A new Highland arrival

Gwyneth and her newborn Scottish Highland bull calf. 

There's a new addition to the small Scottish Highland herd at Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast!
In the midst of one of the warmest mid-March weather ever, a bull calf decided to enter the world. Chris found the calf on a Sunday morning after noticing that the cow had not come outside of the barn. The calf was already nursing. It's quite possible that we had a St. Patrick's Day calf.
The calf's mother -- Gwyneth -- picked a much better day to calve. Last year while she was at another farm, Gwyneth had a calf during an ice storm and the calf froze to death only a few feet outside the barn. The farmer we bought her from figured that she would be the first of our three cows to give birth.
We noticed the day before that the cow's teats were swollen. Sherry also noticed some mucous coming from the cow. But the cow's udder didn't look full enough, Chris thought. But obviously these beef cattle are not like dairy cows and the udder was big enough.
The calf is quite sturdy and looks like he's been washed and blow-dried! That's because the mother was quite thorough licking the calf -- a natural and essential function -- which makes him look fuzzy.
We expect one other cow to give birth this spring and suspect that the other cow -- who had a bull calf last June -- did not get bred. It will be fun watching the little guy grow up.

Maple syrup season begins at Brambleberry

Special bags are used to collect the sap. 

Spiles are put into the trees. 

The sap is collected. 

As winter starts to wane the season of maple sap is upon us. Our philosophy at Brambleberry Farms is to live sustainably off the land, enjoying the bounties that nature provides.
One of the ways we do that is to make our own maple syrup from the trees on our farm. Late February through March are the months when the sap starts to flow. Guests are welcome to help us collect sap and observe the process of cooking it down. We are a small producer of maple syrup. We practice low-impact, labor intensive methods of collecting maple sap using bags on tree taps. The sap is manually collected, boiled down on a wood stove, and finished on a commercial gas range.
Commercial operators usually use a much more efficient system of tubing and a vacuum system to collect sap. 


It takes many hours to cook down the sap, which is the process of removing the water and concentrating the sugar content. You can make maple syrup out of any member of the maple family, although sugar maples have the highest sugar content. Other sap needs to be cooked down even further. Sugar maples yield a 30:1 ratio; other maples are 40:1. In other words, you need to boil down 30 to 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of maple syrup. 

The sap is boiled down

The finished product -- 100 percent maple syrup!

Believe it or not, box elders are a member of the maple family, but you need 80:1 to make syrup. We are not that patient even though we have numerous box elders!
 The sap season is very dependent on the weather. Ideal conditions are for temperatures above freezing during the day and below freezing at night. As we move through March and the nights remain warm, the sap will stop flowing as the trees bud out. 
The syrup is filtered and stored in glass jars. The syrup is used in our breakfasts and also available for sale. We sell the syrup for $7 (8 ounces) and $13 (16 ounces).