Beating Back the Old Man

Yesterday got to over fifty degrees and the older boys spent the whole afternoon outside without their coats, hunting and spear fishing in the small stream in the hollow. Cubby informed me that all he managed to spear were rocks, but considering he doesn't have a real spear--and the fact that there are no fish in that stream that I'm aware of--I can't say I'm surprised.

Then, of course, Charlie stepped in a deeper part of the stream and filled his boots with freezing water and returned to the house wailing about being cold. Well, yes, Charlie. I can see why you would be. It is still March, after all.

It's not spring yet, not by the calendar and not really by the weather, but small signs are appearing. Cubby burst into the house yesterday morning to announce, "Mommy! The most exciting thing! WE FOUND THE FIRST SNOWDROP!" Exciting indeed, my lovely.

We boiled sap this weekend and ended up with half a gallon of syrup. Which looked runny, so I reduced it some more and then ended up with a kind of sludgy half-sugar, half-syrup. Whoops. Now I get to experiment to see if adding back a little bit of thin sap and re-heating will make it back into syrup. Stay tuned.

And perhaps most importantly, A. got the water pump running to fill the cistern last night when he got home from work. No more paying the water guy. Hooray.

Yup, spring's on the way. We'll just ignore the snow in our forecast for today. And the lows in the teens for the next week. Because Old Man Winter's time is limited now. Ha.

P.S. I would wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day, but I'm ignoring it because I totally failed at getting my brisket in brine to make corned beef, so our St. Patrick's Day celebration is going to be, uh, five days after whenever I actually manage to do that. Yes, I am lame. And no, I do not care.