Spring brings Maple syrup!

This past week the sap finally started to really run. Oh what fun we had being outside in the Spring weather hauling maple sap!

Unfortunately we don't have any maple trees at our house so we have to go to my parents to do this. It is a fun to get to spend a lot of extra time with them.

We went out a couple of times last week. I took quite a few pictures and am posting a bunch of them. The first day we were able to do a lot of hauling on a big sled. We were hauling sap and firewood for the boiling down. Aaron figured out a cute way of hauling two of the empty buckets with a stick. My sister Keren and the little one she watches came out to help for a while too.

On Friday we made a whole day of it and finally started on the boiling down. Some friends also joined us, one of them was Su Hyun a friend from South Korea. She had never been on a farm of any sort before and seemed to truly enjoy the experience. Above she and Jonathan were working to get the fire going for boiling the sap.

Here am I checking one of the pails. My dad made nice taps that can flow down into 5 gallon buckets (which he was able to collect for free from local restaurants).

My parents live on a beautiful piece of land with lots of hills and valleys and just down the slope from the "sugar shack" is a valley. On Friday it got up to around 50 degrees and henceforth the snow was melting and running down to the valley and making a little river. Megan discovered it and she and Buster the dog thought it was great fun to play in. She loved walking in it and I had to watch closely so she didn't roam too far.

Megan, Mara and I did end up taking a walk to see how far it would go and followed it to where it drained in to the real river. It was such a beautiful day for a walk!

Here is the little "river" going through the trees.

The ending of Friday ended being a little interesting. Dad was also burning a brush pile and the kids wanted to roast marshmallows. They were out around there with Auntie Keren getting ready to do that when Jonathan decided to climb over a fence to get to where Grandpa was. Somehow when climbing a wire snapped up and made a little gash in his eyebrow. I was in the house and he came quickly back there. I heard someone come in the door and say "Mom" and went to look and there was Jonathan with blood covering half of his face, all over his hands and dripping down his coat. It was a pretty gruesome sight and it made my heart race a bit. I quickly washed him off to find out where they problem was. I was scared it was his eye and do believe the God was watching over him and protecting him because it easily could have been his eye and that could have taken away his sight in that eye.

Jonathan had never had a tetanus shot so we figured that would be in order. On Saturday morning I took him to the walk-in clinic. After much waiting and seeing people were were told they didn't have it and they sent us with an order for it over to the emergency room in the hospital. After more waiting and seeing people and being weighed and even given a wristband (I was beginning to wonder if they were planning on admitting him!) we were taken back to a room in a secure area and the nurse said she would bring in the shot shortly. Well we waited 1 1/2 hours more back in that room. He did finally get it after over 3 hours spent working on it!

Well those are some of our adventures for this past week. We feel blessed and hope you do as well!