Despite rumors to the contrary, we don’t spend all of our time outdoors backpacking. We also go fishing!
Author: Michelle Page 23 of 34
As the weather starts to change, the maple tree in the back yard starts to drip sap. It’s not a sugar maple, so it wouldn’t make a sweet syrup. Plus you need a lot of sap to make syrup.
Georgie talks about making syrup in the notes she wrote about growing up in West Point. On the Bruegenhempke place, there was a row of soft maples north of the house. Sometimes they collected the sap and cooked it down.
Her great-uncle Ben Wellman had a sugar camp in the timber, and in the spring collected maple water. In February, when it froze at night and warmed in the daytime, they collected maple water in buckets. Maple season in Iowa lasts 3 to 4 weeks.
Aunt Teresa would make maple sugar candy in a pan with molds which all had different designs on the bottom. You can buy or make your own maple sugar candy today. It is often shaped in molds that look like a maple leaf.
Digging Deeper
This is an interesting article on the history of making maple syrup posted by the Maple Valley Syrup cooperative.
I love the spring, with new leaves and plants peeping up from the ground. As you wander in the woods, you see an amazing array of colors as the flowers start to bloom. Here are a few of my favorite pictures taken over many years in southern Indiana.
Charles Todd Durfee and Anna Harms were married on February 20, 1889 in Rock Port, Missouri. They were my (Michelle’s) great-great-grandparents.
Henry A.N. Hole was Walt’s great grand uncle, brother to his great grandfather, John Swisher Hole.
Henry was born in on February 13, 1834 in Preble County, Ohio to James Anderson Hole and Mary Ann Swisher. By the time of the 1850 census, the family had moved to Darke County, Ohio. By the 1860 census, Henry was working as a farm laborer on the farm of Jacob and Eliza Pratt.
It’s a few days early, but we wanted to be sure to celebrate a special anniversary. This February 14, Carl and Georgie would have been married 80 years.
Walt and I like role-playing games (in case you couldn’t tell). Much of the games are theater of the mind, where the events are described but not actually seen. Often times, tokens of some sort are used on a map to help show where characters are in relation to each other. For an online game, they are images, such as Walt described here.
These tokens can be simple pieces of card stock or they can be more elaborate miniature figures. Here is a glimpse into my painting set-up for working on figures.
When you are out exploring in the woods, you see all kinds of amazing things. Don’t forget to look at the earth itself. It has stories to tell!
Here is a small cave in southern Indiana. These pictures are many years old – now they do not want people to enter these caves as it is damaging habitats and spreading disease among bats.
Just outside the cave, you can see the hillside and down to the shore of Lake Monroe.
If you head on down to the lakeshore, you can see a variety of colors in the rocks along the water. The different types of rocks wear away and you get amazing patterns. Occasionally, you will also find fossils.
