Time for a Bobcat

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As indicated in earlier posts, one part of our land was a serious "eye sore" with a major drainage issue. It was really bothering us since it was so close to our home and the barn. A few months ago, we reported on our cleaning efforts and since then we've taken the time to assess the situation.

Our land is primarily sand. The reason for this sand is that we are located on what would have been the north eastern shores of  glacial lake Whittlesey some 12,500 years ago. This has resulted in a rather special sandy loam; a very fine sand which seems to hold water very well. When properly exposed to major run off, we face erosion and a very wet and soft top soil. It is a sad state of affairs when just a few decades ago this land would have been a productive part of a cherry orchard.

In the end, we decided that the only way to reclaim this agricultural land would be to install weeping tiles. This is something I was dreading to do since it is a major project. However, with a bit of expert consultation, we decided to forge ahead this week.

The drainage of this small piece of land basically requires us to "ring fence" the area from the water run off it is currently exposed to. In order to do this, we had to dig a rather elaborate trench....and to do this effectively required an excavator, something neither Tristan or I had experience in operating. Nevertheless, we rented a Bobcat  and after a few trials on tree stumps (which needed to be removed anyways), we found it quite easy to operate. Tristan (video game addict that he is) quickly became quite adept in the operation of this machine.

Within 3 days, we had our trench dug up and now it was a matter of time to see if the water flowed the way we expected or intended to.

After letting things settle for a couple of days, the results proved promising.

The next phase of the project (scheduled for next week) now involves installing the drain tiles.

On the home front, we also made an important decision regarding our cellars. Our old home has two very old cellars a good portion of which seem to predate the Victorian structure itself. Some of the walls of these cellars form part of our foundation and they are made of gorgeous old stone.

As our contractor has been working to clean one of the cellars, we started to get a good clear view between the crawl space of the house and the cellars.

The foundations and some brick walls suggested that we might actually be able to join the two along the foundation walls. Since this is a project we would have difficulty completing in the future (once the house is completely renovated), we decided we might as well do this now.

So work has started and of course from our basement we are now digging up more fine sand.

Once this excavation work is completed, we expect to fix, clean and seal the old stone walls. The hope is that we will be able to create a great wine cellar with access to the glass gallery and to our garden.

Finally this week I have to add that the Maple sap has started to run quite well. Our containers are literally bulging and as such we have continued to process more Maple syrup.

This has given me an idea which I hope to address next week: the making of Acerglyn!

Elsewhere on the farm, the garlic bulbs we planted last fall are sprouting.

Garlic shoots from our fall planting

Also, the asparagus whose cycle we have followed since arriving here are now seeding. I've been extracting some of the black seeds from the now dried grey berries. I am hoping to perhaps grow some of these Asparagus in our vegetable garden or in a more controlled area (right now they are growing wild next to a tractor trail).

Asparagus berries with seeds ready to plant 

All in all, Spring has definitely arrived.

We close this week with a quick update on our "mini nursery". Everything is growing!

We're even at the point where, given their size, we have had to transplant the Zucchinis into some potting soil.

The Old Homestead

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This week we had the chance to review the archives of the Pelham Historical Society. Our objective was to confirm the possible presence of an old homestead which may have previously been on the site of our current Victorian manor.

We have suspected this was the case for a few months now as we continue to uncover walls and foundations not original to the Victorian structure.

With the help of the president of the local Historical Society, Mary Lamb, we were finally able to not only confirm the presence of a homestead, but as well get the entire history of ownership of the land now in our possession.

To begin, Josiah Ward, son of a Quaker family originally from upstate New York, acquired this land in 1865. The Victorian home, which we now refer to as the Ward Manor, was built circa 1880.

From an old town map of 1862 , we were able to identify not only the location of the Victorian home, but as well the fact that some brick or stone structure indeed resided on this site prior to 1880.

Old Town map showing the location of the Ward home prior to the 1880 Victorian manor

1862 Town map showing the Lot of Robert Casselman and his homestead in the same location

It now remains for us to better understand how the old homestead evolved over time based on the foundations we have uncovered, and how the Victorian structure was assembled atop this old homestead (since it seems we clearly have some of the original homestead walls within the current house).

In the process, we were also able to identify the entire history of ownership for this land.

As recently as 1802, the site was still Crown land. "Patent" to the land was then transferred to a Ernest Martin.

It eventually had another four owners before coming into the hands of a Robert Casselman (a bit ironic since our glass gallery is called Scholaert Cassel; Cassel being my home town in Flanders).

It was Robert Casselman who eventually sold the property to Josiah Ward.

On the home front this week, our little nursery has surprised us. Less than a week after seeding, our Coir pellets are already showing various degrees of germination. In fact, some of our seedling will soon have to be transplanted into small pots.

Our sprouts, Broccoli and zucchinis after less than a week

To date we already have sprouting zucchinis, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, tomatoes, onions, leeks  and dill. Germination has started with the cucumbers, artichokes, and melons.

It is amazing how some of these tiny seeds are already creating some pretty sizable plants.

Some of our seedlings (in particular the peppers) do not seem to be doing much. In this case, we suspect we may have to get some heating pads.

As an aside, we have been living under some rather cramped conditions over the past few months. We are so tight for space that Christine decided to leave a Rutabaga on a window sill. The result is that the root started to sprout. Tristan and I are thinking of propagating this thing by taking two cutting like you would potatoes (we'll see what happens, but this means we might be adding Rutabaga to our family vegetable garden).

Christine's addition to the vegetable garden

With the colder weather we faced this week, the Maple sap has pretty much stopped flowing. This gave me a chance to carry out a final process to the inventory we had on hand.

As we were experimenting with temperature and viscosity, we were left with a variety of syrup "grades" (from very light to dark).

Furthermore, we found what is referred to as Maple "sand" in our jars. It turns out that Maple sap contains some minerals (calcium and magnesium nitrates). These tend to form into a sandy residue during the syrup making process.

Maple "sand"

We actually found the amount of "sand" depended greatly on the batch and it seems the tree location as well.

There are two ways of extracting this "sand". Maple syrup producers tend to use filtering (using a thick felt filter).

Not having this on hand, we tried a coffee filter but the pores were much too small to allow for the flow of the syrup. Instead, we used the second method: decanting. After a few days, the "sand" settles to the bottom of the syrup, so the process is just a matter of pouring the top layer of syrup slowly without disturbing the residue at the bottom of the container. We found this was much easier with colder more viscous syrup.

Using what we had on hand we finished our syrup by combining all of the decanted material into a large pot and taking it to a final boil. This provided us with a consistent batch which we then bottled using containers supplied by Atkinson (these guys have everything you could possibly need to process Maple syrup).

This actually pretty much concludes our Maple syrup experiment. The next week or two look very good for the production of sap so we will keep processing as much as we can. I suspect that by the end of the season, we will have a lot of syrup, not just for our own consumption but to hand out to friends and family.

On the farming front, we continue to do our barn Spring cleaning and this week Tristan was thrilled to find some old forged iron pulleys next to the barn foundations. So I leave you this week with a picture of his new treasure (I fear he's become a collector).

A Mini Nursery

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With Spring rapidly approaching, it was time this week to start some plants.

In this region, the average last frost is in the first week of May. Since some of our planned vegetables need to be seeded 6-10 weeks before the last frost, we had to set up a miniature nursery.

With the house a major construction site and the barn now a repository for a lot of our "stuff", we decided to temporarily set up a miniature nursery in our store. In order to do this, we acquired a three tier "light garden" from Vesey's. This basically consists of shelving with T-5 full spectrum lighting fixtures. Once we got our heads around the confusing instructions, the system was relatively easy to construct (although one ballast is not functioning).

Tristan with 3 tier lighting system

We proceeded to set up a small production line and filled our trays with Coir (coconut fibre) pellets. Once watered, these are the mediums we used to plant our seeds.

The seeds we planted include: melons, squashes, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, artichokes, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, onions, leeks, rosemary, dill, parsley and strawberries. I have to admit that some of these seeds were a real test to our eye sight and dexterity.

Now it is a waiting game. Hopefully, out of some 700 seeds, something will germinate.

On another front, we continue to tap our maples. Our 4 spiles have been producing generously although they did slow dramatically later in the week as the daytime weather returned to freezing temperatures.

We have discovered that production is highly dependent on weather conditions. We have had from next to no sap to upwards of 40 litres in one day. The volume seems to be correlated to positive changes in temperature. It also seems that trees more exposed to the sun (like on our property line) are more productive than those in the shade (like those in the forest).

During the "low" days, our neighbour Roger was kind enough to supplement our stock in order to keep us going. He has over 40 taps in the forest and as a result seems to have reached the limits of his production capacity, even though he has constructed a rather "nifty" evaporator from an old wood stove.

Roger and his home-made evaporator

In any case on some days, we also did manage to test the limits of our own capacity. We found ourselves boiling sap well into the night and for lack of lighting on our deck, we had to do this under candle light.

In order to address this problem, a bigger pot was called for. So we went from a 10 litre container to a newly acquired 32 litre pot.

After producing our first batch (which turned into a very thick syrup), we decided to be more careful in the finishing stages of production. We found this part rather difficult. Technically, the syrup should be ready once the boiling temperature reaches some 4 degrees Celsius over the point of boiling water. We found however that this gives us a rather "light" syrup, meaning it is very liquid. We also found that the colour was very inconsistent from batch to batch.

I should add that I also made the mistake of mixing my first two batches (the very thick syrup with a new "light" batch). Once in the fridge, I discovered that this was probably the best way to generate Maple sugar. The original batch was completely crystallized the following day. I would not have minded so much were it not at the bottom of a glass bottle!

If we go further with this effort next year, I believe we still have a lot more to learn in order to produce a consistent high quality syrup.

The net result though is still great. We have more tasty syrup than we can consume and we are now searching for all sorts of recipes to use up our stock.

On the farming front, we continue to tackle our Spring cleaning. Weather conditions forced us to work on the barn where we have a mess of old wood, bricks and a slew of material we have yet to identify.

We also have been putting our new flat bed trailer to good use. We have a significant amount of decrepit equipment and large pieces of metal waste on the property.

We have now started to send these to the local metal recycling facility. Given the price for metals these days, it looks like our new flat bed trailer will have more than paid for itself by the end of the year.

On the construction front, we have continued finishing touches on the barn. We have also discovered nasty surprises as we dug the edge of the outside wall to properly bury a water pipe (it was exposed to the elements and susceptible to freezing). What we found is a large oil tank. Thankfully it was empty, but we still had to remove it and dispose of it.

Removing an old oil tank

In the process, we also found that whoever buried this tank broke through an old structure: an arched brick wall. We're not certain what this was (remnants of an old well perhaps?).

An unknown buried brick structure

On a more serious note, you may notice that Tristan and I have a new look. Although we normally like to keep our hair very short, we do not normally shave our heads and we're not trying to make a fashion statement.

Wishing Skye a rapid recovery

We've done this in support of Skye, a frequent visitor to the farm (and now Tristan's fiancee). Skye has been diagnosed with cancer and this week has started chemotherapy at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto.

I know she is a keen follower of this blog  so we'll use this photo to wish her all the best during this period of therapy. The whole family is looking forward to her quick return to the farm (Skye: by the time they release you the weather will be great; you can help Tristan harvest and you can help me cook).

Finally, I leave you this week with a picture showing the promise of Spring: the first flowers. These little buds are blooming just outside the house in the middle of what is now a construction site.

It's Time for Maple Syrup

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With day time temperatures above zero, Spring is in the air. Already birds are starting to build nests in the rafters of our barn and the snow is quickly receding.

It's also the time of year when the Maple sap begins to run and those fortunate to have a few trees, begin the tapping process.

We were reminded of this by our neighbour Roger, who happens to run the local post office. His family has been on this land for a few generations now, so he is also a great source of knowledge regarding regional history.

One evening this week, Roger invited us to see how he taps the Maple trees on his property.

It seemed a simple operation but we did learn quite a few things including a couple of tricks Roger has developed over the years (like how to prevent the accumulation of black flies in your sap!).

The lesson over, Roger was kind enough to equip Tristan with a "starter kit": a few feet of tubing and some "spiles" (the taps inserted into the trees). He also showed us a couple of good maples on our property (this was a good thing since last fall I had only paid attention to the nut trees and completely neglected to note where the Maples were).

Tristan was excited enough that it was easy to entice him to have a go at it. In order to tap our trees, we decided to use 10 litre water containers. We drilled a hole on the upper corner of these containers and inserted one of our spiles for the tubing. These would provide a nicely sealed environment for the sap (preventing the intrusion of insects).

We then drilled our trees (following Roger's instructions) upward at an angle of about 10 degrees.

We inserted the spile into the tree with a hammer and finally the tubing was fixed to the spiles on the tree and on our container...now it was a time to wait.

Tristan was clearly not satisfied with just tapping two trees so we went to look for more.

To our surprise, we found that the east side of our property is lined with huge ancient Maple trees. This was a great find since it can take 40 years for a tree to grow to the necessary 12 inch minimum diameter for tapping. These old trees were evidently tapped at one time and they were all marked! This made our job of identification a lot easier.

I still limited Tristan to 2 additional trees which he proceeded to tap with the help of Skye.

I limited the amount of taps because I was more uncertain with the finishing of the syrup. It takes approximately 40 litres of sap to generate just 1 litre of syrup and without an evaporator, I was not entirely comfortable with the process.

We decided to salvage an old gas powered samovar from the Tea Room operation in our barn. I figured if it's good enough to heat water for tea, it might just do the trick to process our sap. We changed the container (used a clean 10 litre pot). With a full propane tank, we can run this for a long period of time on our deck (after listening to Roger's processing stories we were reluctant to try this indoors).

Within a day, our 4 taps had produced some 15 litres of sap. Impatiently, we were keen to generate our first batch of syrup. We filled the pot to about 6 litres (the sap tends to foam during boiling so we did not want it to overflow) and after a little less than 2 hours the sap was reduced by about half. We continued to top up the liquid until we were done with our entire collection.

After the addition of the last batch of sap, we reduced the liquid to half and then a little further until it was a golden yellow (we had perhaps 2 litres left in the pot). We then took it inside for finishing on the kitchen stove. The finishing process went much faster than I had anticipated (and perhaps I left it on the stove for just a little too long!).

The result: about a 1/3 of a litre of thick golden Maple syrup. The taste was very good and certainly everyone loved the results; I have to admit however that it was not the very best Maple syrup I have tasted. I think my process was perhaps a little too harsh (too much heat, for too long) so there is just a hint of caramel flavour that overshadows the distinctive light Maple flavour. Also, once cooled our syrup was perhaps a little too thick (its consistency was closer to molasses as opposed to honey).

In conclusion, although the concept of making Maple syrup is simple, there is still an art and science to the process of making the best syrups. I think over time we might just get there. This season alone we should have another good 30 days of processing before the Maple leaves bud and given the amount of sap collected on our first day, we may get some 4 to 5 litres of syrup to practice on.

Wine, cheese, listening to birds chirping in the background, and just watching a pot of boiling sap, I can't think of many other ways to better enjoy a beautiful sunny afternoon. Given the amount of Maple trees on the property, this will definitely become a new Spring tradition for the family.

Tapping trees and making syrup was a lot of fun, but we still had work to do. On the farming side, we decided to start our "Spring cleaning". This has become a huge task.

Given the amount of wood and trimmings left from our pruning and clearing of land, we could hardly determine where to begin.

At first, I thought this would be a good opportunity to generate some wood chips. These could be used as a mulch for our plants.

We decided to bring out the wood chipper and no sooner had we processed a couple of branches, our engine ceased. Only purchased some 6 months ago, this is the second time Canadian Tire equipment has let us down (the first was a Poulain chain saw that lasted 2 months). In this case, the piston was completely demolished.

This meant going back to burning until we could either get the wood chipper fixed or replaced.

This week, we also learned how capital intensive farming can be.

Our Massey Ferguson tractor was clearly on its last leg. After spending a significant amount of money repairing the old engine, we started to face some electrical issues (the tractor needed boosting at every start). I finally decided it was time for a new machine....and of course Tristan was thrilled.

We went back to our trusted dealer (Pic's) and bought a new Landini 1 series tractor. The differences between this machine and the old Massey are phenomenal. This new tractor is so easy to use, Skye was able to get the hang of it in a minute.

Nice features of this tractor include the front loader (we could really have used this on more than one occasion over the past 6 months), 4-wheel drive (we did get the Massey stuck in a few places....usually in the most inconvenient locations) and a very simple hitching process for our PTO-driven equipment (no more risking a pinched finger!).

At the same time, we also acquired a proper flat bed trailer. Although still useful, the old flat bed needed some fixes. More importantly, it was not "road worthy" and could not be easily used to transport equipment.

When it comes to capital investments, hopefully we're now done for a while!

To conclude this fantastic Spring-like week, our neighbor John invited us for an amazing "boys only" barbecue. Great people, beer....and lots of meat! There could not be a better way to end the week.

PS. There is a large Dutch community where we now live (in fact, it is evident when one notices the many greenhouses dotting the landscape). So it was no surprise that Tristan and I had a chance to taste Rookworst - a traditional Dutch smoked sausage.  This sausage was not your typical store-bought smoke "flavoured" sausage. It was actually made locally and the "old fashioned" way, smoked over wood chips. Our opinion: excellent!

An Archaeological Site

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This week's discoveries at the old Victorian manor continue to baffle us.

We thought we knew how this house was built over time. Now we are completely uncertain after a few surprising finds.

It all started with what was going to be our kitchen and now will be our main art glass gallery in the southern portion of the west wing.

In the food cellar of this half of the house, we had noticed that the existing stairs hid a second stairway.

It was clear that at one time these stairs exited to the back of the house and into what was most recently our kitchen. Evidence of the top of this exit could be seen on the newly exposed brick wall.

However, we could not be sure of the layout without removing the floor. We were also interested in perhaps re-opening this doorway in an attempt to bring back the original configuration of the house.

In the end, we removed the floor and ended up with an amazing staircase leading into the cellar. Since we always wanted to equip the gallery with an espresso/wine bar, we've decided this would make the ideal passageway from the gallery to a new wine cellar.

What really created havoc however is when we removed the rest of the floor (four layers of it). We expected  a consistent level of dirt in the entire room (our first opening showed the ground only a couple of inches from the kitchen floor). Instead we found a layered structure of stone, mortar and a well-defined stone foundation....all within one room!

Some of the intricate stone work is actually bound with wrought iron ties.

The inside of this room now looks like an archaeological dig, and we are completely at a loss to explain these structures. We have some theories, but Christine and I are now determined to go to the old town archives to see if we can learn more.

The odd discoveries did not end there. When looking at the construction of the house, the west wing which we thought was an addition to the main house shows that one wall was built within the main house....basically overlapping the west wall of the main house (ie. we have 6 layers of bricks all overlapping ... on an inside wall!).

I am having a difficult time explaining this, unless what we thought was an addition could have been the original beginning of the house. Given the newly discovered structures in the back (southerly) room, maybe this was the site of the original homestead (?).

When exposing the floor beams of the bathroom at this end of the house, the construction is amazing. We found these very sizable beams with tongue and groove which almost resemble a ship-building exercise.

Other interesting finds this week, included an old trap door leading to the cellar of the main house. This was oddly situated at the bricked-in back door. The local construction crew suggested this may have been used by the "underground railroad" which was known to exist in the area; we're just not sure since the two cellars themselves have a confusing configuration (there is evidence of additional cellar walls between the two).

We also found some old local newspapers from 1953 (makes for great reading).

For workers on the site, the most amusing find though was a psychedelic wallpaper discovered in the west wing bathroom. It really brings you back to the 60's and I can imagine this place being a great "hippie" hang out.

Of course among all this, we still have to farm. Tristan and I returned to the pruning of our old Pippin trees. I have to say that these were a real challenge. After our work, the trees now look like they've survived a nuclear holocaust.

I hope they do survive our pruning. We are certainly not counting on apples this year, but we now expect to be able to "train" the branches to better produce fruit....only time will tell.

This exercise has created a lot of wood. Some of this we think will make great fire wood, but burning the rest may be a waste. We've decided we will try to process as much as we can through a wood chipper. After all our spring gardening effort will probably require quite a lot of mulch.