I must share my excitement with you! They are small things but they both make me so incredibly happy.
First:
Saturday I took the leap and made granulated sugar from maple syrup for the first time. It was scary as you have to heat it to such a high temperature then stir it constantly until all the moisture suddenly leaves and it becomes sugar. Simple process but any time you heat sugar to a high temperature, it is scary with the possibility of getting burned, burning the pan, etc. I used my Kitchen Aid stand mixer to do the stirring for me so that added another level of scariness. I really didn’t want to do something to ruin that.
But….it worked!! I wouldn’t say perfectly. I have some tweaking to do but it worked! I’m so excited to learn another way to use maple syrup. It’s hard to believe that this used to be syrup. 🙂
Next I’ll be learning to make maple cream. That seems a little bit more complicated. We’d love to eventually be licensed to sell the syrup we make so I am learning how to make other maple products too.
Second:
Matt is no longer driving 45 minutes to get to work. He is now only driving 4-5 minutes! The way his job works is that there are different areas where the trees need to be trimmed. So they park the bucket trucks in the area where they are currently working. Miles-wise, his district is very large. For the next few weeks he’ll be working in the town where I do my grocery shopping, about 20 minutes away. The parking area is in our town and even on our road. The alarm will be going off around 5:00/5:15 instead of 4:15. The best part is he’ll be getting home by 4pm instead of 5pm.
It may only be for a few weeks to a month but I’m going to enjoy it while I can. 🙂 And hope that the next place they work is the one 25 minutes away not the one over an hour away.
These are the things making me happy on this Monday morning while Abby is being grumpy and my eyes are dry and burning (isn’t it too early for allergies considering there is still 4 feet of snow in the yard?).
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