My parents are both from farming backgrounds, and I often think there's a country girl inside of me just busting to get out. As a kid, my favourite books were the Little House on the Prairie series. Oh, how I longed to live the life of Half Pint, little Laura Ingalls. Okay, so maybe I would pass on playing catch with a pig's bladder, but other than that I couldn't imagine a more perfect existence. Life in a log cabin, living off the land, animals all around me and contentment in the simple pleasures of life. Growing up, I tried to reinvent Laura's childhood as best I could in the city. I climbed trees, collected insects (yes, "collected" as in euthanized them, pinned them to a corkboard, and labelled them - maybe that's more mad scientist than pioneer), raised rabbits and ran wild outside. And that was just in the city. Once I got to my relatives' farms in Leamington, I truly came alive! My Opa would let us collect eggs in the henhouse (we were a little intimidated by the clucking Mama hens, though), ride on the tractor through the back fields with him and scavenge in the haymow for baby kittens!! Even as I write this, I can feel the excitement of climbing through the bales with a flashlight, listening oh-so-carefully for the soft little "mews" of those babies. My uncle taught us how to pick tomatoes. He still laughs at the memory of the city slicker cousins coming for a week to earn some money in his tomato fields. One summer I came for the sole purpose of earning enough to buy myself some Coca Cola shoes. I never said I was all country.
This spring, my brother-in-law Todd mentioned that we could easily tap the three maple trees in our yard. Country Steph's heart leaped at the thought! Make our own maple syrup? How rustic, how back-to-nature, how wholesome sounding. How Ingalls! The kids were right on board, too, of course. Here's how it went:
Ben and Emma strike a sap collecting pose
Emma strikes her father on the head as he pours the sap into a huge pot
We watch the huge pot boil. And boil. And boil.
7 hours later, we stare in disbelief at the bottom of the pot
Ever so carefully, we pour the syrup through a coffee filter.
(No one likes dirt and bark bits on their pancakes.)
Ta Da!!!
Saturday morning celebration
Uncle Todd, the man of the hour
We did it! We brought a little bit of country into our citified lives. Next year, listen for the sound of our log cabin going up in the back yard.
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