What’s New?!
It’s been a while! I got locked out of my blog for a long time, I am not techy and struggled with figuring out the problem, and ended up giving up. So I’ve been gone for quite a while. I decided with the new year it’s time to get back to it and enlisted some help and gained my access back so here we are! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season surrounded by love and family, good memories, fun, and good food!
It’s cold here in Michigan today at about 12 degrees and it’s actually sunny. So with the freezing temperatures I decided there was no better way to “Think Spring” than to get started on the garden planning. My oldest son is graduating high school this year and we will be hosting his graduation party here at home so I have some lofty goals to make my garden extra beautiful and successful this year with lots more flowers and new mulch. Last year I was a pretty lazy gardener. I had tons of weeds growing through my landscape fabric and spent hours and hours weeding, and tried the garden vinegar to get rid of them and ultimately lost the battle. So I will have my work cut out for me this Spring. Also my mint took over and I have to find a way to get that back under control. A word to the wise….. don’t ever plant any type of mint directly in the ground in your garden! It helps with pests, but it’ll take over everything else and they have big thick strong roots and are super invasive.
It’s almost time to start thinking about maple syrup again too and the hubby wants to expand the operation this year and tap quite a few more trees. He even told me a few days ago he wants to look into possibly getting bees this year too, which was a surprise, and there may be a pig in the future and of course more chickens. New year, new possibilities! Buckle up! Here’s 2025!
Maple Syrup!
Ever since we’d moved to this property, I told my husband, “Hey, we have so many Maple trees, we should make our own maple syrup!” Well, my sweet, persistent little suggestions finally came to fruition. We decided to pick up some taps, bags, and buckets and give it a whirl! We got a boiling pan and a hydrometer from the local amish store. We bought some concrete cinder blocks and built a little outdoor wood stove and started boiling. I left all of that to my hubby. He enjoyed hanging outside all day and just watching the fire and refilling the pan for many hours on Saturday and Sunday. I also did what every “normal” person taking on a new project does and started researching, and I joined a couple of Facebook groups, and asked some questions to figure out how to do this correctly. I mean, how hard could it be? Humans have been boiling sap down to syrup for centuries, right? We kinda figured it out, but it wasn’t perfect. We had no idea how to use the hydrometer, and I think we let the temperature get too high, and I think we should have filtered with more layers of the filter material because we ended up with some niter forming and settling in the jars. While it isn’t uncommon or detrimental to the syrup, it’s just not as clear and pretty, but, all in all, we definitely discovered some things we will do differently next time. We did get 3 pints of yummy syrup that tastes excellent. It was a fun learning process, and my husband definitely is enjoying being outside and seeing how much sap we can get every day. We tapped 5 trees and had about 20 gallons of sap and we ended up with 3 pints of syrup this past weekend. Right now we have about 30 more gallons of sap waiting to be boiled and it’s only Wednesday so we will have another go at it this weekend and see how it goes!
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What’s in a name?
When you decide to start a website or a brand name or anything of the sort it can be difficult. I tried to think of a name that would represent who I am, and what I am all about. I am very excited about the name of this website because it came to me out of the blue, and I feel like it was kind of a “God thing”.
Growing up I wasn’t overly fond of my name, Ashley, the meaning was “From the Ash tree meadow”. I felt that was boring and uninspiring. I never delved into any further research on it. Well, when I was trying to figure out a name for this blog/website I decided to look up my name meaning to see if I identified with anything. When I did, it was like a lightning bolt to my spirit and I got very excited!
When I googled the meaning of my name further, I found out that the “Ash tree” is a symbol of “resiliency, strength, and independence”; and that The Meadow, represents “a sense of peace and serenity”. This is the perfect description of me! I was so excited when I discovered this and knew I just had to somehow incorporate it into the name of my new site. I also felt kind of sad that I’d never known the true and deeper meaning of my name before this.
I am very strong and resilient, and I have overcome some unimaginably difficult circumstances and situations in my life that would sink some people into the deep dark place of no return, but I’ve come out stronger and better on the other side by God’s grace. I’m proud of this, and I’m proud of who I am and grateful for how far I’ve come despite my circumstances. I give the credit wholly to my God who got me through all the hard times.
In addition to the meaning of my name, I also am always aspiring for growth, more knowledge, and new experiences, and have been ever-evolving through the years. So in that, “The Aspiring Ash Tree” was born. I AM the Ash Tree.
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