Any one know where spring went? Seems we passed it right by and headed into August temperatures. I have been out hiking the past two weeks with any spare time I had trying to get some wildflower and track pictures. Those images on the blog were my attempt at uploading. by the way one is turkey scat and the other is a dandelion. I’ll be getting some lessons on thumbnails later in the week so hopefully I can put all the images on here by the weekend. I just got a pretty good pic of some Coltsfoot as well as British Soldiers, my favorite lichen. If you don’t know what they look like they are really beautiful for such simple plant life. And as always that question pops in my head…….. is anyone really here?? Happy Hiking!!!!
Archive for April, 2009
Spring?
Monday, April 27th, 2009Afternoon Walk
Sunday, April 19th, 2009Well I went for a little hike today to shoot some pictures. I did get quite a few, some Turkey Scat, Hare Scat, a Partridge Berryand some Porcupine Scat as well as a couple scenery shots. There were two nice butterflies out but darn those things are as spooky as a deer. I tried sneaking up on them several times and each time they would fly 30 or 40 feet away and land again. I better try a zoom lens next time to see if that works better. I was going to post a few pics here but unfortunately I didn’t learn how to do that and I’m frustrated from trying. I get a little direction on that and be back to see if it works. Happy Hiking!!!
Tom Turkey
Friday, April 10th, 2009On the way back to the house just up my road I saw a beautiful Tom strutting 20 feet from the truck. Only goes to figure I took the camera out of the vehicle last week. I would have had some beautiful movie shots of him fanning his tail and looking tough for the hens. As it was I rushed in the house and when I got back he was about another 50 yards further in the field. I took a movie but the quality was terrible. I’ll be going out tomorrow to try and find some early wilflowers to get some photos of for another web app. Enjoy the weekend I know I will.
Maple Syrup
Friday, April 3rd, 2009It’s a little late to write this but what the heck maybe you can do this next year assuming you have access to some maple trees. All you need to make maple syrup at home is a large pot that will fit at least a couple gallons of water in. You can pick up some tree taps online or try the local hardware store. If you have a battery drill it makes it easier than an old hand crank drill I used to use. Gather some plastic milk jugs take your taps, drill and a hammer and head for the woods. You need to have these out by March so head out late winter drill your hole, set the tap in with a hammer and simply hang the jug on the tap hook. When the nights are cold and the days are warm the sap flows pretty fast and steady so you will need to empty then once a day on fast running days. Just dump the full milk jugs you hung into a five gallon bucket and head for home. You can simply boil the sap down on your stove in the hours you are at home it doesn’t have to be a continuous boil. Remember it is going to take you collecting 40 gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup, so I used to boil on all four burners and then just consolidate the pots into each other as they boiled down. This will take several days on the stove to achieve when your only boiling from say 5 pm to the time you go to bed. I should also point out that your going to have a lot of humidity in the house from the sap boiling off so unless you have a log house you should turn the stove vent on or open a window, a lot of humidity isn’t going to do your sheet rocked walls very good. I never used a candy thermometer for mine I just boiled it to the consistency I liked and left it at that but you certainly can pick up a thermometer if you wish. For perfect syrup you need the syrup to boil at 7 degrees above the boiling point of water. The boiling point of water depends on the elevation you are located in. Once you have it to the consistency you like you need to let it cool some and then filter the syrup out through some cheesecloth. That’s it, it’s fairly simple and you can get a ton more info probably from google. Just think how satisfying you’ll feel using the syrup you made on your pancakes from now on. Happy Hiking!!!