I’ve not written in a while.  Just to break the ice, I’ll stream my consciousness and try to tell you what I did today, from near the beginning to now, near the end, leaving out a few of the more personal items. Here goes.

I didn’t wake up for my alarm that I set at 4am.  It was supposed to wake me to refill the pans of boiling maple sap on the kitchen stove and refire the woodstove for the pots there.  Instead I woke with the cat pawing me in the kidneys sometime before sunrise, between 6 and 7.  The pans were fine, the woodstove fire was down to fine embers and all was well, I did those chores and dropped back into bed for a bit, not quite sleeping, not quite awake.  I thought about computer programming for the iPhone, about the servers I run at work, and about the chickens (there was a rooster crowing in the back of my head somewhere).

I got up and added more wood to the woodstove, took one of the two 3.5 gallon roaster pans of evaporating sap off the kitchen stove and replace it with the kettle to heat water.  I ground some beans and put them in the press pot, then I slipped on the outdoor slippers and went to the woodpile for more wood.  The water boiled, and I poured it in the press pot, stirred it in and put the top on it, without pressing, and filled Mandy’s cup with hot water.  (please continue reading only if you’re really dedicated to the mundane…)

Remembering some work, I woke up my computer and did a few chores to double check that everything was ready for the day ahead; schools are testing our DSI drug education software, and I make sure their tests run smoothly.  Then I pressed the coffee and poured Mandy’s hot water into my cup, filled hers with coffee, added a spoon of maple syrup and a splash of milk and took it out to her.  Then I poured my own cup and returned to some more work, this time testing our new virtual server instance and learning this new system (pretty easy, though some bugs in the control panel gave me pause from time to time).  Read my mail, and read some more about cancers and their causes (work-related for an upcoming grant proposal).

Pulled on outdoor clothes and went to gather eggs and let the chickens out at the Chicken Palace West, fill water jugs to rinse and fill their water containers, and add fresh feed.  It was a bit early, so there were no eggs yet, but I let them out anyway — we’ve been holding them in a bit longer in the morning just to reinforce that egglaying takes place in the nesting boxes and NOT outside in self-made nests.  So far they don’t seem to be remembering that tendency from last fall when they were just getting started laying, and created a half-dozen or so secret laying places.  I tossed cracked grains for them in the grass outside the coop and listened as the roosters made their special clucking reserved for saying “Hey, I see food, Food!  All you hens, eat up!  Here, here, here!” and then kept a watchful eye for trouble while the hens went mad for the corn and other goodies.  It’s a wonderful thing, this Food Alert communique the roosters provide to the hens, and we see it over and over wherever they are foraging… they find something, cluck the news to appreciative hens who run over and then they stand back and watch over the hens eating, sometimes ducking in for a bite or two but mostly managing the feast.

I went back and got two buckets and started around our sugarbush to gather in the sap that had dripped since last night… it was very light flow (not optimal weather yesterday and today, too warm) and there was only 3 gallons from our 13 taps.  Some mornings there’s ten gallons out there.  Used these to replenish the evaporating pans inside, then filled two more jugs with water and went to visit the East Flock next door and release the prisoners.  Tippy cat accompanied me, and Zane Gray cat met us over there.  I gave them a snack, then took the cracked grains out to the yard and let the East Flock outside.  I fed them in a semi-grassy area away from the coop, using a slightly different spot each day so they don’t scratch up all the new growth in one area.  Then I went back and rinsed and filled their water containers, feed container, and picked up three nice eggs to take back.  There was a little bit of crunchy frost needles in the muddy spots in the path through the woods, so we did get at least a little bit of freeze last night locally, but not much.  The cats back in the garage still hadn’t quite finished their cat food from last night, and although they pleaded for more, I resisted.

I did some more work-reading and server-playing, reheated the remaining coffee, then ate scrambled eggs with feta and drank the rest of the coffee with Mandy.  I restored a virtual server from a backup (still testing), took a shower, and gathered things to drive into Ann Arbor.  I read to Mandy an article about cancer research on those rare patients whose immune systems suddenly kick into gear and drive back inoperable, terminal cancers into complete remission.  Hopeful stuff, but almost too rare to be really researchable unfortunately.

At work, Brian and I caught up on a few things and got ready for the afternoon meeting (every Tuesday).  Oh, and we caught a quick update on the new and shiny features being announced for the iPhone 3.0 SDK.  Then the meeting (with boss Rees chiming in long distance via chat from the Caribbean) came and went, then I did some more virtual server work, testing and restoring backups and finally shutting them all down and heading home with Mandy at the end of the day.  One quick stop at Great Harvest bread (and a small purloined tillite for our garden from the rock beds in the parking lot) and we were home to start Round Two of a day at Dragonwood.  We were greeted by a Speckled Sussex alongside the driveway as we pulled up… a bit of a surprise, as the flock is all supposed to be fenced in to the wooded side at the back of the house, and not up front like this.  However, the fencing situation is still a bit porous in places and this one looked to be the same Speckled who escaped yesterday via the Berry Patch - Sumac run.  She was easily led back through the gate with a “chick-chick-chick” call and a shaking of the coffee can with scratch grains inside.

After a snack (mine was finishing off a lamb shoulder roast with a mustard/pepper crust to die for), it was off to visit the chickens, gather eggs (13 to add to the 10 from this morning), check the sap (not much, leave it there), then to raking.  We didn’t get all the raking done last fall (sigh) before the snows covered things and it all froze in place, and we’re slowly catching up with it.  Since it’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, I wanted at least to gather the piles we’d created during this warm spell, so I gathered several loads of maple leaves to take to the garden (for mulching and other garden uses), and black walnut leaves to take to the back fields (currently fallow grassy pasture) where they will do no harm. The grass underneath all the leaves isn’t quite dead yet (”I don’t want to go on the cart”) so I will have to mow this year, which reminds me that I didn’t fix the dead solenoid on the riding mower that died near the end of the season.

Being dusky at this time of the evening, the chickens were mostly in and roosting, except for the roosters who seem to stay outside to the very end, as if to herd the hens all inside.  Oh, and Rocky and Rhoda were still outside too, they tend that way.  Instead of trying to convince them to all go in, I decided to visit the East Flock, who go early to roost, and close them in for the night.  So with the hand cart in tow (returning it to its proper home), I headed across the road pondering where to place our mailbox (the one knocked down by the snowplow, that we hope to move to the little dirt road on the east side of Dragonwood instead of along the main highway to our south), and sidestepping the very muddy parts of the path.  Tippy joined me in the yard, and we listened to the peepers as we walked along, then cluck-clucked to the flock as we came into the coop/barn.  No alarm given for my presence, but they always give one for the cat when she meows or is spotted nearby, even though they’ve grown up together and all the cats walk among the chickens daily.

I give them a little bit of grains (since they de-roosted to greet me) and unload 14 eggs from their nesting box, for a total of 17 from these 24 hens, their highest output of the spring so far.  Back to Dragonwood again, sans Tippy (who often stays with the East Flock) and hand cart, dodging the muddy mole hills in the grass and admiring the pretty pinks in the darkening blue sky.  I picked up a couple wayward rakes in the yard and got as far as the woodpile when I saw Mandy by the maple trees outside the West Coop (accompanied by the roosters).  She handed me a bucket of sap across the fence and grimmaced… and admitted that she’s resprained her ankle just a few minutes before.  Ugh.  It’s an old sprain from more than two years ago, but it just hasn’t quite healed up to be as strong as it should be.  It’s not too too bad (not like the first time), but her plans for raking into the twilight are gone, and she headed inside.  I finish collecting all the sap (only 8 gallons all told today), and then go back and finish adding my little innovation to the bucket lids.  We bought some new/used sap buckets this season to add to the six nice ones we got last year.  The previous six were “Slim Grimm” buckets, a 10-quart variety that is tall and slender with metal flip-up rain-protection lids that protrude a healthy inch past the bucket lip.  Unfortunately no Slim Grimms were available and we’re stuck with the regular 10-quart Grimm bucket, which is almost the same diameter as the lids… a terrible thing when it rains as the lids become guides for the runoff into the bucket instead of a shunt to protect our sap.  So I’ve fashioned some clips from springy office binder clips and bent paperclips that affix to the lids and push the bucket edge back just enough to protect the contents… I hope.  We’ll see how they work in tomorrow’s rain, and since the weather’s a bit too warm for much flow, I’m not expecting to have any losses anyway.  We’d consider just boiling it all away, sap water diluted with rainwater, but the rainwater tends to run on the branches above and brings a distinct discoloration along with it, so we haven’t done that, and won’t.

Standing under the maples in the dark, adjusting my clips, I heard a drip-drip around me, slow and irregular.  Several leaks it seems, up there in the tall maple, this 104″ circumference maple with three taps in it.  Sure enough I spot a wet spot (with my flashlight) in the ivy on the north side of the tree… I hold my hand out and gather a few drops; not very sweet.  I head back to the house and decide to bring some more wood splits to the covered woodpile.  We have a split pile in the driveway from a truckload we collected cutting down a large ash tree at Rich and Joan’s place before they headed to Japan.  We’ve burned most of it now, but I got the wheelbarrow and moved three more large loads over to the facecord-sized covered stack we keep near the back door, piling it to about 6 1/2 feet high.  It was lovely working in the near dark, listening to the peepers, looking up at the stars in the warm clear night.  I think it’s the combination of WARM and clear night, instead of COLD and clear, that warns me of the oncoming rain even though I usually get my weather from the Weather Underground.  I took slow steps moving back and forth (guarding my ankles) and lifted one or two splits at a time (I’m having some elbow tendon issues), and it was just as pleasant as work can be.

I think I’m beyond quitting time now, having written too quickly to edit much, but it was intended as an exercise to limber my writing fingers and the writing part of my brain.  So I’ve succeeded on my end.  And if you’ve read this far, don’t say you weren’t warned.  There’s more, of course… we’re still boiling down the sap now after midnight as I write this, and will leave some of it on the woodstove and some simmering on the kitchen stove all night, to be finished off in the morning and canned.  But I’m through.  Good night.