Population in 2014 was 13 people year round and 15 people seasonally and in 2019 the population was 14.

The Jersey Lilly went up for sale in 2019.  When we were there the Jersey Lilly was the only business in this small town, so in we went and ordered a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.  Talking to the waitress we discovered she was the owner, and talking more with her we found out that she was from Wisconsin as well. 

I'm not sure what it's like there in Ingomor Montana now, but I'd sure like to go back and find out.

We woke up to snow covering our world.  I had started a post from photos I had taken oh so long ago that I have yet to post, I had planned to post them just never did.  So, I will be digging into the archives of my photos and post them all eventually.  It's going to take a while to do that, because the first post I plan to do, the photos are from 2014.  Wowzer, all on hard drive thank goodness, as I have replaced my computer/laptop a few times.

Sugaring is still going on, and we are still making syrup.  Each year our system changes as to how we collect, boil, draw off the syrup, bottle and the clean up.  Who would have thought that after 13 years of cooking syrup there would be room for change, but yet there is always room for improvement.

I'll leave you with some snowy photos from this morning and get to working on the next post from our travels.

The first batch of syrup for the season is bottled.  It seems like we got a later start this season, but the syrup looks pretty good, it's not often we get the golden mild flavor.

Miss Suuvi loves it outdoors and the snow.  Not really sure what she's looking or listening for, only she knows.  I tried being sneaky taking her photo, but of course her hearing is pretty sharp, and she turned around to head my way. 

We got another snowstorm on Thursday, and it snowed another 3 inches last night.  Maybe this will be our sugar snow.

Sugaring season is going to be so different this year.  We did not hang the buckets we usually use; we went with plastic bags this year.  Jim says it's so much easier emptying the bags.  Our dog Suuvi does good out in the sugar bush and follows the UTV around, it seems like when it stops, she stops and when it goes, she goes, she will meander away but so far really hasn't ventured too far. We missed having a dog come out and sugar with us and despite her small quirk I talked about in a previous post, she does very well. 

It's nice having a four-legged companion again.

Just when we thought winter was gone, we woke up to a bit of snow on the ground and no sunshine.

We sure do enjoy having animals.  Our neighbor told Jim when he took care of our animals last that our milk cow is like a pet, totally different than his beef cattle.  Lazer loves being scratched on her lower neck.  In fact, she will nudge Jim if he stops so he'll scratch her neck more.  The new calf is tagged #23 which is what we call her, she is adjusting well and Lazer has accepted her as her calf.  The quad, which consists of Lucy our Jersey calf, Rose who is our Milking Shorthorn/Devon cross beef calf that we'll be keeping and #24 and #25 all heifers, have been very curious about the new kid on the block.

I'm not sure what is going on with Typepad, but some of my photos will not show up on a post, and I somehow lost my banner, I put another one up, so we'll see if that disappears as well.

At least we think it has.

Our puppy turned 1 year old the end of January.   She has her good days and days where she is definitely still a puppy in so many ways.  One bad habit she has and we're not sure how to break her of it, is that whenever anyone comes to the house be it the UPS driver, mail carrier, neighbor etc. we cannot control her at all.  She gets so excited and jumps and tries to get into their vehicles to the point of it being just ridiculous.  Her ears are totally turned off to any command that we give her, and she knows commands very well believe me.  So, this sweet innocent looking face is not so innocent...LOL

Mari over at My Little Corner of the World, does a Cooking Thursday post where she shares a recipe.  I absolutely love it when she does these posts.  This recipe doesn't look exactly like her recipe, but I'll tell you it was very delicious.  I didn't use canned tomatoes; I used the tomato sauce I made last fall from the tomatoes I canned from our garden, and it made the texture a bit different but still very tasty.

With sugaring starting up milking will be a bit more challenging.  We live in dairy country, so we are very blessed to be able to find calves fairly often and last Friday we were able to acquire a heifer calf, she is the cutest little thing.  I took one photo of her, but I'll have to get another when she's outside and you can see her better.  

We tapped about 100 taps and this year after much thought and discussion, we decided to do bags instead of the galvanized buckets.  For one thing it was much faster hanging the bags over hanging the buckets, and we won't have to clean the bags at the end of the season.  I'm not sure how economical the bags will be, but it will be much easier at clean up time, the tubing we won't do that is for sure, and with the buckets we would lose some sap because the buckets are old and the sap would be rusty from the buckets so those buckets we would have to take off the tree and put them aside so we wouldn't hang them next season. 

So, we'll see how the syrup season goes.  For one thing with not having the buckets hanging, I'll miss the pinging of the sap dripping into the buckets, it's such a wonderful sound, and for us it's the arrival of spring.

a single photo...

capturing the moment.

There you have it, yogurt, butter and cheese.  I have been having so much fun, especially being able to make butter, we have no calf on our milk cow right now, so we are getting a lot of milk and cream.  I am so excited to try the hard cheese when it's ready, I put a wax on it and will turn it at least twice a week.  We are making hay while the sun shines. 

Yesterday we had the vet out for a preg check on our milk cow and she's not pregnant, we were pretty disappointed.  So, we'll try AI once again and maybe the third time will be the charm.  Still haven't tapped trees yet but not sure how much sap is running yet.  It's busy, busy, here on the homestead.