First Fresh Produce of the Year

We just dug this out of the garden yesterday (under a foot of snow).  I've been anticipating this first harvest of the year since about the time I forgot how much work the fall harvest was. Can you guess what it is?

April 2 Edit: No this wasn't an early April Fools joke and since people are having a hard time guessing, I'll give a few hints.  Ella guessed that these are parsnips.  They are not.  Nor are they carrots, ginger, or some odd kind of turnip or radish.  By the way, did you know that they grow ginseng up here?  It is not ginseng.  Lisa said they look like something that should not be eaten.  She's partly right.  You would not want to take a chomp out of this strongly flavored food.  It's usually eaten in small quantities mixed with other ingredients or foods.

April 8 Edit: Ok, I misled you a bit in the preceding paragraph.  It is, indeed, some (odd) kind of radish.  If you need a more direct hint, check out this link: Hungry for Horseradish.

Feeling Sappy

I'm not usually accused of having a sappy personality.  Silly for sure, or even maybe crazy - but not sappy.  But this year we're all feeling a little sappy after drilling a bunch of little holes in maple trees and hanging bags on them to catch the lifeblood of the trees (you'll never enjoy pure maple syrup innocently again).

We've collected around 100 gallons of sap so far and boiled much of it down on an evaporator we got from a very generous friend who was getting out of maple sugaring.  The evaporator is a wood fired stove with a couple big pans that sit on top, directly over the flame.  

 

 

We haven't drawn off any finished syrup yet, but should get about 2 gallons from what we've collected so far.  We have yet to see how much longer the trees will bleed flow and what our potential for production is this year.  I don't think we'll run out of wood, but we might run out of time.  Each finished gallon takes about 8 hours to boil down - and that's time that could be spent grafting and pruning apple trees.