You may have noticed that we were very quiet lately. After announcing our retirement, we spent every minute of our time on two things: selling our house and buying a new one. We had to spruce up our house a little, which we did fairly quickly. Serendipitously, before we listed the house, our neighbours expressed … Continue reading The Coronavirus Diaries – Big News
Today is Canada day. There are still Covid restrictions in place and large gatherings and celebrations will not take place. This is a perfect opportunity to pause jubilations and reflect on some of the cost and pain that built this country. More specifically, this Canada Day we need to reflect on the fate of First … Continue reading Happy Canada Day?
We both got our second vaccine. Lots of people are getting theirs and this post may very well be one of the last one of the Coronavirus Diaries series. The world is opening up! Alas, I had adverse reactions to the second dose which included high fever. I slept a lot and had some interesting … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – New and improved Plagues
It's been awhile since our last diary post. A lot happened since then, yet in line with this weird covid surreal existence, it still feels like nothing has. Ontario is still in lockdown with gradual opening to roll out over the next few weeks. The hostages and us had our first vaccine shots, so despite … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – What’s New?
The first day of spring. There is promise of new growth and freedom in the air. At the same time, through the melting snow, remnants of last fall's casualties are still evident.
With our first batch of maple syrup boiled and bottled, the next obvious step is to sample our freshly made product. Pancake dinner tonight! We have a very clear division of labour in our household; Tony is in charge of making crêpes, while I'm in charge of making pancakes. It's just one of our rules. … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Pancakes for Dinner
The big day has arrived. It's not too windy, the sun is shining, and we have about five gallons on sap to boil. We like to boil small batches at a time. It will take about 4 hours of boiling for this amount of sap, but there really isn't much to do during the bulk … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Sap to Syrup
Temperatures are warming up and the fridge is melting rapidly. It is still cold enough for a ring of ice inside the pot to keep the sap nice and cold. We filtered the sap through some cheese cloth, brought out the turkey fryer and started boiling the sap. In previous year we boiled the sap … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Boiling the Sap
The arctic freeze moved on and the sap is dripping again. The snow softened and we can prepare an outdoor fridge to store the sap in. We prepare a spot in a shaded area; with warming daytime temperatures, we don't want the sun melting our fridge. The tree buckets had some sap in them so … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Our Fridge is Up and Running
Temperatures plummeted again and we were a bit late in prepaing our outdoor refrigerator. It was so cold that the snow froze. Since the outdoor refrigerator is basically a hole in the snow, it became a bit hard to do (yes, we just reinforced all those stereotypes about Canada). Well, when we say the snow … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Our Snow Froze!