But First Let’s Be Honest About Poking Holes in Trees Someone walks up to a group of meditating maple trees and stabs one, hoping to see a watery solution trickle out.  This is a very first and necessary step on the annual journey of making maple syrup. And if you...

We use this chart as a starting point to discussing what's IN elderberries - the entire, raw berry. It's an exciting berry worth taking a look at! Check out the calcium, phosphorus, and Vitamin A -- all these and more are considered important vitamins and minerals for the human body....

Here is a photo of a few of our new Elderberry bush cuttings. We're expanding!  We are so encouraged by everyone's feedback on Elderberry Apple Shots, we are planting more. They are very small right now, but they grow quickly -- like weeds really. We had the option to BUY...

Rig as in not a large truck, but a maple syrup evaporator. Imagine your oven, 1000° or so, 3 giant pans of liquid, and a feeder tank to watch. Then, manually operate the oven, don't burn anything, and stop in time for the feeder tank to finish -- too early and...

It seems there are two, contradictory perhaps, popular sentiments swirling around post November 2016: ONE: do small things to make great changes; TWO: get angry and make a big splash. The Queen of England's annual Christmas address, for example, was about praising ordinary people doing "extraordinary" work every day. Charity...

The other month, Farmer Bill had the pleasure of meeting Joe, a former ginger taster, extractor, and world-wide quality control ginger expert for a large soft-drinks company. Joe, after figuring out how to massively scale down from large, stainless, ga-jillion dollar equipment to common kitchen items, extracted our Certified Organic...

Now the Greenhouse is living up to its name: Green! We are producing lovely GREEN celery, a real boon in gray January. Even with ice on the windows (see next Blog post), it is at its peak of sweetness and tenderness. Closer to the Colonial-American-kitchen-garden celery than the grocery store...

Earlier this week the ice returned to the greenhouse glass windows. It makes some beautiful patterns, but it means the nights are below 20F. On a diversified farm like ours, this is a good thing. A cold winter means better maple sap flow. Too cold means the peach trees might...