The warmth is officially here and we’ve had a great albeit dry stretch of weather lately to finish out the Spring and usher in Summer. Rain in the forecast as I type this, anyway. Today marks an obscure personal milestone: meeting a new neighbor younger than me. They moved into the only other house near us recently and we hadn’t met them yet. We crossed paths by chance and I got a great first impression. But that just capped off a day of polishing up the rough edges around the homestead.
After some weeks of hemming and hawing about brush mowers and walk-behind string trimmers I finally pulled the trigger on a DR model. Remember those late night ads? Marketing works, kids! That said, I had forgotten about the ads until someone mentioned it.
The 2016 sugaring season got underway early this year. Thanks to an incredibly mild Winter which saw record-setting temperatures throughout- the sap was flowing early and often. Some tapped at the end of January but I waited until the 3rd week of February. Last year, I had 6 taps flowing. This year I decided to up that number to 26.
Relatively speaking as far as sap collecting was concerned, I was slightly disappointed. I figured there would be so much sap, I couldn’t boil it all with my equipment. Realistically speaking, the outcome was pretty much on-par with exactly what I was capable of processing. I made around 96oz of syrup (¾ gallon) last year but I didn’t keep track of how much sap I collected.
My first year with a real garden has proven to be an up and down experience. There are many things I will do differently next year, but overall the “seat of my pants” approach that I took this Summer has taught me a lot. For example–the deer can be an issue–despite my hope that abundant food would keep them at bay. It mostly has, but their preferred path of travel takes them past the garden as well as the apple and cherry trees. But I digress, this post is about the epic tomatoes we are currently struggling to manage.
The result of a bad wind storm and not enough support via stakes and strings has caused a bit of an armageddon. Many have been and will be lost. Despite having given away several dozen pounds of them, we can’t process them fast enough. As a result, some are rotting out there. We have more sauce and crushed tomatoes than we know what to do with and will be enjoying the fruits of our labors all throughout the cold Winter months.
Lessons were learned as you might expect. Turns out that a little bit more planning would’ve made things a lot easier to deal with. Next year, there will be fencing to fend off the deer who like to munch on random, tasty garden things. Having a garden surrounded by ample food in the wild doesn’t outweigh the simple fact that the deer trail is next to fresh veggies. The plant rows will be better spaced–and straight! The tomatoes will be staked far better and stronger, and there will be a dedicated area designated a berry patch with raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries. More leafy greens like spinach and lettuce will play a bigger part, too. All in all, it was a great experience but with some improvements in planning, process, and harvesting it will be even better next year.
