Living in the County has brought to us some great new friends. And two of the absolute coolest are Alysa and Jess from South in Milford. They bought a decommissioned 1970’s school house about 5 years ago, and what has made it so very successful is their ingenuity, determination, and it doesn’t hurt that they are both really smart. Here’s a link to their story.

Each year Jess and Alysa make syrup from the maple trees they collect across the street at the Miller’s House. It’s the house of Bob, our very first friend in the County, and Bob runs a bed & breakfast. So this is a simpatico relationship; Jess collects the sap and a few weeks later, Bob gets a few bottles of maple syrup.

The process is very labour intensive. It takes about 40 litres of maple sap to make 1 litre of syrup. That’s a lot of boiling, a lot of wood, and a lot of time. The best weather for tapping the maple trees is warm days and cold nights. We are in the sweet spot right now, so I helped Jess with collecting the sap.

Over the years Jess has developed many methods of boiling down the sap. This year he’s invented the sap-vaporator (patent pending). It runs on firewood, and the design Jess came up with is reducing the heat loss. Very efficient!

Alysa and Jess have two of my favourite dogs, Ernie and Elsa. These two were having a great day – to be outside, with your people, in the sun, well, it was perfect.

Yesterday was a perfect Saturday! Standing around in the sun, chatting with friends, and learning the process that makes one of my favourite food groups, can it get any better?

Apparently it can! Alysa gave us a drink of the maple sap – aka maple water. It is a really refreshing drink. Sweet and cold, right from the tree!

And then, the spoils of Jess’s hard work, we left with a bottle from the first batch of Maple Syrup!

There’s not too much going on at our County house in February, mostly lots of snow and sitting around the fire. Although I have put in our Veseys order and had a great time at Carson Arthur‘s seminar on Vegetable Planning!

But at night our “back yard” seems to be a literal coyote highway! During the day we see a lot of tracks, but it’s great to capture what’s going on with our Nature Watch camera.

Here’s a daytime photo of the camera position. It’s back in the marsh area and a couple hundred feet away from the garage and house I think.

We were pretty excited to see two Coyotes as it’s the first time we’ve captured more than one in a video. We don’t have sound in the camera but from their body language we can see that they are calling to each other.

But for the first time we’ve seen other critters too. For sure there was a raccoon, and we also think the second photo here is of a fox – check out the tail, what do you think?

It was pretty cool to see our lame Coyote is still around. He doesn’t look like he’s lost any weight, and it doesn’t look like he’s being picked on.

This is my favourite series of photos. Its from a video that was a full 30 seconds, so it was too big to include. As a set up, this Coyote found a trail of something. You will see it jumps up really high, then pounces. And when he digs his nose into the snow, we’re assuming it was probably a mouse.

So it’s been a busy February, and even some pretty heavy snow storms doesn’t seem to slow our Coyote friends down!

We had some fun this past weekend – the first long weekend since the Christmas holiday’s so it was great to get together. We played some cards, built some shelves, and ate really REALLY well!

Maegan wasn’t able to join, but sent a cake that was as delicious as it was beautiful. Maegan’s cake is fully vegan, and in her honour I made a veggie casserole.

And there was some exercising too. Well, to be honest, Dorothy went for a walk…that was it.

Hope you had a lovely and relaxing weekend too!

Our lame coyote came back  this week. I am wondering what might have happened to his foot. It will be interesting to see how he does through out the winter.

We also had a kitty cat visit, I’m hoping it’s one of those smart “County” cats, that knows to stay away from coyotes….fingers crossed!

And now our Walter – he definitely could smell something  interesting! Know that none of the dogs are far away from the house once dusk falls, and never out alone. No cocktail weenies for the coyotes I’m afraid!

Okay, I know, the coyotes have always been around, but we don’t notice as much as we do in the Winter.

There is one coyote that seems to have a lame front paw. Not sure what exactly it is, but will continue to watch for her (him?) over the next months.

And know the three Weiners do not go out of sight in the evenings. They are small, but have BIG survival skills – even Walter!

As we are able to extend our visits to our home in PEC, deb and I have started to connect with more and more with County life. For us this includes a faith community, and it looks like we’ve found one in St. Philip’s, Milford.

St. Philip’s is a 10 minute drive from our house, which is quite attractive, but we are also pretty picky about preaching and liturgy. Luckily for us St. Philip’s ticks the boxes in these areas, plus we’ve met some pretty lovely people.

One such person is Leigh Scott. Leigh lives down the road from us, and has a Lazair ultralight  aircraft that he flies from his house. The plane cruises at about 40 mph, so Leigh has to go out when there’s minimal winds, this is usually in the late afternoon. The craft only fits him, with an open cockpit, and Leigh was able to get these photos of our house, taken October 21, 2019. Leigh apologized for the quality of the photos, but I’m pretty impressed as he took them with an old Sony video camera, and converting the video to photos.

We love having these photos – thanks so much Leigh!

A family of SIX! We were pretty pleased with the ferns we picked up for the front of the house, especially as they can be watered only once a week. We were a bit surprised with the squawking when I went to water the fern that is nearest the bird feeders. We brought down the fern, and were really surprised and incredibly thrilled to see the beginning of a little nest!

The white you see in the nest is Elsa’s fur! We had Elsa and Ernie visit the first week of July, and when we picked up the tumbleweeds created by Elsa’s hair we would let it fall outside. Elsa is a lovely, fluffy girl, so there was a lot of hair to share!

But back to the finches! It was hard to get a photo of the mom as she didn’t like us near the nest at all. We did get this photo of the dad – not very clear but we couldn’t get any closer!

We started with two eggs, it grew to four, and now, we have four babies! No more watering the fern!

And quick update on the robin’s – they have flown the coop!

Well thanks to all with your input! It was overwhelmingly  Option One, “leave au naturel!” Some liked the bottom board only white (Option Four, which is my favourite) but for now, especially with how very hot this summer is turning out to be, we will be leaving the porch as is….well except for some furniture changes! Hey, a girl has to keep things lively!

Thanks again for your input, really appreciate your time and advice!

So we have been thinking about painting some of the porch columns and trim, but aren’t sure how it would look. Along came our dear Andrea, who worked some Photoshop magic. But we still can’t decide which option is the best. Can you help? Just put the one you think looks the best in your Comments. We appreciate your input! Here are the options:

OPTION ONE: Don’t do anything!

OPTION TWO: Top, bottom and columns painted white

OPTION THREE: Top trim and columns only

OPTION FOUR: Bottom trim only

So let us know what you think! Will let you know the outcome in another post, and what we’ve decided.

We decided to name our screened porch the Bogside after our trip to Ireland last Fall. We traveled around Northern Ireland with our beloved cousin and tour guide Linda. This included a trip to Londonderry / Derry. Derry taught us a great deal about the history of Ireland and The Troubles, through it’s architecture, it’s people, it’s landscape, somewhat sadly, it’s expressions of Christianity. From the wall surrounding Derry you see the area called The Bogside. There is a lot of angst and still high emotions about this divide, but for us we connected to the origins of the name, because the area  was originally underwater as the river Foyle flowed round the island of Derry. It dried out into marshland: hence the name Bogside. And marshland is exactly what you see from our porch!

Here’s a summary of the many months it took to create our Bogside!

I am pleased to report that we have baby robins in our first rafter. Last week  5 eggs, this week fuzzy (and possibly a bit ugly) chicks! It’s hard to tell if there are 5 chicks because they are pretty packed in, but I can see at least 3.

I think the Rafter 2 eggs aren’t going hatch, there’s been no change from last week. A bit sad, but nature, what can I say.

And nothing going on in Rafter 3 or 4. We are thinking the nests may have been abandoned.  The egg in Rafter 4 is still looking good, so I will keep checking in.