notice how pricey pure maple syrup is, think of it as a bargain!   That small quantity of maple syrup was originally a whole lot of sap!    

It's a tiny little thing... even smaller than the photo here, but a great source of excitement.   This past weekend, we purchased our first sap spouts which we will use to tap our Sugar Maples.

Next step, we need to continue the search for those trees.   We were given a heads up by the local Maple Sugaring supply store,... "Don't tap a pine tree by mistake."

Ah yes, the New England sense of humour...  

We keep getting hints of spring.   And with each warm day, our minds go to....   Sap.   Yes, sap.

As our first February and March on the farm approach, Georg and I hope to tap some sap from our sugar maples to make our own homegrown maple syrup.

The concept behind this is simple enough.   Tap a tree, collect sap, boil it for several hours, and Voila!   Maple Syrup!   Needless to say, the devil is in the details....

When to tap?   This is important. The weather has to be just right for the sap in a maple to flow.   Freezing nights, warm days.   Lately, that seems to be every Saturday...

Which trees to tap?   There are a few different varieties of maples and only a couple which are really suitable for syrup.   Even then, the sugar maple is the one to go for.   Each maple tree can be distinguished from the others by looking at the leaves....   Ooops.   We didn't think ahead on that one!   The leaves are gone.   Plan two...   Find the trees which were tapped in previous years and still show the little scars...

Equipment.   One of the local farmers has generously offered to lend us a few buckets & lids, as well as a few Grimm taps.   And he armed us with some introductory maple sugaring books.   When we collect our sap, we plan to boil it outside in the carpark, over a fire...   the old fashioned way...   dropping fresh syrup onto the snow...   friends and family pitching in to stir the boiling sap.   You get the picture.   Very New England....

It is not hard to imagine that around this time next year, my husband will be geared up to attach sap collecting piping to the trees, and have his own little maple sugaring house setup with an evaporator, filters, and canning operation ready to go.

But this year, we are beginners.   We'll not just be tapping our trees...   We'll be tapping the assistance of our local farming neighbours.

Since moving to the farm 9 months ago, we have probably only used our alarm clock 2 or 3 times.   Otherwise, we wake naturally in the rhythm of the farm.

Sounds pleasant, huh?   Actually, it works more like this...

First, we have our 2 year old African Grey, Ian Grey, who is usually up at first light.   "Guten Tag."   "Hello."   "Breakfast!"   "Want some egg?"   So, first thing in the morning, the chirpy cheerful bird chatter begins.

Then we have our local farm suppliers, some of whom are more like the US Army...   "We do more before 9am then most people do all day."   By the way, Sundays are not a day of rest.   So, in our new life on the farm, lie-ins are pretty much a thing of the past...

This morning was an exception.   After days of wind, warmth, and sunshine, a quiet snow is now blanketing the landscape.   It is quiet outside.   Ian slept in, not making a peep until well after 7 am.   No one came onto the farm until a little before 8 am.   It was Snooze City.   A nice change, except it meant missing a 7:30 am 121 with a friend & colleague in India.   Oops.

Our move from England to New England has meant re-learning to live with snow and sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures.   And with winter weather now here, this means Icicles & Ice Dams.

The ever lengthening spears of ice hanging from the house are truly lovely.   However, as every parent has to explain to their kids every year, icicles are not play toys.   Standing under them and knocking them off the house is like an icy game of Russian Roulette.   Great fun, but geez, you don't want to get it wrong!

(Needless to say, the "little boy" I married likes to pull the biggest icicles off the house and play with them!)

We have not had a freezing rain yet, so the icicles we have right now are the sort created by the slow gentle melting of the top layer of snow on the roofs.   With temps well into the single digits (Fahrenheit) range this week, there isn't a lot of fast melting taking place, so the icicles are lingering quite nicely.

Ice dams are a new concept to us.   This is where ice forms along the lower edges of the roof line, blocking the flow of snow and allowing for a build up of snow & water.   Standing water on roofs, obviously, is not desirable, so effort is required to interrupt the development of ice dams.   Since we don't have an ice dam prevention system in place, this means breaking up the ice dams manually.

Break up the ice and let the trapped snow & water continue down off the roof.   Sounds easy enough.   Personally, I plan to pull out the video camera when Georg decides to take action.   It could be pretty comical.  

Did I say sub-zero Farhenheit?   Yes, indeed.   This morning, it was 5 degrees.   That's a wickedly cool -15 Celcius.   But hey, it's a dry cold.   You know, humidity free.   We are talking tons of static and dry skin.   This means don't kiss without discharging first!   And with the snow on the ground and the bright blue sky, temporary snow blindness occurs if sunglasses aren't worn outdoors.

Compared this the UK winter which can feel miserably cold & wet, while having higher temperatures, and is often quite grey.   The differences are remarkable and help make the New England winter rather enjoyable.

Spring comes early in England, with the first flowers popping up in February, sometimes earlier.   Here, winter rages on for a couple more months, finally giving way to Spring in April.   So, ask me again in a couple months time how we like the New England winter and how we are coping....

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend we enjoyed the company of houseguests...   friends & family.   And, as often is the case when we have company, we accepted generous offers to assist in the care of the horses.

When we hire employees, we walk them through "New Hire Training & Orientation" which takes about an hour.   The appropriate HR paperwork is filled out, we go over the expectations of the role, we discuss the rules, we cover the philosophies of the business, and we even go into the details of fertiliser management...   Yes.   How to manage the muck heap.

Have a giggle if you must, but let's look at this for a moment.   The average horse eats around 30 pounds (2 stone, 2) of food per day and may drink many gallons of water.   The horse processes that and generates an awful lot of waste products per day.   And, with it, the bedding of the stables gets soiled, which also becomes a waste product.   Now, multiple this by many horses and we are talking about a substantial daily volume of manure and other waste.   Therefore, managing the muck heap becomes a serious aspect of farm life.

With our head girl, I described the longterm vision of the muck heap.   We discussed the strategy of how we would achieve a safe and longterm useful muck heap.   We went over the tactical details of how on a day to day basis we would develop and shape the muck heap in a way that allows us to continue to safely climb the heap with a wheelbarrow.   We agreed to continually extend a shallow sloping pathway that follows the perimeter of the dump area, a pathway that, even when covered with snow, would still be easy to navigate and extend further.   And when we reached the final destination, we would arrange to have the whole heap moved by tractor to another location to age into useful fertiliser.

Knowing the long term vision, the thoughts behind the strategy, and some of the tactics, so far, all has been going well and the muck heap has been developing quite nicely, with a nice safe and wide pathway that has been extending slowly and smoothly.

So back to this weekend.   My generously helpful friend took it upon himself to take several full wheelbarrows up the muck heap and deposit the contents at the top at the end of the path.

After he had left and I was back to being "Queen of my Muck Heap", I saw what he had done.   He went up the muck heap and simply dumped the manure.   He did not dump it with any purpose other than dumping it.   He did not know about the long term plans, the aim to keep a clear level path, the requirement to extend the path further, nor the need to keep the slope easy to navigate.   He just did what he thought was expected.   He simply dumped the manure onto the muck heap.   And now my little manure highway needed maintenance, repair, and TLC.

My own reaction was nearly comical.   Fortunately, it did not take long to realise that the situation was my own creation.   You see, my friend had performed the task just fine, but without any idea of the vision, the what's & why's of the strategy, nor the day to day operations involved.   I hadn't shared that with him.

It was an interesting lesson for me.   And hopefully, the moral of this story is obvious:

Without a Shared Vision
Expect nothing more than a Pile of Poo.

It was quite incredible, really, to see how fast our little turkey poults grew.

As June warmed everything up and the turkeys grew, the little guys moved into a stable in the barn.   They were given a bed of shavings, clean water, and plenty of food.

And they grew.   Literally, it seemed like they were bigger from day to day.

When the weather was nice, the turkeys were allowed to roam free outside.   They would roll and fluff in the dirt, graze on the grass, wander around the horse barn & indoor arena, and hang out with anyone who happened to be outside.

More than once, the turkeys made their voices heard during concalls.   Wandering around the house, they often chose to soak up the sun lying under one of my office windows.   The occasional gobble could be heard around the world.

At 3 months old, we give one turkey away as he was huge and beating up on the others.   This left was us 2 males & 2 females.   At 5 months, we had to separate the males due to squabbles over the females.   The biggest tom continued to live with the girls.

In the last 2 weeks of their lives, Big Tom was discovering that the girls were more fun than he previously had realised.   The girls, however, were not so impressed by his advances....

.... in part, because Big Tom weighed in at a hefty 48 pounds, dressed.   In other words, like what you would buy in the supermarket.   On his feet, Big Tom probably weighed in at well over 55 pounds.   The hens weighed much less but are still over 35 pounds each.

On Thanksgiving, no doubt there will be a few tears at the dinner table as we remember the cute little turkeys we brought home in May.   But we also believe that all of the Tender Loving Care, freedom, and attention these turkeys received in their short lives was a good thing.   Our turkeys had great lives.

So, thank you Tom, Tom, Girl, and Girl.   We miss you, but we'll see you next week.

After a week of frosty nights, light snows, and cold winds, we are now enjoying sunny weather with temperatures in the 60's Fahrenheit.   What a huge change!

With that big shift in weather, however, comes our first true Bug Invasion.   Our house is covered with LadyBug like beetles, flies, wasps, and other bugs.   Apparently, this is "normal"...   but it does feel rather strange.   Creepy even...

Happy Halloween!