Copper Kettle Farm: Spruce Tip Syrup

I made Spruce-Tip Syrup this week. I had been wanting to try it for a few years now, but never got around to picking spruce tips while they were still new shoots. So I recruited Isabella to help me pick some. She mostly picked wild roses, but we did managed to collect a decent potfull. Here is the excerpted recipe I used:

"Our spruce-tip syrup smells like strawberries and tastes like honey. To make it, we collect the new growth from spruce trees in spring. The pale-green tips are best harvested when 1 to 1 1/2 inches long. It is OK if The brown end cap remains on the tip.

Rinse and drain the tips, then place in a large kettle and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered about two hours. Strain the liquid and add an equal amount of sugar.

At this point, the syrup may be cloudy. Boil until the syrup is thick and amber colored. MARY HILLBERRY Ketchikan, Alaska. Read more from Mary Hillberry in her Firsthand Report, "Wild About Alaska," August/September 2004."

Following the instructions, I covered the spruce tips with water and boiled uncovered for 2 hours. Darren complained about the terrible smell it made in the house. I then strained the liquid, I didn't have any cheese cloth handy so I just poured the liquid through a Bounty paper towel that I placed over my measuring bowl. If you do attempt to strain boiling hot liquid through a paper towel, make sure it is Bounty, I don't think regular paper towels are sturdy enough.

I ended up with 5 cups of liquid, so I added 5 cups of sugar and boiled the mixture for another hour. It wasn't quite thick and amber colored, but I had other chores to do and I didn't want to leave syrup boiling unattended on the stove(and I was tired of watching syrup boil), so when it was peachy colored and less runny than water, I called it good. I ended up with 6 1/2 half pint jars of spruce tip syrup.

It does taste like honey, very sweet and slighty tangy. After I added the sugar to the strong smelling spruce liquid, I thought to myself "I bet you can make anything taste good if you just add and equal amount of sugar..." And with spruce tips, it really is true!

The

Dogwood

Flowers

are

Blooming...

The Tom Turkeys are strutting...

~SERENA~

Serena has finally graduated to being an off leash dog. We are all much happier.

She even comes when she is called. We still need to work on the obedience training a little, but

she

very

much

improved.

~The New Reindeer Pasture~

Darren moved the reindeer into a new pasture so they could have some fresh grazing ground and let the other pasture recover before they are moved back in there before winter. Here is Rosie surveying her new surroundings.

And here is Salty the Bull sampling the new shoots.

The two bulls

Rosie and Virginia

Virginia is still sickly. She ended up coming down with a cough that Darren suspected was pneumonia. So we ended up giving her a shot of the powerful antibiotic. Darren held her while I administered the shot. I had never given a shot before, butI have seen the vet give shots to the dogs and cats so I figured it wouldn't be too hard. Of course, it was more difficult than I anticipated. First of all, Darren didn't want me to fill up the syringe until he caught her, so he had to hold her and wait for me while I tried to fill the syringe. I was having a hard time getting the medicine sucked up into the syringe. It took seemingly forever, but I finally got the correct dosage in. Then, I had to pull up the skin on her shoulder and poke the needle in without getting into the muscle. It was even harder to get the medicine out of the syringe and I had to push the plunger very hard to squeeze out the antibiotic, Darren kept accused me of injecting her in the muscle. We had to do all of this while the mother ran around us snorting and stomping and grunting. It turns out that the needle was too small which was causing all the difficulty, I picked up a syringe with a larger needle in case we needed to use it again.

So a few days later, Virginia falls ill again and Darren determines that she must need another shot or she will die. So again he catches her, I fill up the syringe with the larger needle and proceed to administer the shot. But during the course of the injection I notice the antibiotic dripping out on her fur - I poked too far and went out the other side of her skin. So I had to go back and refill the syringe and try again.

Reindeer often will react to shots by forming an abcess around the injection site, many reindeer owners have to weigh the benefit of the shot (usually a vaccination) versus the very likely potential of having to deal with an abcess. Virginia actually developed two tennis ball sized abcesses within a couple of days. One on her chest and one on her shoulder where the shot was administered. They will often heal on their own but sometimes they need to be lanced. Darren monitored her for a few days and when the abcess on her chest started getting even larger our reindeer expert from the University recommended that they should be lanced. This time, I got to hold her down while Darren operated on her. I won't go into details here since it was actually quite gross and messy. She is still weak and very scrawny, expecially compared to Rosie. Hopefully she will recover and catch up on her growing.

~Fuzzy~ Darren suspects that Fuzzy is still pregnant, if she doesn't have a calf within the next couple of weeks, she will have to go on a serious diet.

Fuzzy starred in the movie "Elf" before coming to live on our farm. Doesn't she look like a super star?

The reindeer graze on wheat grass, willows, birch, fireweed, roses, lichen and a variety of other naturally growing plants. They also get a small grain ration twice a day.