Sweet and Sappy

We are in Canada. Now what is typical Canadian? Any suggestions? Hockey is Canadian. S'mores are Canadian. Well they are more North American. What about Baseball? No, that´s a bit more American. The word ``eh´´ is Canadian. Eh? Bacon is Canadian. MMMMHHHH. Bacon. Pancakes are very Canadian.

And if you type ``typical Canadian things´´ into the internet, maple syrup should show up near the top. Yes, maple syrup is good, sweet, not full of chemicals, all natural, fresh from the trees (well almost) and Canadian. A lot of people we know make maple syrup. But how do you make maple syrup? Do you take the leaves of a maple tree, put it in water and add sugar? Do you take the roots of a maple tree, make something like root beer and then concentrate it? NO!!! Every spring the sap in the tree runs up and down the tree, transporting nutrients, minerals and sugar. What you have to do is drill a hole in to the tree, put a tap in it and let the sap drip out. Then you take your collected sap, put it over a fire and concentrate it.

Collecting sap in the sugar bush at Hollanbec Farm.

Here friends at Hollanbec Farm are boiling down the sap! This process lasts quite a few hours.

FOR 1 LITER OF MAPLE SYRUP YOU NEED 40 LITERS OF SAP!! That is a lot of sap. So how much syrup will you get from 1.000 LITERS of sap? It is an astounding number. It is not 200 Liters of syrup. Make sure you don´t get shocked by this number...... For 1.000 liters of sap you only get 25 LITERS  of syrup. ONLY?????? That is a huge number. But how much sap do you get from the tree every spring.?   The rule of thumb is that per tap you put in to the tree, you should get 0.6 liters of SYRUP. In a good season 1 liter of syrup per tap.

Their finished product.  Yum!

So why don´t you make maple syrup in other countries? Well, there are a lot of different maples out there. Theoretically, you could make syrup with the sap from EVERY TREE!!! So you could get birch syrup, white maple syrup, hornbeam maple syrup, silver maple syrup, red maple syrup and the possibilities are (almost) endless. But why don´t you make maple syrup in other countries?? There is one type of maple tree used to make maple syrup. ``The sugar maple´´.  The sugar maple contains 2% sugar in the sap. All other maples contain 1%. Some other countries do not have sugar maples at all. Did you know that the earliest recorded descriptions of the Native American method of extracting a syrup from maple trees was published in the ``Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society´´, London, England, in 1684?

So, we want to try and make maple syrup now that we are in Canada. One day we drove up to our property north of Lanark to tap some trees. The road is a dirt road, and it doesn't get plowed in the winter. There are a lot of hills there, one as high as a mountain (well at least for the standards of the area 😉). The road was pure ice. We tried to get up that hill. We almost made it. Only a few more meters. But then the car stopped and we slid back down again. It wasn´t that fast. Because we almost made it we decided to try and get up the hill again. We went up, we were almost at the top, again, but then the car stopped, and we slid back down. Again. This time faster. The only thing preventing us from sliding into the ditch were tire tracks in the ice made by logging trucks. It was scary. So we decided NOT to try that again. We did not have that much to carry so we walked in the rest of the way. When we arrived Cathy (This is Jonathan writing), aka my Mum, noticed that she forgot the soup stock for our lunch. That´s OK. We won´t starve.

Ice makes a great slide!

One of the first things we did was find the sugar maple trees. My dad had a  handbook on trees with the shape of the leaves. Did you know that every maple has a different leaf? This is the leaf of the sugar maple:

Sugar Maple Leaf

It is early spring. There aren't any new leaves on the trees. So, how do you know if something is a sugar maple or something else? There are a few characteristics:

• When growing in the forest it develops a trunk free of branches for two-thirds or more of its height. 
• The leaves are three lobed with only a few irregular, wavy teeth.        
• The bark is grey, divided in to long , vertical, firm, irregular strips.

So, there is bark, and there are branches, but where are the leaves? As most of you probably know (but only probably 😉😉😉) all the leaves of deciduous trees (so, not evergreen) fall off in the autumn. Almost all of the time the leaves are under the tree that they fell from. Once we came to a tree with five different types of leaves under it, so we left it. It didn´t take us long to find a few trees. When we found the trees, we drilled a hole, stuck a tap in and waited. And we waited and waited. No sap came dripping out of the first tree. Or the second. Or the third. After I do not know how many trees there was sap dripping out of the tap. Now, we cannot drive up to Lanark every day to pour the sap in to another bucket and keep collecting.  Instead we bought big water containers called Aqua Tainers. With some tubing we directed the sap into these Aqua Tainers and piled snow around them. This will help to preserve the quality of the sap so we can wait a week before we come back. We tapped 7 trees. That is not a lot. We know that. But it is a good start if you are doing it for your first time. Before we left we were able to taste a bit of sap which the one tree had already produced. It tastes like water with a little sweetness. We will go back soon to boil it down. More information next time. I hope you liked this blog and will read the next one soon.

Take care!!!

Jonathan

It's fun to be at the Y.M.C.A.!

We decided at the end of December that we would get a family membership at the local YMCA.  We had thought about it but finally went in on the 30th and there happily discovered that they were having a special on memberships! Super, so we signed up and went the next day to try it out.  They have a pool, a kids pool (which is up to my waist and is lovely and warm), a hot tub, a sauna (dry and not very hot), a track to run on, weight machines free weights, other exercise machines, a squash court, a gymnasium and also various exercise classes.  In other words, there is enough there to help us get/stay fit over the winter!  And as this particular Canadian winter is so snowy and unusually cold, we're really happy to have this opportunity.  It also gets us out of the house and doing something different.

Jonathan writes, "So this blogs topic is not about land or Christmas or even homeschooling. It is about the YMCA formerly known as the Y. Because there is no YMCA in Austria I´ll explain what the Y is. The YMCA used to be a Christian organisation meaning Young Mens Christian Assosiation. Now it´s all secular but they still have got a lot of different things to do. It is a chain like McDonalds. It is a building where they have a swimming pool, a running track, weights and weight machines, a squash court (something like tennis just in a square court and you are standing next to each other), a gym and tonnes of exercise machines with a personal TV like treadmills, bicycles, rowing machines hand bikes, stair stepping machines and something called a Jacobs Ladder. The Jacobs ladder is like a ladder which you have to climb but the higher you climb, the faster the steps come down (check it out on the Internet ``Jacobs Ladder gym´´)."

In January we signed all of the kids up for swimming lessons.  In Austria we hadn't done this as there weren't any lessons in our area and we really want the kids to improve their swimming.  Jonathan and Rebecca had had swimming at school so they were a bit further ahead than before but here they are really being challenged.  As our lessons are at 7:10 at night there are fewer children in each of the classes which is fantastic for them.  Josiah even has a teacher all to himself!



So, we're doing a little bit of everything.  Last Saturday the boys, Jonathan and Jeremiah, wanted to try Squash for 6-12 year olds.  It started at 9am.  There was also a Drumming exercise class at the same time so we decided that I would go.  But waking up on Saturday we had had a LOT of snow overnight!  Thankfully, Dominik loves to use the snowblower.  He got the driveway cleared I managed to get out.  The roads were terrible but drivable. We proudly arrived only to find out that the squash teacher had cancelled about 5 minutes before.  Fortunately the staff were really nice and let the boys play anyway, and I went off to try drumming.  What is drumming, you might ask?  I wondered too.  You take and exercise ball and drumsticks and do exercises to music.  It is basically an aerobics class with props.  A family of four and I were the only participants, so it wasn't very intimidating. ;-)

Here's your internet drumming class example! Cool, eh?

This week I decided to try the Zumba class that came a bit before the kids swimming lessons.  I was thinking that the class would be full of fit 20's and 30's and that I would be out of place.  I mainly thought that because they also offer 'Zumba Gold' and 'Chair Zumba' (really) earlier in the schedule.  But no, I was pleasantly suprised to find that it was a really mixed class.  It was fun and will be more so when I actually learn the steps!

What the class kind of looks like now (internet photo).

What I'm sure we'll all look like after a few weeks! ;-)

That's about all that's going on here with us this week.  Homeschool and exercise.  Reading and planning and I'm doing my course work. Between all that and shovelling snow we're managing to keep busy. Also Dominik taught Elena and Jeremiah video cutting. When we were swimming at the Y Jeremiah and Elena took the gopro and started filming in the water. So these are the videos that they made.

If you're enjoying our blog then consider 'Following' us and you'll be notified when we upload the next installment.  It's fun to see where the readers of our blog our- last week our blog was read (in decreasing order) in Austria, Canada, Russia (cool!), Germany, The U.S., Sweden and a few others.  That's exciting! Have a great week!

Gutes Neues Jahr 2018!!!!!

Hello from a cold and snowy Canada!  (okay, all of you in Canada- you know what I mean :-)) .  We were sympathising with Austria over Christmas since they had spring weather and we had to keep digging out of the snow.  We would have loved to have shared it with you!  :-)

We had a lovely Canadian Christmas this year, a very relaxed one. We managed to stretch the day out, we enjoyed our turkey and we enjoyed just having time together.  We skyped with friends and family in Austria, Los Angeles and Calgary.  The kids were sending and receiving messages with friends through my Whattsapp and their school messaging site.  It's been great keeping in contact with people that way.

Austrian Blaukraut, Wurstel & Semmeln (not as good as Oma's!)

By the tree

Canadian Turkey Dinner with everything!

So, we had a lot of snow.  And then cold.  Both are new to us at Christmas (not to me but to the rest). Dominik and the kids had a blast taking the snow from the driveway, as well as some from the back yard, and making a huge snow hill in our back yard.  It kept snowing and they just kept on shovelling and using the snow blower.  The hill got higher and higher!  Then, about a week later, when it was nice and cold (at least -15 degrees C), they dug out a snow cave.  A nice BIG snow cave!  It could sleep 4 people.  But it hasn't yet because then the weather got colder and dropped down to -27 at night.  But it was supposed to be feeling like -34 or something.  That's the great thing about Canadian weather reports.  It will tell you how cold it is and then add how cold it FEELS LIKE, just to make you feel braver and stronger about feeling cold.  Usually it does have to do with the humidity or with the wind, and it's always fun to hear it when it's really cold.

We have also been enjoying some of our presents which we received at Christmas.  There were the usual things, you know, the nice Christian western romance novel (or collection of stories) set at Christmas.  I really enjoyed that little fantasy every evening.  Jeremiah got a Minions version of the game 'Trouble' and it's great because he can play it with Josiah and Elena quite happily.  They play for hours with the Playmobil.  Seriously, they imagine so many things and can play undisturbed for hours.  This can be quite handy!  But the two best...so far the most-used things are.....ready?  5 Krazy Karpets (plastic pieces to go sledding on- they have handles hence turning a piece of flexible coloured plastic into a sled!) and a GoPro!   We have taken these two in combination and have had hours of sledding and filming fun.  On top of that, before we left Austria we made sure that we had purchased some sort of video editing program.  Dominik cut a LOT of videos while working at Schloss Klaus and now he has been teaching the kids how to do it too.   Today we started videoing the birds coming to the feeder.  This might be a part of the homeschool program as well as it is amazing to see how a bird actually flies- when you get to see it all in slow motion!    For now we'll let you see our first video of 2018- Sledding with the Castle's.  Thanks to them, Emily and Andrew and kids, for having fun with us!

New Years itself was pretty quiet for us, especially as there aren't any fireworks to watch.  Now, a clarification for the Canadians/Non-Austrians reading this.  In Austria every year over 10 million Euros is spent on fireworks just for New Year's Eve.  Yup, that's a lot!  I used to visit Dominik's parents with our kids (he was working) for the celebration, not just because it was nice to be with family, but because the neighbours there spent a lot on fireworks.  We just had to look out the window or step outside (sometimes carefully- watch for falling debris!) and we saw a spectacular show!   When I stayed in Klaus and celebrated with friends, I could watch the fireworks from our village, the next village and also you could see the sky lighting up behind the mountains since the villages back behind them were also shooting a lot off.  Someday we will have to experience a Vienna New Year's (Silvester).  Then we can enjoy punsch stands, other snacks and a fantastic and government-sponsored pyrotechnic display!  So, back to Brockville.  Nope, nothing.  Okay, it was really cold.  -25C.  They had also cancelled some of the activities in Ottawa, Calgary and other cities because of the cold.  But the fireworks would go ahead.  But no, for us with a bunch of small kids, the idea of standing around on Parliament Hill in Ottawa at midnight when it's that cold????? No.  So, we stayed in.  BUT.  And here is the great 'BUT' in the story.  Our great friend Miriam Merz showed us the fireworks from Klaus live as it happened!  Usually we celebrated together, when most of the staff were involved in the New Year's retreat, like Dominik and Kerstin and other friends, so it was nice to kind of, in a way, be able to celebrate with Miri again this year.  And we got to see the fireworks!

This was our first year to have this holiday as a family, completely undisturbed.  Usually Dominik had to be back at work on the 27th.  The Silvester retreat was big and busy and great fun, but a huge amout of work too.  It was wonderful to have the time together but, at the same time, it was odd not to be there,  Still, we were in contact with some people on the team and it made us feel a little closer.


That was our holiday.  We had Christmas and New Years and now we're back to school.  We are both reading the Permaculture Book (by Sepp Holzer- an Austrian! ;-)) and are getting lots of good ideas. Elena has a book on bee keeping.  Rebecca received a book on keeping horses and ponies. We have a homesteading class and Rebecca is eager to learn how to cook more and more.  But we still don't have land.  We know that we will likely have to wait until spring because there would be too much risk involved in buying something covered in snow. (Right, Patrizia?  :-)  She told us the story of a German who came to Austria and saw a lovely snow-covered field with a pile of hay on it.  He managed to buy it and then went back to Germany.  When he returned in the summer he couldn't find his field- it had been a frozen lake!  So, we're not going down that road! :-)).  But please pray with us that we find the right piece of land at the right time and price.  We're pretty calm and patient but it will be a great relief to have it and to get going!  Thanks!

God Bless in 2018!  We will be back with more soon!