Old Time, Celtic, Maritime Music, Gardening and Small Scale Farming

I didn't know I was a musician gardener.
All my life I've loved getting my hands dirty gardening, keeping small livestock, and playing traditional music, but I always thought that was just a peculiar combination that occurs in a completely random fashion. But one day my wife Sara and I were talking with a neighbor who ran a one acre educational garden down the street from us. He mentioned that as soon as the growing season was over he was going to hit the road with a bluegrass band he played with. He smiled and said that he felt really blessed to live the life he had- getting to play in the dirt and play on the stage. I had no idea he played in a bluegrass band so we talked shop about music, gardening, and travelling for a bit. After we said goodbye and started walking away Sara turned to me and said "oh I know what you guys are, you're Musician Gardeners."
Suddenly it clicked, all my life I've known and met people who combine their lives like that. friends, neighbors and other folks who combine their love of the land with a love of music, often the very music that grew and still grows out of that land.
This blog hopes to explore that relationship and to let other Musician Gardeners out there know that we're actually a demographic!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Fiber cereal, and Layer Pellets, Can You Tell the Difference? Plus Norway Maple, a great sap tree- who knew?

We were cleaning out the kitchen the other day and noticed an old box of fiber cereal that a neighbor had given us quite some time ago.  Obviously it hadn't been touched since it was brought in the house so we decided since none of us could stomach it the chicken could probably still handle it.  I have seen them eat broken glass before so I figured they could probably handle fiber cereal.  However, on my morning walk to the coop the next morning I noticed something strange about the similarities between the bucket of layer pellets and the kitchen scrap container full of fiber cereal.  So I've decided to bring the question to you, good reader, containers non-withstanding CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE?
What does this mean!? Have my parents really been eating layer pellets for breakfast all these years?

We've also recently discovered another culinary mystery.  Steaming purple cauliflower is apparently the best way to make Romulan Ale

 

If we mixed this with carrot juice would we get a Klingon Car Bomb?






Maple syrup update:
I'm on my fourth boil down now and have tallied up about 80 gallons of sap and 2 gallons of syrup.  Things are going much better than I had expected.  It's looking like the season will start winding down soon for my Silver Maples whose buds are just starting to burst but I'm hoping the my Norway maples will run for at least another week.  Norway Maple, by the way is a tree I have become very impressed with.  They have great sap flow even without dramatic freezing and thawing cylces.  The sap is sweet, clear, and boils down to something much more like Sugar or Red maple syrup than Silver Maple.
Norway Maple does have a tendency to become invasive so one would have to be careful planting it but I'd definitely consider Norways for a sugar bush now.  They seem to flow great all the way from early february through the middle of march and show no signs of stopping.  Most trees will give you a four week window of sap flow before they taper off, but Norways just seem to keep plugging right along.  Can we infer from this that Norway Maples are slower to compartmentalize their wound than other maples?  Who knows, either way I think all those norwegians over in the old country have been missing out on a good thing all these millenia.
Take care.....   and now that you know how to make it, just take it easy on the Romulan Ale......
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